Waking up to the smell of fresh paint, I remember today’s date – September 24th – It was on this day 15 years before that we moved to his house. With white washing work going on at home now, the entire house is in chaos with things being moved from one room to another and rearranged back again. It brings back memories of the day when we shifted here, of the childhood days, of leaving behind a whole lot of friends in the previous place and a lot more!

When my sister and I were kids, every time one of us tried to scribble on the walls, we were constantly warned that the house owner will scold us if we do that and all I asked my parents was why don’t we shift to a house which doesn’t have a house owner? 🙂 🙂 It’s another fact that by the time we moved to this house, we had already crossed the scribbling-on-the-walls phase.

Today, sitting amidst a whole lot of games like Scrabble, Chess, Business, Chinese Checkers, Brainvita, Brain Wave, Ludo, cards, Memory, Puzzle, Mind Your Language, etc. and story books for children and craft items and trying to arrange them back in the cupboard, I look back as to how those were our most prized possessions when we came here. And how today all I am doing is trying to arrange these in such a way that I can squeeze in as much as possible in a shelf and make more free space, thereby making them not easily accessible anymore.

Today, of course, our prized possessions have changed from the games to our music collection. It is music that means the most to us. And this area does have an important role in making that happen. It was from the shopping hub of Madras (T.Nagar) that we moved to the Carnatic music hub of Madras. As my sister and I started going for the kutcheris frequently, I started telling everyone that moving to this part of the city has definitely been one of the best things that has happened to me.

Incidentally, it so happens that the very first movie that we watched in this house and that too right on the day when we shifted was Thiruda Thiruda when it was screened on Doordarshan. While it was nothing but a sheer coincidence and I was not even a Mani Ratnam fan back then, it still makes the Mani Ratnam fan in me happy today.

Back then, we had shifted here just as Navaratri was starting. So along with the laborious task of setting up the house, arranging the golu too had to be done. Even now, just as the white washing work gets over, Navaratri will start within a week.