‘A home away from home.’

It is a two storied building with small rooms. Once a bungalow, its owner converted it to small rooms to rent it out. No one apart from the owner knows its name. It has eight rooms with common toilet and bathroom. Four steps lead you to the first room. It has a blue door with ‘Joshi’ etched on it. This is a compact room owned by Kaku (meaning aunty in Marathi). It is the biggest room in the building. It looks like a pathway to another room. If you are taller than five feet you have to bend little to keep yourself from getting hurt.
As soon as you enter, you will see two grey cupboards on the left. Next to the cupboard is a rusted red colour refrigerator with a BPL 20” television set on top of it. On the opposite side there is one cot for the ever flowing guest. This is where the hall ends. Take another step ahead and you are in the kitchen. One compulsory item in the kitchen is a steel basket with white onions, a must with every dish served in Kaku’s house. On the left there is a long black platform which ends with a sink.
When Kaku’s son Sanjay got married, they added a loft. Once in the loft, you cannot stand. It had just two beds and a night stand with a night lamp. A ladder, leading to the loft, was fixed between the refrigerator and the platform. I used to stand on the 4th step and watch Kaku cook. I would often mimic her and would dream of one day doing the cooking like her. On the opposite side there is a shelf. The shelf contains photographs, groceries, books and sometimes linen. The shelf always had a bug of chocolates that we would steal in Kaku’s absence.
During festivals, the black floor of the tiny kitchen would temporarily take the colour white. Big steel boxes full of different kind of ‘laddos’ would be stacked neatly under the shelf. Kaku would sit with her big aluminium boxes and huge plates to make sweets. If we were lucky we could assist her in making the sweet even if it meant only handing her a spoon.
A white door leads to the backyard (if one may call it so). On the left there is a small green tiled patch with attached taps. I call it an open-air washroom for washing clothes and bathing little kids. To go to Aunty Mary’s home (another small room), one will have to walk through Kaku’s house and go via the open-air washroom. This was also our stage for various dances. Often in the afternoon when the tiles were dry we would sit there and play games. If you step take a right and walk around the large shoe-flower trees you will come back to the front which was where we played cricket and badminton.
Though the room was small, there was always room for more people. In the entire room, my favourite spot was the white ladder. Here, I spent five years of my childhood. The image of the room has been etched into my brain. Even today when I close my eyes I can see the room in its full form. It has been six years since I last visited the place. Now Kaku has moved out and some strangers have occupied it. Today thought the door says a different name, for me it will always be my childhood cresh belonging to Alka Joshi- Kaku.