In a new, unfamiliar city, I have just moved into a house in a somewhat strange-looking street that smells of childhood.
You’ll find such a road or alley in every old Indian city or town, from Kolkata to Vijayawada to Moradabad, but not in planned urban spaces, like say, Chandigarh. To give you a picture of the organically grown town where my new home is, residential buildings are closely packed here along the road. They are mostly small, at the most two storeys high, but no two of them look alike. Some houses have big ornate gates painted bright yellow, some have unpretentious small doors that haven’t smelt of new paint for decades, and some have a small open space in front, with a cluster of trees bearing family history, under which a red cemented slab invites people to sit down and chat. And at some points, old, dimly lit stores stand as the façade for the house behind. I am tempted to peep into a store and check what they sell, but don’t.
My house has a small red wooden door pushed back by a few feet from the road. I climb a short flight of stairs to reach a landing to unlock the main door with a large, ornamentally designed key. The paint on the door is old, peeled off at places; it’s a kind of entrance that makes you feel comfortable about the home beneath. A horse shoe, which people connected to good luck, has been nailed on the door at the eye level. Just below are three more wrought iron pieces reading 3, 8, and 6. The house just before mine is numbered 385, but for some reason, the one that follows is marked 392. That is the house with a large yellow gate.
I keep my light suitcase and duffel bag in the first room, open windows to drive away the musty smell, and come out to explore my new neighbourhood. But as it often happens, the place has just turned into a college hostel. My house is a room now; 386 is my room number. I realise why the street reminded me of my childhood. But a more urgent need forced me to return to the present. I had to pee.
I walk past a white wall and a long row of doors, all painted dull grey. Towards the end of the corridor, as expected, I find the common bathroom for the floor, without a gender sign. I go in.
Filth accumulated since god-knows-when assails me. The baths on one side has broken doors, leaking showers, and thick layers of fungi on floors and walls. The toilets are overflowing, with an avalanche of putrid brown slithering towards me, slowly, but inexorably. I am reminded of Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes. If you have read the book, you would recall the horrifying experience of Ali Shigri, who was held captive in an indescribably filthy windowless toilet.
However, I am far more fortunate, I don’t live in Pakistan. I turn around and run. No one stops me; I am back in the familiar, somewhat quaint road, and I hold the large key tightly for my dear life.
I walk on …
But I can’t find my house. I go past the now familiar road a number of times. Every other structure is in place, but I can’t find a door marked 386. Between 385 and 392, there is a wide alleyway washed by the morning sun, with blades of grass glistening with dewdrops. Was that how the other houses too vanished earlier?
It doesn’t matter though. Here I stand in my new city, with an ornate key in hand, but no door which it opens.
For the first time in my life, I realise how it feels to be homeless in one’s own country.
[Image courtesy Getty Images]
