My first memory of home is a small house of bricks painted blue. There was a small living cum dining room which had a big window covered with a grill. The grill had the figure of a peacock in it. The peacock was painted blue and green, and looked very much alive. We used to call that room the peacock room.
The house was surrounded with trees of all varieties.
There was a big guava tree falling on to the roof top of the verandah. Since it was slanted, it was easy to climb on top of that tree, on to the roof. And
once on the roof, one could see the huge mango tree to the other side of the
house, in all its glory and majesty. If looked at it from the ground, one could
see the huge trunk only. It was so big that one used to wonder if at all it had
any branches and leaves on top of it. But looking at it from the top, one
realizes, yes, it is a full-fledged tree with lots of branches and leaves and
still eager to grow higher up into the sky.
These were not the sole inhabitants
of the plot of land around my home. All sort of fruit bearing trees, that one
could imagine, lived there amiably and peacefully. Just like a perfect, big
family. There was mulberry, champakka,
panineer champakka, cherry, muttapazham, passion fruit, Ololikka, a
number of coconut trees, yet another guava tree, and a couple more of mango
trees. Now the readers would think that we were prejudiced towards fruit
bearing trees. That was not the case. Though not many in number, there was some
flower bearing trees and plants as well. There was a big pink rose, jasmine, ashokam, elanji and
the flower that blooms in the night- nishagandhi.
In the popular (among us) stories of my mom about my
family and home, there is a story about these trees too. It is said that when
my dad bought this plot, there was only a couple of coconut trees there. Once
he built the house, he himself planted all these trees though it was doubtful
for many, if so many trees in such a small plot of land will bear fruits. Just
as soon as the trees started to place their roots firmly in the soil and
started thinking about growing and expanding, the great draught, of the year I
was born, stuck.
The brook (about which a great many stories follow and will be
told some other time) that ran just behind my house went all dry. The Well,
just beside my home, followed suit. It was so hot, dusty and dry that the trees
started feeling thirsty. They grew week, dry and all weary. That was the
time utmost care was needed to make sure that they don’t die or grow retarded.
So my dad went up the brook, fetched water from the temporary small wells made
all over the brook, carried the water on his shoulders, and watered the trees
throughout the evenings. Thus he made sure that the trees survived in-spite of
the fire-spitting summer dragon.
In front of the house, was the long, winding KK road
connecting Kottayam and Kumily. This was and still is an important road of
trade and commerce in Kerala. This was the road travelled by Britishers when
they set up huge tea estates in the High Ranges of the Western Ghats in Kerala.
The same road that the Irish father of Plantations, J J Murphy , took when he
went to establish the first successful Rubber plantation of India. Later on
many a ’son of the soil’ took this road with ambition and zest in mind, to make
their own kingdom of spice and rubber plantations, which marked the richness of
this land for decades. Of all the characters that have been described so far,
this was the only character with some sort of prominence to people outside this
locality. On the other side of the road is the huge, thick and lush green
rubber plantation of Chittady Estate.
Another important character of this geography has
already been introduced earlier- The brook. This was the entertainment spot for
all the children in the surrounding area. The ways of entertainment varied from
fishing to two hour long swims in the afternoon to patented water games which
would be unheard of in the outside world. This included kallittankuzhi, vellathil chattam, ‘swimming with changadam’ and scores of others. This brook
bordered the backyard of my home. Across the brook was again a huge, thick, and
lush green rubber plantation.Thus, this house of blue bricks surrounded by all
the above described topography served as a home for me, my brother, my mother
and my dad for the first 10 years of my life.
All things, good and bad or great and small, will come to
an end. Most of the times, they give way to better things. Now, we were moving
away from this house to a portion of another house in the same neighbourhood, so
that this house could be destroyed, demolished and erased out of memory, and a
new, concrete house with two floors could be built instead at that place.
The
evening we were to leave from there, there was a frenzy of activity all around.
Packing, moving things, disposing of the hens and it went on and on. That was
when I tried to retrieve something precious from the bedroom me and my brother
shared. There was a poster of two monkeys-mother and kid, I got from Balarama, which I had pasted on the wall. Carefully, I tried to take it off the wall. It
wouldn't come off. Soon, it was time to leave, impatience overtook carefulness
and I tried a little hard. It tore off from the wall. Then I cried, I cried
bitterly all the way of the small walk from my home to the temporary abode
where I was to live for the next one year or so. I cried for the first time in
my life for leaving home.
P.S: There would be many a times in the chronicles of my life (some
past and some yet to come) where I would be crying bitterly, at least in my heart,
for leaving home.
