Strange fact about life is that we don’t realize how much some things mean to us-until they’re absent from our lives. If we knew how much of an impact they make in our lives….would we treat them differently? I ponder over the year that has gone by...I am here in my home that I grew up in and yearned to be back in all of last year- and strangely, I miss the home we had built in the past year-far away from home.
A few months in a PG in the new city we had come to conquer (Chennai!), and we were ready to move into a place of our own. There started our house hunting adventure which we started with a long list of requirements, but ended with just one – give us a house with two bathrooms indoor…please!!! We poured over the newspapers, contacted one broker after other till our phones were clogged with their numbers, went in and out of what felt like every free house in the area –till we landed in a decent place which amazingly seemed to fulfill all our demands.
Excitedly, we waited for the day the keys to our little nest would be handed over to us. We sat up late in the night making lists of the paraphernalia that we would require to give the place a semblance of home. Many shopping trips later we were equipped with all the items on the list we had deliberated on. By then the house was whitewashed and ready for us to occupy. And so, one February night we moved into our little home-Coronet Gardens.
The months that followed were a riot of emotions. We were four girls – so different from each other that you could be rest assured that you‘d get four completely different opinions on almost anything under the sky. Yet there was something that bound us together. Maybe it’s the home that we lived in together, maybe it was being away from family, maybe it was the college life that we shared- whatever the reason, it’s impossible to imagine a place or people I’d rather have lived with.
Moving into a place of our own was the beginning of a lot of first timers for us. We Inaugurated our kitchen with our house warming –which had all of us watching anxiously for the milk to boil over on the right side. Well…we weren’t really sure which was the right side, so we assumed whichever side it boiled over was the right one! Though we had little or no prior experience with cooking, we did go into it with all the gusto and enthusiasm of first timers. The effort proved worthwhile in the end -because even though the ingredients remained our private secret, we had tasty food on the table- rather, our makeshift table!
It was a special feeling -sharing the mundane things with people who are so unrelated to you. Looking back I realize, it wasn’t as much fun then as it is thinking about it now! We had our share of irate neighbors giving us a tough time, water problems, maid problems, bill payments– but in the end we ranted about them and finally ended up laughing about the whole thing.
It was a unique experience-sharing our home, midnight birthday bashes, brainwashing everyone to indulge in a round of pizza, ice cream treats, cooking experiments, late night talks about completely weird things, , peaceful silences, serious talks, laughing about absurd marriage proposals, shopping trips, unexpected visitors, cleaning frenzy, sudden outbursts, impromptu outings, dancing and singing like no one’s watching- but most of all….the feeling of coming back home after a days work, the feeling of belonging.
