"HOME"

For every brick going down Maahi felt a little piece of her was being broken. A lifetime worth of memories were scattered across the ground, in a pile of rubble. Maahi loved her house. The building she had come to call 'home' since she was 3 yrs old. Now after 20 yrs Maahi had become more attached to that place than she cared to show. She wasn't someone who easily got homesick; rather someone who preferred the outsides but ultimately everyone wants to come back home. And she did, if not after a few hrs then a few days when she was in need of comfort and something familiar.

It became more of a habit than anything else. Taking the same route each day to reach her house, telling people where she lived and filling out the address column in every institutional form with the same eight letters.

Maahi remembered each and every corner of her house with precision. The stairs which had seen her two yr old self fall a dozen times, before she finally learned to climb. The kitchen slab which didn't see her cook even a single day but on which she sat and spent hrs chatting away. The bathroom floor on which she slipped and fell and got up laughing each time. The first floor balcony where she threatened to commit 'Suicide' because her mom wouldn't let her play past her bedtime. The rooftop which had seen her dance a dozen times to the rhythm of the monsoon rains. Her bedroom mirror which had witnessed her strike a million poses pretending to be a fashionista and adjust her hair before her dates. The walls which had seen her cry more than anyone else in the world. The marble floor on which she tip-toed in her mothers heels though her little feet could fill only half of them up. And the outside pavement into which she crashed her car while she was learning to drive for the third time. She remembered it all with absolute clarity.

The day before it was supposed to be knocked down, Maahi went up to her house. Now an empty space which once used to hold her most prized possessions. She did the only thing she could. She roamed about in every direction taking mental pictures, to never let the memories fade away.