A Spool of Thread

Saba Khan 

My father was in the military, hence we had many homes. We used to move out from one place and settle down into another quite frequently. Subconsciously it made sense that everything no matter how long, how strong, will end eventually and mark new beginnings. Just as wild foliage, flowers bloom around composting debris.

Recently, I had the opportunity to revisit one of my childhood homes. It used to be a very big and far stretching colonial bungalow, and it was raised to the ground. Putting it in simple words, it was no more, it had completed it’s life cycle, while I was standing there, one of it’s many inhabitants, paying homage to a place, which once provided shelter against hot, cold, rain, and wind storms.

Two poles with a missing gate, marked the entrance. The driveway, which seemed like a never-ending highway as a child, now shrank just to a few meters. There used to be a non functional huge well, filled with dried leaves, but there was no sign of it there. Ironically the building above was raised and the well beneath was filled, different ways of erasing different structures!

There was no front lawn, no backyard with vegetables growing. The bamboo trees were still standing tall, the servant quarters, far away, were still there, peeping beneath the bamboo foliage. No rose garden in front, no water reservoir at the back. The red thatched roof, no longer there, the chimney, missing. At that moment, my eyes were witnessing a family of five, sitting happily in the front lawn, having tea, in a sunlit cold afternoon. No narcissus flowers blooming, no hedges to trim, and the scenario seemed so grim, but to my eyes only, as I had seen what it used to be and what it was now.

Life is a spool of thread, we hold the end, which in fact is the beginning and then we keep on unwinding and we reach the end and we realize, the end was in fact the beginning…

Image courtesy: Mahakali Tea state by Sona Patel @pinterest