Ready to be a mouse for that house!

MR Anand

There lived, half a century ago, a Gujarati family in our street. Their beautiful house named ‘Dwarka Bhavan’ was the only bungalow in the neighbourhood. Other houses were mostly ordinary, single-storeyed or tiled affairs. We held this Gujarati family and the palace they lived in, in awe. Built in old British style, the house had a convex semi-circle front with a portico for the family’s topless sparkling light-blue Plymouth. On either side of the wide entrance fitted with imposing iron gates stood mango trees. Behind them lined up plants bearing flowers of different hues and fragrance. I used to specially love to look at the traveller’s tree that stood spreading out its lush-green leaves like rays of a rising sun. We, children of the street, used to gaze wide-eyed at the tiny park the Dwarka Bhavan’s family created within the compound for their children. This park had a swing, a slide and an artificial waterfall.

Flocks of parrot visited the bhavan for the fruits its guava trees supplied. Cool perches of the neem trees provided dais for koels to conduct their music concerts. Another very special attraction was a pet peacock. The presence of a peacock that strutted around added to the regal look and air of the bungalow. On number of occasions, we used to wait near the gates for the proud peacock to shake open his tail feathers into a fan of a thousand cobra hoods. 

On Diwali day, the building would turn into a celestial mansion, decorated with hundreds of earthen lamps with flickering golden flames. On Janmashtami, the family used to spread a fare of sweets before their family Radha-Krishna deities. After bhajan and puja, the same would be distributed among children of the street.

Things started changing in the early seventies. Old houses were pulled down, one by one, and in their place new ones, mostly flats, sprouted. I believed the wave of change would not touch Dwarka Bhavan. Even after we shifted to another area, when the colony where we lived for decades was vacated to pave the way for a school building, I often thought of Dwarka Bhavan with painful nostalgia.

One Sunday afternoon, in the early eighties, I accidentally met at a cinema, a school friend of mine who lived opposite Dwarka Bhavan. ‘How is Dwarka Bhavan?’ I asked him. ‘God! You still remember it? It is gone.’ Noticing the sadness that spread over my face, he exclaimed: ‘Why are you so much into Dwarka Bhavan? It was not even your house!’

Should we like or love only what we possess, I wondered. No. 

Actually, when I was a boy, I was ready to become a mouse to live in that house.