The House that belonged to Me Alone All of Us 4.

18 May 2014     All of Us       4.

4.

The House That Belonged to Me Alone

That was the home where I stayed for barely three years, but it claimed me like nothing else could in my life. It is strange to develop relationships with houses and realize later that those relationships have sustained you like real human beings. This was the house that belonged to my mother’s father. It was in Pune, the place where I was born. This house was somewhat like a beloved over whom I would not allow anybody to stake a claim. I was very possessive about it. It was as though I had counted every brick of every wall of that house and was responsible for every wear and tear in it. If the house in Bandra taught me that one could love something that one did not own, and one could love that way with a continually expanding feeling of sharing without the grasping hold of the ego, the house in Pune gave me the experience of losing something which one had just begun to love when one did not even know what it is to love.

My mother’s father Krishnarao Jaywant had spent the major part of his life there in that house in Pune with his wife Radha and his three sons and two daughters. I was the last of his clan with whom he had developed a tie of affection, because he died after I was four years old. He had thirteen grandchildren in all, but I was the only grandchild who was born in Pune and the first and the only grandchild who came to that house straight from the hospital where I was born. Although I did not know all these things then, since this fact did not have the least bit of significance, I perhaps knew it unconsciously. I think I came to that house with a certain inborn sense of belonging. I have a feeling that I was connected to him and if I had dillydallied in coming, we would not have met. I even feel that I knew the hour of my coming although I know well it is just a feeling.

My mother was the youngest child of Krishnarao Jaywant. She was, as I knew her, fiercely independent, both emotionally and intellectually. But I always wished she had a little more of the gentleness of her parents. That was the decadence of his life when Krishnarao Jaywant saw my birth, or rather felt my birth, because he lost his eye-sight just before I was brought home from the hospital. So, he could not see me. Those must have been days of a deep trauma for all, and perhaps the reason why my mother was not able to love me in a normal way.

But I have very loving memories of my exceptionally brilliant grandfather. He had belonged to the inner circle of the Theosophical Society’s Lodge in Pune and even after he had lost his eye-sight, the members of the Lodge met regularly in our house in Pune.

He taught me to sing some devotional songs composed by saint Meera, one of which I was made to sing often for his amusement. Its opening line was something which meant, ‘O parrot, I adore you because of your quick insight and wisdom. You are a very bright bird, indeed!’ ("Popat panchhi chatur sujan")

I remember his bright smiling face as I held the other end of the walking-stick he held in his hand and led him from one room to another, feeling foolishly and vainly proud as I did that, the stupid thing that I was and have always been since then.