Broken Houses, But Not Broken Homes. (Diary Logs #20)
Posted On May 23, 2019
Hello Readers! How are you all doing? Already relieved tomorrow is Friday? Already on a long weekend? Or just thinking about how many hours you are going to sleep during the weekend? All sounds good to me!
Here I am, with a Diary Logs post after a while. The thing with these kind of posts is that they are mostly real with a bit of added fiction. And, nothing real usually happens to get me into my over-thinking zone. But, here I am, finally, so read on!
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Dear Diary,
The other day I woke up as usual & got ready to go to the office. It was an unusually hot summer day. It felt unbearable to step out of the house. But, of course, I had to. Work doesn’t stop, be it scorching heat or heavy rains. I decided not to take my two-wheeler to work & instead took a rickshaw. The rickshaw driver took a different route than my usual one, but I was already too tired from the sun to tell him otherwise. All the routes were familiar to me, anyway.
He took a left turn from my street & we went to a lane which is always full of traffic. I was shocked to look at the state of that road. On both sides of the road, there was destruction. Total chaos. All the little houses, shops & other establishments were torn down. Some completely. Some partly. On some houses, there were no walls. On some, there weren’t any windows or doors. On some, the living room was gone. And then there was one, where you could see directly inside the house. It was on the first floor. Everything on the ground floor was torn down badly. And the visuals upstairs were evident. Green-coloured walls in the living room. A partly broken screen of a 24-inch television. A single wooden cabinet with a lot of belongings from clothes to utensils to documents. A broken house.
Of course, all this was for road widening & I’m pretty sure most of these constructions were illegal. But, they contained real families. Even if it was an illegal house, it was a real home with real people. I thought how the scenario at that home might have been just last week?
The husband must probably be a labourer returning home after a day’s hard work. Or he might have a sales job, selling anything from toys to socks to mobile back covers outside the railway station or outside parks. Or he could be working at a decent enough job & could be earning black money.
Who knows? But, the point is he was in his home just last week, maybe even happy.
The wife is probably was a stay-at-home mother focusing on raising & educating her kids so that their children might have a better livelihood. Or she could be working as a maid; sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, washing clothes & utensils. Or she might have a job as a low-key chef. Or she could be working as a teacher in a Municipality school.
Who knows? But, the point is she was in her home just last week, maybe even happy.
Maybe just last week, they might have had a pleasant evening. An evening where the husband, his wife & their kids were all sitting in the now-torn-apart living room with green-coloured walls, having a discussion over tea & a cricket match playing on the now-partly-broken screen of the TV in the background. Maybe they were even happy, despite circumstances. Maybe they knew it will be the last time they will be happy in that little house which was a home to them. Broken Houses, but not Broken Homes.
Until next time,
About The Author
Aishwarya Shenolikar
Hello! I'm Aishwarya, an Introverted bookworm & writer. I have been reviewing books since 6 years on my blog - Mindscape in Words. My favourite genres are Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thrillers, Magical Realism, Poetry, Fantasy & Memoirs. I like the kind of books which evoke emotions on several levels leaving me wrecked, but also incredibly content. I'm dreaming for the world to paint a landscape full of words, more like Mindscape in Words. Hope you enjoy the view.