Mosaic Tiles and Mismatched curtains

It is one of those pleasant Bangalore evenings- cool with a hint of oncoming rain, and silence. I sit on the concrete ,once wooden bench in the compound of my grandfather’s house. The luxury of having a place to sit that is neither in, nor out. I am shaded by the roof above me but can also see the sky. Having the seclusion of a blank wall in front of me but also a view of the road to my left. The road, one of those idyllic cul-de-sacs, which used to have at least enough trees to give us food for countless tree-to-tree games. Now most of the trees are gone, but at least the coconut trees inside the compound of a few houses still stand. I remember collecting the tiny dried up ping-ping ball sized coconuts that fall down and playing with them.

In front of me is the tulsi plant with the miniature shrine. Painted a bright yellow by my grandfather a few years back, it is a reminder of how central it used to be in their lives of yesterday. A small one-and-a-half foot wide strip of ‘garden’ runs along the length of the compound, no fancy manicured lawns or exotic plants here. Just a homely mixed growth of green. In front of the spot where I am sitting used to be a banana tree – a bright vivid shade of green, exciting to a child’s eye .The hibiscus plant still stays, from which we used to try extracting and tasting the nectar.The old fashioned gate remains untouched as well, with its carved flowers and musical instruments, from where I have swung watching the going-ons of the road and the way the maid would wash the stone outside the gate with cowdung and draw a ‘kolam’ and make borders on the stone.

To my right is the garage. Having never owned a car but still owning a nice ten feet by twelve feet garage with a rolling shutter,  the garage doubles as a multipurpose store room for odds and ends, discarded furniture, a clothesline where the laundry was transferred when it rained, the odd scooter that a relative or a random uncle would leave temporarily. The garage had been a wonderful playroom for me, sitting on a chair that been converted into a swing, making tents out of bed sheets, spreading the same bed sheet on the floor for games of ludo, and getting fascinated by the operation of the rolling shutter and its heavy rattle. A tall wooden stool that also doubled as a ladder while taking things from the loft still stands there. It is now a pale yellow but it used to be painted a bright blue. Just like most of the other wooden things in this house- cane chairs, the window shutters, even the back door.

Each of the rooms used to be painted a different colour, and the colours used to also be changed each time the house was repainted, and the little peeled off bits of paint would reveal what the colour used to be, leaving you wondering how that room would have looked in the other colour. The ‘hall’ was a shade of blue somewhere between sky blue and cobalt blue. The main bedroom was green with cornice bands of lavender and pale yellow. I remember how this room permanently had a spare cot that was placed on its side at one end to save space. I would clamber on to the gap and pretend it was a witness stand and enact courthouse scenes.   The other room that had a view of the road , that was and is still called the ‘front room’ or ‘outside room’ when translated into English was painted a light purple , I fail to remember the colour of the dining room but I remember the foldable brown formica topped table with the oddly shaped chairs.  

The small kitchen with the cement counters, the bathroom, not to be confused with ‘toilet’ that was a separate entity, had a rough granite floor, ‘anti skid’ in today’s terms, and used to have a large ‘boiler’ that heated water.

The backyard , with the washing stone and built in grinding stone, and a small water tank that I have on occasion used as a swimming pool/bath tub, and the small outdoor ‘Indian toilet’ with once red-oxide flooring, the projected sil where I have sat many a time playing with the hooks that hold the wooden shutters in place and the rangoli powder that was always kept in this spot, the old quaint wooden sign bearing my grandfather’s name and the name of the bank where he worked, the uneven portions of the ground where water would collect during rains and where we would make paper boats, the common walls with the neighbouring houses which we would jump across while playing hide and seek...

The house may have had mismatched furniture haphazardly arranged leaving no space for movement and oddly coloured walls and doors and a cluttered showcase where objects went on display regardless of  aesthetic, but the memories overrule the absurdities -sometimes absurdities are what make  memories so much more vivid...