For 3 decades, my grandmother’s house was a pit stop for everyone in the family passing through Delhi. It was a pilgrimage that you couldn’t skip without offending the deity. After she passed away, shutting it down seemed like locking up a temple. But what is a temple without its deity?
For 4 years it was also my home and so it seemed like winding it down might still be emotionally overwhelming but somehow it was a clinical exercise. The furniture was packed, the paintings wrapped, the clothes given away. The walls were painted white, the floors scrubbed and repairs made. And then the last of everything that had been built over a lifetime was loaded into a truck, leaving the house vacant. It was only then that it struck me that I had been rendered homeless. As I stood at 4 am on the chilly morning, standing beside the loaded truck on a deserted road, I spotted this tree. Back-lit by the street light and engulfed in fog, it appeared surreal. It became to me a mythical speaking tree. It reminded me that home is where the heart is and i realized that my grandma was the heart that made this house a home. It was her throbbing presence that pumped life into this house. It said to me that my grandma had made her final journey to be this brilliant light I see – That brilliant light which illuminates the path that I must now take to resume my own life journey.
