Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Home Sweet Home

Peace - that was the other name for home
- someone.

Coming from an economicaly not-so-good background, building a spacious house and making it a sweet home has always been a dream for me.

I remember my very first home - where i born and spent my infant days. It was a single room house with roof of hay and bamboo. The kitchen is an open space with two small mud stoves and a wooden rack to keep the cooking items. I remember the cool mud floor, the banana trees along with jasmine and rose plants. That was my fantasy house during my child hood days...banana trees were the walls with jasmine roofs. I spent most of my day in that shade playing with small mud toys. I used a pile of small stones to mark my rooms and interiors. The toys were my inmates and lived in an imaginary house were at times my grand ma would join me to live there :)

As i grew, so did our financial status and we demolished that mud house and build a small house with an open first floor. But my fantasy house become our backward garden where me and my father used to spend lots of time hearing stories of his childhood...naming the flowers and looking for butterflies. The open floor used to be my study room where my father fixed a small bulb for me to study at nights and my brother used to fix me a temperory wool tent to avoid the winter. It used be lovely to spend the night - in an open space with sky as my roof. It will be good to watch the sky at night with gently breeze humming and distant coconut trees dancing...!!! Those stars and trees knew my deepest wishes and wildest dreams.

Then after schooling i went away from my house to stay in hostel. The more i got exposed to the external world, the more my dreams have got widened. I was so absorbed into the materialistic world i begun think about my career, my future etc. In that, the dream of house has got hidden somewhere. I started traveling in the direction of time and become more focused.

Then my life has become a journey in a roller coaster...ups and downs...twists and turns and i changed and statisfied myself in accomplishing short term goals and no more dreams. After i landed in my dream company, i felt my journey has come to a smooth stream.

One day my friend invited me to her house for a weekend. I went there with the hope of spending a weekend with good sleep, good food and good shows. When i opened the gate of her house, the first thing striked was the roof with jasmine [it was season] , a lemon tree and few other plants. It was friday evening with gentle breeze. I remembered my infant days and fantasy house. The deep down memories started surfacing, i started thinking about my childhood dream of building a house...

I thought that i could buy a house of my taste near the place i worked but after some analysis i found that building or buying a house in that place is not possible and i would never get the peace and then i decided that i would built an house in my hometown which has too many memories for me to cherish my wholelife time.

And then there were too many occasions where i had to convince my parents , my grandma and my well wishers. Initially they thought that the idea was not a good one. They didnt want me to get loan for building the house and i was begining to lose the hope of a house for my parents.

Then suddenly one day, my grandma accepted and then it was not that difficult for me to convince my parents. After that everything came handy...luckily we got a land...and loan was approved immediately...thanks to Finacle & infy. Then started the project...we found a good constructor and i was there almost every month to see our house growing.

I was crazy enuf to take pictures whenever i go there...so tht it ll be part of my stored memories...i remember watching sun set standing on the top of the concrete...the wet floors shining due to the reflection...i remember showing the plan to all my frns...talking about it almost at every coffee time in office hours...though i spent very little time during the construction...but each and every day was a step closer to my dream come true.

Ofcourse there were many conflicts wrt chosing the flooring type...door design. And thanks to my dear brother...he took charge of everything...and saw the way i wanted to see and chose everything. He is the back bone of that design and look. As the house was in almost completed stage...my maraige got fixed...and i am supposed to leave to US as soon as my maraige got over.

The final days were really tough...emotionaly...physically we all were exhausted. The day i left the house...it was not completely finished...yet some patch work has been required...i was not there for the house warming ceremony...i was not there for painting...i was not there for flooring....but i m there...in each and every inch of that house.

Now the work is over...my parents are living there to make it a sweet home...and i m thousands of miles away from my home...waiting for the day that i wud step into my dream ...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Some times i think, that the human life is all about constructing a dream house...With whatever i see. My parents constructed one dream house & paid the interest for the rest of the years, and now my goal is also another dream house, and i donno as how many years i'm gonna pay...If this all every middle income group family supposed to do in a lifetime???

Anonymous said...

wow...so many sweet memories and dreams of childhood..we cant forget them so easily...and we cant leave dreams without making them true..thts life...