5. The House Which Was All My Own. 20 May 2014

This house too had a wooden staircase, far more sturdy and stable, unlike the wooden staircase of the house in Bandra. The staircase of the house in Bandra had a greater privacy though, as it opened on the rear side of the house, out of the sight of the passers-by. The staircase of this house in Pune opened right in the face of the busy road. You stepped right on the pavement as you took the last step down. My grandmother Radha often told me how she saw an apparition of a Moslem woman clad in a black burka come up the staircase and walk stealthily in the direction of my grandfather who was thoroughly engrossed in reading the newspaper. According to my grandmother, she and that apparition could see each other. They were even scared of each other. But all the while my grandfather was totally unaware of what was going on. That woman was trying to tell my granny that she meant no harm and that she had come to meet some Hamida bano. It was only when my granny shouted at the top of her voice in a fright that my grandfather awoke from his trance and looked around. He gesticulated as if to scare away the ghost whom he did not see. The woman walked back to the staircase without turning her back upon my granny. According to granny, the woman disappeared-- or that was what my granny felt-- as she reached the top of the staircase. Thank god, my granny told this story to me long after we had left the house for good. This incident had taken place years before I was born. It could be that the woman was real and she had mistaken the house for the one she wanted to visit. But my granny was of a firm belief that was not the case because my grandfather did not see any woman.

After my grandfather’s death my granny had to make a choice. Since she would be the only person now staying in the house, she could either give up the residence of the house completely and stay with one of her children, or continue to stay there by herself. Somehow, her daughter-in–law, the wife of her eldest son who was childless, agreed to stay with her and my granny continued to stay in Pune. My parents left me and my younger brother in the care of the two of them and went back to Bandra. Now we were the four of us left to occupy the house--my granny, my aunt, me and my two years old brother.

That is how the house came to belong to me and I belonged to the house.