The Long Journey Home

Holding the keys of our new home in Punawale, brought tears to our eyes,

As it marked the culmination of our long journey home!

Twenty two years and eight houses later!

The first few shifts, we did ourselves, buying cardboard crates

And packing everything into boxes marked ‘B’, ‘H’, ‘K’, ‘B storage’ etc.

After a few relocations, we had enough of doing and undoing.

The next few shifts, we just sat back and watched the movers and packers

Pack crockery, paintings and vases in bubble-wraps, and move things

Without breakage, scratches on the walls and floors or chips in the plywood.

Boxes packed so well that very often I would think

Why bother to unpack when we would have to repack

And move to another rented place soon again?

I look back at the long list of houses we once called home:

The first, our honeymoon house where I had a traumatic miscarriage,

The second, where we were blessed with our first son.

The third which had rooms like the compartments of a train,

The fourth where our little angel enjoyed her duck rides in the garden right behind,

The fifth where we celebrated each others’ festivals and learnt the joys of neighbourliness.

The sixth where we spent most evenings at the municipal garden across the road,

The seventh where the children climbed the mango and ramphal trees in our courtyard,

The eighth, my father’s new house, where I found in a neighbour, a friend.

When our children were small,

We lived conscious of the fact that the house

We were living in, wasn’t our own.

We were afraid: Afraid that the children would draw on the walls,

Bang the doors, play too noisily, shout too much, waste too much water,

And turn the house upside down before the owners’ surprise visits.

So many neighbourhoods and so many neighbours!

We lived in so many houses in Nigdi Pradhikaran that we knew

Each lane and each street like the lines on our palms!

Attending other’s house–warming ceremonies, we often wondered

When we would see our own names on the nameplate outside the door

And call the house we were staying in, ‘our home’.

After we settled in our home, my twenty year old son

Wrote ‘I am a wall’ and his name on the wall, compensation

For the innumerable times he was scolded for writing on the walls!

The children now put on loud music casting it on to the T.V. for amplification,

Dance to their heart’s content, shout ‘Baou Zakeruga!’ without being scolded,

And we are no longer worried about the house owner’s visit!

And though the house isn’t furnished yet and we are sleeping on mats,

Though the kitchen trolleys are not in place, nor the clothes line,

Yet, I’ve got a spring in my step, I’m smiling, and we all are too!

Dr. Elizabeth Vincent Koshy

From: India

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