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| My "cute" house |
“It’s only when you construct
a house you learn how to construct one and by then it’s too late for
that lesson.” A friend of mine whom I visited last week said that. The
construction work of his house was in the last phase. The house looked like a
mansion, a palace that befits an NRI which my friend is. I wondered why my
friend was dissatisfied with it.
I had reasons
to be unhappy with my own house. I had handed over the contract lock, stock and
barrel to a builder who was from my own village. He didn’t understand me at
all. When I said simplicity he understood cuteness. When I said elegance, he
understood ostentation. In the end, the house wasn’t at all what I had in mind.
But you can build your house only once. You are destined to live within your
blunders until your death.
Unless you keep
changing your house as one of my relatives did. He didn’t stay in any house for
more than a few years. He would start constructing another one months after
shifting into a new one. Until his wife told him that she was not particularly
amused by rearranging furniture, furnishings and utensils all her life. By then
he had grown old too and tired to imagine a better house.
I built my
house in my old age. I had spent all my life in somebody else’s houses. Dormitories
in seminaries and then houses that weren’t much better than huts in Shillong
before I got a decent flat in Delhi. Finally at the age of 55 I constructed my
own house in my village. And got it wrong just as I had got most things wrong
in my life.
“By the time
we learn the essential lessons of life, they become useless,” I told my NRI
friend as we sat in a bar near his house sipping Heineken beer. He agreed
instantly. But I reassured him that he should have no reason for regret about
his house which was a palace fit for the Maharaja of Kochi. What he wanted was
not a palace, he said.
He must be
right. He is quite a simple man at heart. A philosopher who won’t feel at home
in a Maharaja’s palace. But that’s his destiny now: to live in a palace. As
much as mine is to live in what my contractor called “a cute house.”
PS. I have
accepted the #WriteAPageADay challenge from Blogchatter and so you will find this
sort of odd posts. How else will I manage to find topics every day for a month?
Tomorrow you are likely to get my raves on Tevye, the protagonist of the movie,
Fiddler on the Roof.
"Our space is our home because we love each other in it. "
ReplyDeleteYour house is indeed cute!
That's so true, Anupama. What makes a home a sweet place is the love within it. All the rest is meaningless in the final analysis. That way, my home is the sweetest place in the world.
DeleteHari Om
ReplyDeleteA post is a post, per that challenge - but you always meet the challenge admirably! I really enjoyed this little read and having known several 'self-builders' can also understand that there never seems to be total satisfaction with the end result. I am just grateful to have a roof over my head at all! YAM xx
Glad that i make sense when i write what i think is my raving.
DeleteYes, no one will be quite satisfied with whatever is done... Human nature!
We have two apartments in Chennai but both of them are pretty small. You have been to my house in Kochi, Tom. It is a three bedroom apartment and I like it here. I have never lived in an independent house though. One of the things I sorely miss is living in a house with a garden. I would like to build a house myself sometime and if and when I do that I will make sure it has a garden.
ReplyDeleteProbably it's not about house, Jai.
DeleteI was getting some terrible idea these days... about a story where you're a famous horror fiction writer and I'm an inquirer as well as a victim of an illusion. A ghost story that's funny and horrifying at once.
Nothing to do with houses. Everything to do with what you and I are..
And the ghosts out there.
A real life story with morality ingrained in it! Building a house is like building ones dream and I can understand how it would feel, if the house is not as per wishes. May be someday, I will be able to build my house. Only time will say.
ReplyDeleteI'm making certain alterations so that my house will be more like I wanted it to be.
DeleteWell living in a house which is “cute” in eyes of the contractor doesn’t seems cute to me and honestly making a house to a home really needs some physical and emotional inputs. Being someone who has moved a lot lately, I would say I really miss my home in Kerala.
ReplyDeleteKerala people give undue importance to ''cuteness" of their houses, I think.
DeleteLoved reading this post Tomichan. It reminded me of my tailor:) Ha! HA! Being far away from the place we hope to settle down in once the husband retires, the only form of contractual construction I've dabbled with recently is for sari blouses. My 'contractor' never fails to disappoint. Perhaps, there's a reason our dreams don't often match reality. In that disappointment lies the need to evolve, reflect and sometimes even discard our own notions and definitions of beauty/simplicity/elegance--perhaps.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great lesson for me. Age is teaching me that sort of wisdom, especially patience and tolerance. And then acceptance too.
Delete