I left the building long ago, I moved to another place not very far. This year saw the building being taken down. When I found out about it, I went to take a look. Now only half of it stands. Its name was GEMINI.
As I looked at the debris, all my childhood memories flashed before my eyes.
The place where My building stood, a tin wall covers the place
My Building, Only Half of which still stands
This is where I grew up. My little sister opened her eyes here. This is where I made my first best friend, that is after I fought with him. Its been like that with me from the beginning. I have a few friends whom I can call my best friends(FOUR to be specific) and I started with a fight with all of them.
This is where I learnt to ride a bicycle and also fell from one and bruised my leg. I remember to have plucked a ripe guava(peru as we call it) and shared it with a friend of mine. Here is where with two of my friends, I actually bought down a coconut from the tree(of course, the tree was not much in height) and all three of us broke open and enjoyed that coconut. Remember all the games we used to play and sometimes just roam around in search (of nothing) like we were some explorers. How my friend use to call out my name in a funny rhythmic way if I had not yet come to play. Behind the last wing of our building there was no obstruction for a long distance, so a cool breeze always blew through that part of the building.It felt like heaven. May be the adults did not like the above mentioned fact that they built a society office to obstruct the cool breeze. But thankfully that did not happen till I left.
There’s a garden behind my building, which is older than myself. Obviously, it has a lot of trees. And there is a circular structure made of stone in the middle, raised from the ground and its height increases gradually. There is a slide, two swings and a see-saw. Also there was this one strange thing, a sort of a house kind of structure which stood there for as long as I have known. The garden had a huge silver gate for an entrance. But, since it shared two walls with my building as its boundaries, we kids seldom used the gate. We used to climb over the common walls. While playing in the garden, we kids had a knack for doing some stupid stuff(we were kids!). On the swings, we used to swing hard and once caught enough speed, we used to jump of the swing. Then we used to ride the swing while standing on it. Then there was something known as double seat-two kids on the same swing at the same time, one kid is seated and the other standing behind. Then instead of sliding down the slide we used to walk down it, we used to climb up from the sliding end. On the see-saw, three kids held it down from one end while the fourth used to climb the other end. Once my sister was on the swing with a double seat and she fell off. She was not bleeding but was partially unconscious and I was in tears. I rushed her home. That was first time in life I experienced what it feels when your loved ones are hurt. There was this one time, when me and my sister went to the garden. It was afternoon there was no one in the garden except two horses grazing and there were small green balls of horse shit here and there. We tried to go near them out of curiosity. But we ran and climbed one of walls when they started walking towards us. We jumped a common wall and went back to our building. Guess the horses did not wish to hurt us, just drive us off. A lot has changed now, a big stage like structure stands in place of the weird house I mentioned, the circle is gone, so is the silver gate and the entrance wall. But I see, no one has still disturbed the common walls. The place seemed so huge when I was a kid.
One of the common walls which we kids used to jump over . . .
The weird house, The circular structure, The swing, The slide. All is gone!!
The building had four wings. So the bachcha party was huge. Festivals were a free pass for us kids to enjoy and create chaos. I can still remember Holi, Diwali, Navratri, even Kaujaagiri. All the bachcha party used to have a great time.
The Building stood tall for more then 21 years and now its gone! But the memories still stand tall in my mind, they form A BUILDING OF MEMORIES.
!! V-Revolution !! 