CHAPTER 10: WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

 

It hasn’t really been long, that I have left this place. The place where I spent the entirety of my childhood. The “City with no names” they called it. It’s quite a beautiful name for a place to have. It has a poetic touch to it. Looking back at it now I can imagine why it was called that. There were thousands of families that lived here, none had a name for themselves. When I say name, I mean, social status. They were all just people wandering around trying to live a normal life under the crippling hand of mediocrity. Sure, they had jobs and lives but no one here had a name for themselves, nothing about anyone here stood out. The city with no names held true to its name or the lack of it.

I walked along side Jeffry through one of the several streets that lead to the heart of the place. The place was supposed to have changed in two years of time, but somehow nothing felt new. It felt old rather. Most shops that were opened when I left were not there, many buildings were missing and the people were not familiar at all. I have always remembered the people here to have eyes devoid of hope, and yet here I could see the cheerful faces.

There must be some relationship between awkwardness and nostalgia, because this place always makes me cringe. However new or old this place may feel, I can never forget this place. The buildings, the roads, the one medical shop and the one Panipuri stall near by the medical just across the cobbler’s street setup. We passed by the barber’s saloon.

Wait this wasn’t supposed to be here, it shifted back near the medical shop a few years ago.

“Where are we?” I asked.

Jeffry walked in front of me silently.

“You’ll see”

He walked faster than me. I almost had to jog to reach him.

We took that straight unpitched road and one turn left from right beside an old Newari house. If you ever visit you’ll see that this house remains till date today. There was a guy that had Down syndrome that lived there. He was, let’s say, not very fun. Not that I mean ill will to him or that he was a bully. Just that I felt sad for him which made it not fun at all.

There were people in the street but no one seemed to care about the two of us walking. This was especially amusing since the both of were the same person. You would assume that people would think we are just twin and not bother, but this wasn’t the case. No one, not even a single person even glanced at us. It was like we were ghosts.

The next turn lead to my house. I lived here forever. The towering building at the end of the turn should have been a girl’s hostel now, but there was no hostel nor was there a building. Right beyond the turn three boys were playing football with a Mr. YOD ball. Tell you what that ball made your feet strong more than anything else. With a distance of five or ten yards between them, two brick stood as post for the street football match. The streets were narrow and no throw balls were awarded except when the ball bounced into one of the houses.

The boys used the walls that narrowed the streets as a one-two pass to evade the defenders and knock down the bricks and score. Just to the side of one of the odd bricks was a huge black gate. It lead to a slight slope expanding into a garage of a huge house.

Here I thought. Here again.

This was the place I spent the entirety of my life in. I had left a few years back to my own home promising never to come back unless it was to buy the place for myself.

“Why here” I asked. The boy continued to play before us.

“Why not?” Jeffry replied. We had reached before the gate just as the ball struck one of the bricks.

I slowly opened the gate pushing it inside and heading into the brick laid house. Immediately to my right was a corridor that lead to the first of the ten room in the bottom floor. The corridor began with two distinct smelling common toilet attached to a similar hideous bathroom. The corridor then opened up to the open of the sky bounded by thick nine inched algae covered walls. At the bottom of these walls were two rusted pipes each leading to a golden tap. The municipality sent water every two weeks to fill. This was the only source of drinking water for the families in the house. The only other options were buying water or walking twenty minutes up hill to the municipality tap itself.

Opposite to the tap was the main flat of this floor. When the owners started building this grand house, they stayed here for the first time. The apartment was grand with four rooms and more importantly a toilet and bath of their own. To the right, and at the end of the corridor was another room, a single room. It was small, dark and smelly.

Skipping that corridor and little further, to the right was another path. This one lead straight to the second floor. We will get to this later. A little further than that was another slight corridor-ish. I say this because it was barely ten feet. On each side of this corridor were two room, so four more rooms here. Four families lived here. One in each room.

The garage itself was bound by two large gates. One black one which we talked of before and another green one. As huge as it was, it merely extended to the top of the ground floor. It was painted green with laces of brown painted steel running around the edges. The gate opened up to the huge open space. Of course it wasn’t always like this.

When I was young the fire

 

I took a step through the gate. There was no open space. A blanket of blue tin covered the entirety of the space. Long wire like plastic ropes ran through the small openings left by the tin and washed clothes hung on every pocket of clearance on that rope. These ropes were tied to the tin houses on one end and the wall of the main house on the other.

Windows from the earlier rooms on the left of the final corridor were at the very edge. The following window was of the flat I talked about earlier.  And finally at the edge was one more room. Beyond that was the huge wall that compounded the whole house and its premises separating it from the neighboring miniature houses.

Below the blue tin ran about twelve room made each separated by cheap combustible bricks. For the landlords this was easy money.

Despite this sheer number of rooms, there were no people around. The whole house was silent. Empty.

I turned to Jeffry who was calm as he always is. “Where are we? And why isn’t there any one here?”

“We’re home!” He replied almost instinctively. He was right. This was my home. I was and am a part of this place. Every inch of this place has defined me, nurtured me and perhaps even broken me.

I looked around. The wind tickled the tin above and made a calming sound, almost like from one of those ASMR videos with millions of views. I’ve never really understood what makes that so worth watching? Is it porn? I mean do those sounds give us links to awesome porn in Morse code or something? Also what the hell is ASMR is it like an abbreviation? I know I’ve got google but I’m not checking!

Focus!

The silence was almost eerie. It had a haunting feeling. But soon there was a sound. From where?

Before me one of the plastic ropes had huge bed sheets hung on it. I pushed the one at the very edge aside. There right by the window of the grand flat of the first floor was… me.

The small innocent me. I grabbed onto the steel railings of the window hanging, watching what was inside.