Home Is Where the Heart Is...

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.