The red brick house

A red brick house near my home held great fascination for me during my childhood. Its inhabitants father, mother, a son and two daughters ...

A red brick house near my home held great fascination for me during my childhood. Its inhabitants father, mother, a son and two daughters were all that my family were not. They were the kind of parents I wished mine would be: sophisticated, suave, very demonstrative. The children in that house, unlike my brothers and me, were allowed to do whatever they wanted.

I had wished 8212; in vain 8212; that my parents would take a cue from our neighbours and stop being the disciplinarians that they were. My secret wish was to trade places with the elder daughter of the red brick house who was my age.

She had always been an object of envy for most kids in the neighbourhood, as she was the only one who was blessed with such progressive parents in our uninspiring mofussil town. Not only that, she was being trained in vocal and instrumental music, which made her a favourite with the nuns of the convent school where we all studied. The fact that she did not fare too well in studies was never a consolation, as it never counted against her at school.

Rani 8212; let8217;s call the object of my envy that was not the only one in her family who captured my fascination. Her brother and sister were also being trained in music and dance. As evening descended, the sound of music would waft across from the red brick house. At that time, my brothers and I would be sitting at the study table doing our homework under the ever so watchful eye of our mother.

A few years later, we moved to another town, and soon the red brick house and its inhabitants were forgotten. Twenty years later, on a visit to Kerala, I was passing through the same old town where my brothers and I used to be so envious of the children residing in the red brick house.

On an impulse probably spurred by a faint hope that I may be faring better than my childhood bete noire I decided to visit our one-time neighbours. Yes, the red brick house was there, but bereft of the old charm it had held for me. The bricks were moss-laden and no longer bright red; the compound was strewn with dry leaves and litter. It was obvious that no one lived there anymore. Unable to contain my curiosity, I walked into the neighbouring house the house where we had lived for many years and asked about the inhabitants of the red brick house.

What I heard was like a tale from the macabre. It was as if the collective envy of the children of a whole neighbourhood had brought the family misfortune. Or was it the unconstrained existence the children of that house seemed to have enjoyed? The elder son had taken to drugs while in college. Some years back, following a showdown between him and his father, the latter died of heart attack. The son shifted residence to their rubber estate in the mountains, and never came back though he regularly sent money to the family.

Story continues below this ad

Rani, who was very close to her father, refused to live in the house where he died. For the last so many years, she had been staying in a convent which looked after mentally challenged children. The mother had turned to some cult figure, then apparently went overboard, and finally ended up in a sanatorium. The youngest girl appeared to be the only one who had escaped the curse that seemed to have befallen the family and was well placed in the United States.

I wished I had not stopped to inquire. I felt ashamed at my own pettiness which had prompted the stopover. The red brick house should have continued as that blissful place in my mind, a happy home of my dreams on which I wanted to model my own family when I started one.

Shaken, I drove back home to my parents. As I hugged my bewildered parents tight, I promised myself that never again would I make unfair comparisons and would accept people as they are.