Dear Diary

(Firsts of everything lasts forever. I’ll never forget my first kiss. My first cheque. My first love. I don’t know why it is like this. I also won’t forget the first home I lived in- my nani’s. Maybe because it coincided with my childhood. Maybe because it grew alongside me. Or maybe because I became myself or atleast the core parts of my personality grew and developed in that place. Whatever it might be, even if there is no logic to it I’ll still prefer dying there rather than anyplace else.

This is the only diary entry I have written outside of my diary.)

9th November 2018

Friday

4:55 p.m.

Old houses speak in mysteries,

About people and their histories.

For when they part,

Then they truly come to know,

That it’s not just some land,

But a piece of their heart.

The death of an affectionated object is …difficult. The accumulation of affection for the object over time, at times, tantamount to sacredness. And you’ll do anything to prolong separation from it, even naturalise its death by letting it coincide with yours.

When talks of selling nani’s house resumed with a serious vigour last week I forgot every other concern. Unlike every grown up involved in it I really wasn’t concerned with what good or bad this act could initiate. I didn’t even want to subject it to moral scrutiny and discuss if it was selfish or something well thought of. All I know and all I am aware of is how I feel. And I feel grievously sad for I can’t see myself otherwise; I am just someone who stands to lose so much. Nothing more. Nothing less. And the sadder part is that I am utterly powerless- whatever I say wouldn’t matter.

That house isn’t just a signifier of my childhood but of otherwise inexorable things. Every corner houses a story from my childhood, preserving ten years of my life lived there. Its bare walls and frugal furniture have remained the same. The floor of the balcony that my nani washes everyday reveals paw prints when the water evaporates. And they always plunge me back into nostalgia- the first dog I ever loved whom my grandfather lovingly called Lallu (literally stupid, naive, gullible). It is because of that house that I can resume chitter-chatter with my childhood friends every month while languidly strolling into the night. And oh! Its sun-kissed balcony gives a perfect vantage point to observe the whole lane while it comes to life as the sun charts its course; revealing a society where the lanes are filled with houses and the homes are filled with people and everyone knows everyone and they all talk through their daily chores whilst hanging out in their own balconies. Their sociability is mysteriously contagious.

Now where am I supposed find a place where time slows down for me to watch it go by?

The bridge to the things I left behind six years ago when my mom remarried is going to be taken down and I seem to lose so much that I can’t see through blurry eyes what gains await me.

If the people you love are your family and the things you possess define you and your relations, then a home puts these on a map, arrange them with care in the matrix of time and space.

Its going to be so difficult not to call those things mine anymore.

But when the house is going to get sold, and someone is going to whitewash my childhood to register their own over it, then certainly my heart is going to break.

I always thought it was going to be my very own ancestry. Maybe I was too sure. Maybe this was my fault.

What is life but a series of comes and gos.

Of dos and don’ts.

Of choices and deliberations.

Of making yours and letting gos.

With love,

Sam