Finding a second home at the same address

For people when they leave a home behind, the address changes. We move somewhere else, we carry what we can, and slowly begin living and making memories in a new place.

I was eight or nine when we first did that. Third or fourth standard, if I remember correctly. My father bought a piece of land near the house we were renting, and we began planning our move while the new house was being built.

I still remember that place where I spent those initial years of my childhood. If I close my eyes, I can replay particular moments, both happy and sad. Me eating mud. Our owner who used to live next to us drinking whisky. Kids flying kites. A large number of small, disconnected memories that have somehow stayed with me all these years.

The new place which was our own land would take a little longer to become our home. I remember how an architect had been brought in to give a basic layout of how the house will appear like. Of how every piece in the house was heavily debated on. The plan was to setup our “home” on a higher 2nd floor with the ground floor made to rent out or for us when all of us grow up. Every room had a unique and different paint basis whoever lived in it. I shared mine with my two sisters, and we couldn’t agree on a single color. So each wall had a different color. Even our cupboard had three sections and divided among us. Every big and small decision was heavily debated upon, and most of these discussions ended without anyone being entirely satisfied. Eventually piece by piece, the house became ours and it started to feel ”home”.

Eventually, we had tenants who moved into the ground floor as we’d thought. There were now so many people living on that one piece of land. Some became close to us. Their little children grew around us for a few years before they moved away to make their own homes. New tenants came. Life kept filling the house in different ways.

For a while, we still missed our previous home. We went back to meet people who lived around it. But the years passed, and this house filled up with our things.

The balcony was turned into another room because my mother thought there wasn’t enough space for the five of us. Beds changed. Furniture changed. A music system arrived and was given a prime spot. Later, when the internet became a thing, it found a quieter place on a spare table. Dust gathered on it. Eventually, it was touched mostly to wipe that dust away. This was the home we grew up in. The one with the most memories, the most fights, and all the things we had slowly accumulated. Then, one by one, the rooms began to empty.

My sisters moved to different cities for work. I left for college. I remember my parents coming to see me off, and then being there again for my graduation four years later. We had begun building lives elsewhere, but this remained our home. Whenever we returned, things were mostly where we had left them. The music system was still there, now covered with a pink cloth to keep the dust off. The cassettes were still neatly lined up.

The paint in my room never changed because I wanted to preserve those memories - the stories behind having different paints. The broken tap stayed broken. The childhood albums remained in their place. Whenever my sisters and I were home together, we would sometimes pull them out, flip through the photographs, and laugh. We kept coming back, even as our lives elsewhere became fuller. There was comfort in knowing this place was still here, with so much of our childhood left in it.

A few years ago, my father got diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease called PSP. It affects his balance, his walking, and his cognition, among other things. There is no cure. And for the past two years, we’ve been trying to accept that and make room for it in our lives. As his falls became more frequent, my parents had to move downstairs this year.

The ground floor had always been part of the plan. We had imagined maybe using it when the family grew. At a time when there were more people coming here than the upstairs rooms could hold. I don’t remember us imagining this reason.

They took down the bare necessities enough to set up a kitchen, a bed and a few chairs.

And so, at the same address, we began putting together another home. This time there were no long arguments about wall colors. No plans for what we might add as the years went by. We arranged what they needed around what my parents could manage now. The upstairs floor was locked, with almost everything left as it was.

My father had built this house for us. He had sat through those discussions, made those decisions, and planned for all of us to keep coming back. Now, he could no longer go upstairs. I still go up whenever I go home.

I unlock the door and walk through the rooms trying to replay our past. I visit the room I shared with my sisters. The walls are still different colors. They still make me smile. For a moment, I remember how much we must have argued over them.

Then I go back downstairs.