Home away from home

Some wounds are hard to heal mainly because of its location on the body. By the time the wound heals, in spite of taking care, something hits it again and it bleeds all over. The emotional wounds are very similar in nature. They often never heal! This I find most painful.

While the shoe bite gave me many uncomfortable moments for almost a week, soon after my arrival in the city that never sleeps, the feeling of separation from my mother, brothers and sisters who I had left behind, caused more psychological pain, which I had not imagined. I found out soon that this wound takes more time to heal. More precisely, it never went away.

I started sharing the amenities in which there were already seven inmates. The front room measured only 10 x 10 and the back room, which also doubled as kitchen during day, was of the about 10 x 8. It also contained a 'mori' which served as bath room. Inside there was no toilet and one had to go outside, where there was a toilet block. This block had only two toilets for the entire 'chawl' consisting of six rooms which itself was home to six different families with varying size of members in each family. You can imagine the nightmare if all the members of each family wakes up at the same time and start using the toilet facilities!
More over, the same toilets were used by the owners of the chawl, who resided in a separate house, surprisingly devoid of toilets. I still remember the scene when the old lady from the landlord's house was being escorted to this toilet block outside. Because of her age, she tended to be a slow walker and sometimes assisted by her granddaughter, someone from the chawl used to beat her first and she had to wait for her turn outside. Even today I have no idea why they did not go for a toilet of their own inside their house, as money did not seem an issue to them. Even at that time, they used to receive a good amount of rent from their tenants.

Once the members of my room left for work and school, my work began in earnest. Having finished my morning chores, I used to go through the 'wanted' columns (classifieds) of the newspaper first and the moment I found a post suitable for me, I used to mark the same and later send a reply to them. Such replies, where the advertiser mentioned box numbers of the newspaper, were carried by my uncle next day, some replies, were sent to the advertiser direct which I posted at the post office daily. This was the time when the postman having sorted the letters received that day, used to hand over the letters to the waiting addressees, who sometimes came to the post office to collect them.

Meanwhile, I had not heard from my mother for quite a while. I had not sent a letter to her on my arrival in Bombay - in my hope that I would land a job soon and would be able to surprise her with the news. But I found out that it was a difficult task to achieve and my resolve to send a letter only after getting a job remained a stumbling block in my mind. I longed for news from my native place, and I guess, she chose to wait for my letter. I have no idea what finally prompted her to write to me first, almost a month later. Though, the moment I saw the letter, a lump was formed in my heart. I had a picture of the contents of the letter even before I opened it and it was more or less the same, of what I had expected to find.

Even today I find that lack of news from my dear and near ones opens the same wound in my mind.