Memorial of a Home

Sunandini Mukherjee

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“Home is where I'd go

Cause home is where you'd be

Home is all I know

Home is all I see”

- Caleb Kanayo

The concept of home becomes increasingly difficult to explain as one passes through the stages of life. Sometimes it becomes entangled with the ‘house’, a site of lukewarm memories, and at other times it becomes intangible, especially if one has to leave the house. So, one locks it in a chamber of the mind and carries it around like a worn-out suitcase. Let me tell you a bit about my suitcase.

I was born and raised in a house that was alloted to my mother by the school she was employed at. The township was famous for its sylvan presence. For the first twenty-one years of my life that’s all I knew- growing up amidst unkempt greenery. And then, one day we had to leave the house. My mother had retired from service. The quarter would now be someone else’s. So, I folded up my childhood, tucked it away somewhere deep into the subconscious, and left without looking back.

We had a beautiful, sprawling garden. With winter coming, it would be ready to compete with the Valley of Flowers. There was no internet at that time which gave me a happy, happy childhood. Instead of the tiny screens that I look at now, there were sun-burnt afternoons. Trees shed their leaves in Autumn. A calm, sing-song rustle would fill the garden and sometimes break into our little house. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear that noise making truant at work. But what I truly miss is the smell of wet earth; the assuring sight of my father holding out a white plastic pipe to drench his beloved flower-beds. My friend and I would spend our winter afternoons in the garden, lying on a mat beside the Christmas tree, our eyes closed to soak in the warmth of departing sunlight. I wonder who lies next to my tree now, all grown and green. I wonder if anybody lies at all; my dear, dear tree that we planted as a sapling, whether it stands lonely now.

I learnt that Poppies are flirtatious darlings that open only after bees come and kiss, I learnt that Roses like to hold back a little water on their petals, I learnt that Impatients are the most patient and caring beings. I also learnt that no matter how far you wander away, a green green lawn still lulls one to a siesta.

I learnt lessons from our garden more than from all my books put together. I learnt that Poppies are flirtatious darlings that open only after bees come and kiss, I learnt that Roses like to hold back a little water on their petals, I learnt that Impatients are the most patient and caring beings. I also learnt that no matter how far you wander away, a green, green lawn still lulls one to a siesta, I learnt that caregiving is the only way one grows, I learnt that missing a stupid patch of green land makes one a misfit among flocks of busy adults. It has been eight years now, but every dream I still have about ‘home’ is still unfailingly built in that patch of green land.

But what is the land without the sky? While the azure Autumn sky made our garden blush in beauty, I was equally fascinated by red skies, probably because they generated a terrific hope of some sort of action. Our township, although covered in trees, was an industrial one like Dickens' Coketown. We tuned our ears to diurnal sirens of the local factory and knew exactly when it would spill out a lot of ash into the air. As a little girl, it was beyond my understanding how pollution made the night sky look red. So, I imagined that it would rain. Birds chirped, delusional of dawn, but for me they were always my partners in crime, anticipating rain. There were often moments in later years when I thought that the red sky had taught me everything but to love, that it had perpetually trained me to expect storms even on quiet, breezy nights. Not that I regretted it one bit- how could anybody not be delighted at the prospect of rains driving in dead leaves, and patterning hills on my window! Sometimes it rained alright, perhaps only to put a silly girl out of her misery and I would dance the rain dance in my sleep. It doesn't rain like that anymore, neither do the birds wake up in alarm. But every time red clouds gather, I still hope that somewhere there's a storm rising, one forceful enough to break my thirst.

Now you see that I have my own song of fire and earth, one unerased by temporal distance. It is a complicated relationship. Or maybe it isn’t complicated after all. I hadn’t looked back the day we left my birthplace, and now the township is scheduled to be bulldozed to make way for ‘civic development’. It is possible that the lack of mourning would make me carry the ‘home’ in my body and mind, and someday I might just wake up and find myself back in the little house, with green grass and red sky, and everything in between.

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Author bio

Sunandini Mukherjee is a teacher and an aspiring research fellow from West Bengal. Her poems have previously been published online by Cafe Dissensus, Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Travelling Cultures, and Dhaka Tribune. An enthusiastic translator, her work was published by BEE Books in 2021. She writes in Bangla and English.

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