I would rather stay miles away from this house today, even if all my best memories of growing up years, have been coloured by this house which has been my home.
Memories rushed in seeing that blue scooter standing alone outside the house, unkempt and unattended, standing there alone waiting for nothing more to happen.
It seems like just yesterday; almost 12 years now, everybody has moved on.
Have I?
That fateful day sends shivers down my spine; my memories seem locked in that pivotal moment of my life with a void never to be filled.
I can still see it so clearly when my father was clutching onto a piece of paper, he wobbled across the room, held his other hand to his chest and kept mumbling gibberish while gasping for air. I watched him helplessly sitting in my wheelchair from the other room.
It was the letter on a blue sheet of paper that my father clung onto and dropped the rest.
My mother rushed in to hold him while he lost his balance, but his feet could not take his weight anymore and he dropped to the ground. His head hit the corner of the table and his lifeless body lay still and stiff.
There was pin-drop silence in the room!
I could hear the raindrops on the rooftop of the garage.
I felt silence for the first time.
This silence was loud.
Those moments were so surreal; experiences of suspending time and nothing happening!
In a flash, I could hear life speak the language of the soul that came to visit this earth and bid goodbye when all was done and nothing was left as per the script, life came with.
None were aware of this happening that wrapped up so quickly leaving a scar for this lifetime. We were all left unprepared for what the future held in store for us.
I looked out of the window where my father's Neel Pari stood silently, maybe waiting for him to join her stealthily; he called her fondly, Meri Neel Pari, his best friend!
Two friends rode around the town like little kids, racing the wind; enjoying their time out.
She never failed him, like good old bosom friends.
He had bought her from an old friend, who had to sell in distress, meeting some urgent pending payment. From that day and today, all seemed like, the play of time, living endless stories of my father and his Neel Pari.
None of us remembered the blue sheet of paper, the harbinger of this hell.
My elder brother Raman soon contacted our relatives and friends. My mother was hysterical, unable to accept the devastating crisis in her life!
The conduct of the whole event to follow was under the guidance of the universal energies making all arrangements as if some prior notice were given.
Soon people were pouring in; that was the worst part of the chaos.
My father would often say, all lies in the present but the present is unlived due to the dance of past and future. Everything changes with the change of perceptions in life.
As if I could hear his voice speaking these words into my ears.
I hear them today as well.
Is life so unfathomable and uncertain?
Those moments became pregnant with many doubts and questions, confused and in conflict with whatever was arising one after the other. These questions burn in my heart even today seeking guidance through life situations flowing as the endless river that is determined to meet the ocean.
I seemed to have frozen in time, sitting in the wheelchair, unable to move; all the cells in my body lost the ability to take cognizance of all that happened in just a few seconds. Somebody helped me come near my father, who lay still with eyes that couldn't escape shedding a few tears in pain before his last breath. The house walls seem to have lost the colour of joy they celebrated; my father's silly jokes and his loud laughter echoed all through this house.
It was always alive with him poking fun at my elder brother and teasing my little sister.
Reshmibai handed me over some papers and I recognised them as the papers my father was reading.
Among them was that one blue paper that spoke about leaving this house as the unpaid loans had to be evened out by taking over the house with the scooter.