Akbari Manzil
Over the years the house started to lose its sheen. It became a liability that was weighing my parents down. I began to dislike the house.
The house was larger than any of us had ever lived in. The bathrooms had bathtubs and bidets, unnecessary extravagances that we could have easily done without. We were eager to bring Bahrain back with us. This house was my parent’s early retirement plan. It is the home they built for their children to come back to, once they flew the nest.
We began the task of furnishing it. Only the best, was Pappa's constant refrain. We entrusted most of the furniture building to a dear friend from Bahrain who was now retired and living in Goa. The friend built cupboards for every bedroom, a massive crockery cupboard that houses mummy’s never-to-be-touched treasures, and an impressive large, round, black marble dining table that seats eight people but can easily accommodate more. Some furniture was shipped from Bahrain, some bought in Goa, and some built much later.
I designed the library bookshelves. With the little knowledge of interior design that I had acquired during one semester in college, I drew up the library plan. I measured our books, their lengths and breadths, and designed the shelves optimally. Both wooden and glass doors. A little bit of open shelving. The carpenter who was given the project was impressed with the drawing that he had to follow and built it to the T.
We bought curtains and bedcovers from Mumbai. The carpets came from Bahrain. As did most of the crockery, the kitchen appliances and cooking pots. I would visit home during my college holidays and see additions to the house.
The lawn, a walking path, garden lights. Coconut, banana, mango, and guava trees. A bougainvillea growing over the compound wall. The mogra sampling growing strong and climbing over the lovingly installed metal arc to guide its journey. Mummy attended gardening workshops and tended to her garden, buying flowering plants in droves.
During the years I was home after college, our home almost got hit by a plane. My mother and I were on the balcony one morning and two naval planes collided mid-air. One went nose down and crashed on the highway, while the other came straight at us. I looked up from the morning newspaper to see the nose of the plane right in my face. It passed over our home, over the masjid next to our home, and crashed into the next house. The sound of the planes taking off and landing at the airport nearby terrified me for months. I imagined the house exploding on top of us.
When I got married and left this home, I felt a twinge of sadness. I miss home, I would often say. It was in fact, my home. More than anything else was home. Was missing my parents the same as missing home? Was missing the life I left behind the same as missing the house?
Once when I was home visiting with my baby daughter, we slept through a robbery. We woke up in the morning to see the downstairs bedroom completely turned topsy-turvy. The cupboards, shelves, and dressing table drawers had opened themselves in the middle of the night and vomited out their contents, onto the floors and the bed. There were muddy footprints on the white marble floor. The backdoor lock had been broken to force entry. My mother lost all her gold jewelry that night. Does our accumulated wealth ever belong to us? I asked myself, while the sniffer dogs did their job. If it can be taken away so easily, do we really possess anything material?
Over the years the house started to lose its sheen. It became a liability that was weighing my parents down rather than being the Eden we hoped it would be. I began to dislike the house. Whenever we went to visit my parents, they made us feel warm and welcomed, but the house felt cold and distant.
For years, my nani (Amma) lived on the first floor of the house. It was difficult for her to venture downstairs, where all the action was, but she had a little world of her own upstairs. She was comfortable in her bedroom with a spare bed for the helper, an attached bathroom, and a living room with a television, right outside the bedroom where she would take her meals, watch serials and cricket matches on high volume, and read the Quran, or at times, Urdu magazines. Our visits would delight her. She would kiss my children’s hands, and gaze at us with adoration, asking about us all in great detail.
“Tu theek hai na? Tabiyat theek rehti?” she would ask me every day, in our Dakhni Urdu dialect.
“Khush raho, Sumi.” She would say, eyes brimming with tears, at the end of our visits.
With every visit I would see Amma grow older, harder of hearing. Her soft velvety skin would be more wrinkled, yet so delicate to touch. She had lost sight in one eye years ago when she had a fall and the broken glass of her spectacles pierced her eye. She carried on with her other good eye, but it grew weaker and weaker, till she stopped wearing her spectacles and stopped reading. She stopped watching television too. Her eyes grew distant and unfocused. She had no control over her bladder but detested the adult diapers she was made to wear. She lost balance and hurt herself but insisted on using the bathroom unaided and bathing herself. Until she couldn’t any longer.
What is it about this house that I detest so much? Why does it not feel like home? After all these years, why do I want to run away from it?
I hated that Amma stayed upstairs alone for so many hours. I hated that the house was so big that the distance between those who dwelled in it was so great. I detested this house that required so much time, money, and effort to maintain but refused to give back. I pleaded with my parents to sell it and move to a smaller, safer, and practical home. They listened and said, “We’ll see.” After years of pleading and coaxing and rationalizing with them, it was clear to me that they had no intention of ever selling and moving out of this home.
“The three of you can do what you want with the house once we are gone,” my mother said once. And that was that.
After Amma left us, her room was given to me. The five of us make ourselves at home in the room that held her spirit. I don’t want this room, I scream internally. In front of my parents, I practice saying ‘my room’ instead of Amma’s room.
The manicured lawn and the pruned plants are gone. My father tends to the garden but can’t keep up. The never-to-be-touched treasures are gathering dust. There are old artwork frames, neglected on the walls, in the corners of rooms, and behind shelves. I can almost hear them moan when I pass by. Lizards make themselves at home in the upstairs living room and scuttle behind the moaning frames on the wall whenever we pass. The dank air begs to mingle with the passing breeze outside but the windows remain shut, while spiders make patterned cobwebs across them. Once in a while, a maid comes upstairs to dust and change the bed sheets, sweep and mop, throw open the balcony doors, and allow the dank air and breeze a brief rendezvous. To make the space liveable for our visits.
The library I designed lies abandoned with books that don’t entice anyone anymore. They sit on their wooden and glass shelves reading to themselves. The words tumble over each other and merge into a humming palpable vibration that buzzes in my ears. We recently used the room as a suitcase storage room and ignored the buzzing and the humming until we couldn’t hear them anymore.
In August, the house hosted a wedding. We attempted to polish it down and dress it up to cover up the cracks of the past. The house was decked up like a bride. She looked like a withered old lady in ill-fitted clothes and way too much makeup. Nevertheless, she welcomed people from across the world with her dentured, lop-sided smile.
Family poured in and resuscitated the spaces gasping for air. For one week, there was a flurry of activity, the rooms filled up with family and food, banter and laughter, flowers and lights. For one week this year, the house took deep breaths. We all inhaled and exhaled within it.
Until a week before the wedding, the monsoon showed off its strength and beauty. It poured day and night, the damp seeping to the walls of the house and mold began to spring up. The house comes alive every monsoon. It sways with the trees that graze its cheeks and dances with the mynahs on its balconies. My parents prayed for the rain to leave us alone during the wedding and their wishes were granted. The week of the wedding was a blazing combination of heat, humidity, sun, and sweat. The house basked stunningly in August sun.
After years and years of solitude, the house was not too big or too empty. It fulfilled its purpose. It held us all in its embrace. After long tiring days of festivities and celebrations, it rocked us to sleep at night. It whispered cautiously in my ear once, “This can be your home too.”
The last of the guests have left. We are catching our breaths in the spaces they left behind. There are suddenly too many chairs, plates, spoons, and too many empty places at the table. The air is not empty though; it feels heavy - laden with the emotions that ran amok through this house, just a few days ago.
We left as well. And now it is just my parents and their house.
The word ‘home’ has sparked a series of scribbles, journal entries, essays, and poems most of which are still in hiding and need some coaxing to come out and shine. This essay is one of them. I’d love to hear about your relationship with a home/house. In other words, tell me I’m not alone.
What a stunning and moving essay, Sumira! You took me back to my home too, and all the range of emotions associated with it. Thank you for writing this ❤️
Sumi, you're not alone. love. I wanted to read and not read this essay again. It brings up too much and yet, not enough. It is an elegy for a living thing.