An End To a 48 Year Old Journey

 The house that one grows up in is always special. No matter how far an individual goes, that home holds a special place in one's heart. If there is a situation where the said individual leaves the home permanently, there is a weird feeling. It can also be sad in many cases, but it sure is odd in every one of them.

I was born in Indore and have lived 92% of my life there and that too in the same house with a joint family. Only after I got a job in 2021, I moved to Pune in 2022 (after COVID-19 lockdown ended). Pune also was temporary as evident from the fact that I am currently in Bengaluru.

Even if I was not living in Indore, I would visit my house on festivals and special occasions. While I would still continue doing that no matter where I am in coming years, I won't be visiting the same house anymore.

My family has sold the old house and bought and moved into a new one. A bigger and most importantly, a better one. It still is a joint family if you are wondering.

In my opinion, calling the old house “old” in 2023 is an understatement. It was old maybe like 20–25 years ago. It died around 15 years ago and since the last 7–8 years, it has been a zombie.

My grandfather bought the house in 1975 when it was brand new and since then, our family lived there till now. My mother came to this house when she married my father. They have been married since 36 years. My sister was born and brought up in that house until 2015, when she left to pursue her MBA. My cousin (uncle's son) was also born and brought up in the same house.

The house was purchased for Rs 45,000! Yes, that's right. 45K including registry.
While it is a small* amount in today's world, I am sure, it packed a punch back then. My aunt was just telling me my grandfather sold some of his gold in order to gather the money. The crazy part is if you buy a house worth 1Cr today, I am sure your next generations would be surprised 50 years from now when they receive this information. “That Cheap!?”, they'll say.
“Small” is not the right word in the above lines, as any amount is subjective to a particular person's financial condition, but I think you get what I am trying to say there.

There are multiple reasons why I called the house “zombie” in the paragraph above.

• The entire house was damp. The correct word in Hindi for this is “seelan”. It was so damp that the paint used to peel off months after when we painted it on Diwali every year. The wetness was clearly visible on the walls. For kicks, I taped an A4 sized paper on the wet wall for a night and next day, the paper became very soft and more easily tearable. Prolonged exposure to such dampness gave rise to multiple health issues like Asthma to my aunt. One cannot walk on the cold floor without a pair of flip-flops for 9/12 months.
  

• The house was right next to a railway track. All our lives, we heard the sounds of train whistles and trains passing by, up to a point where we don't even notice it anymore. I have observed that kids (and even some adults) usually are very excited to see a train pass by. It is not true for our family though. It is safe to say that we have heard and seen more trains than an average person does in his/her entire life.
  

• The house was in a commercial location. Take 15 steps from our house, and you would be standing on a very busy service road with shops on both sides. Just above the service road, there was a flyover. Our ears were filled with traffic noises 24×7×365, for all these ears. I still remember, I was surprised to hear the ticking of the clock during COVID-19 lockdown (second wave) where no one dared to step out of their houses. I find this kind of silence of eerie now.
  Even in Pune, I lived 50m away from “Balewadi High Street”, 10m away from a pub named “Eskobar” and the road provided a shortcut to skip 2 traffic signals, so there was traffic and noise always.
  Now in BLR, I live in a proper residential area which has that eerie silence. The keystrokes are loud and clear as I type this post.

• The neighbors were assholes. A politician, a garage owner, a property broker, a car wash, an auto parts store, a barber shop. Not a single family was worth calling “neighbors”. A lot of them used to drink and fight. None of them had the decency to talk to elders or anyone for that matter. The garage workers and the owner himself was a pervert. There were countless occasions when a fight broke out between us and the others. I won't mention those here. With the new house, let's just hope that we never cross paths with any of them again.

• The house used to flood in heavy rains. A new road was constructed in our street years ago which lowered our house's level with respect to the street outside. As a result, if it rained a lot (which usually happens in Indore), the house would get flooded, and we have to wait for the rain to stop in order to clean the house. Due to old construction, a lot of that water was absorbed by the walls and the floor which increased the house's dampness even more and completely damaged the wooden doors and frames. There was a fear of getting electrocuted when the house was filled with water. Normal people enjoy tea and fritters in rainy season while we were always worried of a flood and prayed for the rain to stop.

• The water supply was very irregular and even on the days it was there, it only lasted for 30 minutes or less. Towards the end (last 3-4 months), the water was so polluted that the purifier gave up. We had to boil the water to be able to drink it.
  

While there are MANY other reasons also, let me stop here with all the negativity.
Even with all those problems, we managed. We had to. It was our house. It was close to my father's college. Furthermore, it was close to my school. Mainly, it was close to my uncle's place of work about which I will write a post when the time is right. The only reason it lasted this long is everyone tried to keep it in the best possible condition. A huge credit goes to my aunt for that. Being a cleanliness freak has its advantages.

Even though we tried before, we had trouble selling it because of all the reasons I mentioned above.

But now, it's done, and it's time to start a new journey in the new house.

I was in Indore from 12th to 28th Nov. The plan was to move to the new house in October end. That's why my father had to go to Indore while my mother and I were there in BLR. Read my previous post (A For Anxiety) about this if you haven't yet.

But due to some change in plans, we had to postpone the moving to the end of November. As result, I was not there to experience it because I returned to BLR on 28th Nov. On the same day, we had the pooja for the new house which thankfully, I was able to attend.

The moving started on 30th Nov and continued till 1st December. Yes, we have a LOT of stuff. My father had to donate a lot of his journals to his college library. There was so much stuff, that after moving, when my sister was not able to see the floor of the new house during a video call, she decided to come to Indore the next day to help everyone with the arranging and organizing. She is there as I write this post. The current state of the new house is also a mess. Slowly and gradually, everything will have a place of its own.

Some things are to be fixed. Carpenter, plumber and electrician will visit in the coming days to do their jobs. By the looks of it, my father is not coming to BLR for at least 20 days. Maybe 30. Let's see.

Now that we have a proper “home” in a proper locality, we will be able to do things that everyone wanted to do since very long but were not able to do so.

• The porch is big enough so a lot of new and big plants will be potted there.
• My father and my aunt will have the chance to decorate the drawing room without worrying about the wet walls.
  
• I will use the knowledge of home automation and automate multiple things there.
  
• Because of the plenty water supply, a new automatic washing machine can be purchased.
  
• We got rid of the old and outdated furniture, so it's time for some classy furniture now.
• A nameplate consisting of my father and uncles name would be put outside.
• On Diwali, no more Chinese lights with thin wires would be purchased. Finally, it's time for LED strips.

These are just some (materialistic) things I can think of at the moment. There would be countless other things and the main thing is – improvement in quality of life. A little peace after all this time.
 

This deserves a special mention:
In the old house, there was a door frame on which I pasted some tattoos in my childhood that came as freebies with “boomer” chewing gum. They are still there! The quality of those things was on a different level. It's highly unlikely, but if someone pays a visit there for something, I'll ask them to click a picture which I will include in some future post.

 

Now that the old house does not belong to us, I have no problem in sharing a video showing all the rooms. You can clearly see the damage on the walls. If you are a subscriber of my blog and are reading this post directly from your inbox, I would suggest visiting my blog if you want to watch the video as it cannot be embedded in the email.

 

You might wonder why I have not uploaded a photo or video of the new house. The answer is – because it's the current house now. Although it's unlikely that someone would watch the video here and map out the house for a robbery, but I will not do it.

I know with proper determination, one can achieve a lot with just the reference images available publicly. Stay tuned for my next post where I will reveal a project that I have been working on since October and which I briefly mentioned in my previous post (A For Anxiety) also.

With this, I am ending this post and my 24-year-long journey in “25 Vyankatesh Market, Manik Bagh Road, Indore”.