Walking back home..

Tw- talks of nostalgia

today I walked back to my old life. My life in muhaisnah 4. The place I grew up in.

strangely I was estranged to that place. The house that I lived in for 10 years. It was like my ex that I wouldn’t want to look back on.

My siblings were born in that house. The one at the end of the street with a long balcony. The balcony that I played water fights regularly with my cousins.

The very one that I stopped playing in too because we’d reached puberty and can’t interact with the opposite sex. We were 13. Cause you can’t be a girl with a wet tshirt playing a harmless game.

anyways, this house brought about a lot of my lived experiences some which were pleasant and not-so pleasant ones.

It was suffocating to live in because it housed 6 children, 2 teens and 2 adolescent children. It was not more so because of the space or my siblings but because of my mom. She always tried to exert control in every way possible. It became so bad that friends from school described my existence with - the girl with mommy issues.

It’s tough living as a girl in a Hyderabadi household, where your only job is to look pretty enough to be able to get married.

This is why, I didn’t like to look back on my old life. A life where I had no say in. Every time I do, it brings about bad blood and resentment.

It’s been 13 years and 4 months, since that house. The house with the long balcony at the end of the street. The balcony that also housed my dad’s weird pet choices. Sometimes love birds, rabbits or the 10 chicks 🐣 that quickly became the bane of my existence.

This house had a wonderful park and a masjid upfront. This masjid had a special place in our heart- the one that my dad always went to religiously and was friends with anyone and everyone, the place where we prayed Eid Salah, the place where we first got exposed to Quran classes at the masjid. This masjid had a large porch, with big and wonderfully maintained date trees that always bore fresh dates at the start of Ramadan. My dad used to get a crate full because he was friends with the Imam.

Near this was a lulu, one we always got the mc d’s icecream from. And their moan-worthy chicken burgers. I don’t know what they put in them(now we know). This particular mc d’s had a slide and a birthday party section that I often went to. The slides that I never stoped playing in.

And there was this Indian chat restaurant-Sandesh. We used to always get home delivery for their fresh fat samosas with aalu and matar filling.

“Bhaiya, do samose bhejna bohot sari laal chatni ke saath.”

As I walk back home. I expect to see the same foundation of the masjid, the same wonderful place which seemed so in my reach.

“Do kadam pe toh hai masjid.”

The foundation is still intact but it seems like everything else had changed.

The place where the porch was supposed to be with green grass and flowers growing was replaced with a poorly drawn makeshift playground area.

The date trees replaced with regular trees which bore no flowers.

As I walk along the back of the masjid, to get to the women’s section. I quickly realised that we’re the only ones who had grown. The masjid that I knew was lost forever. It had grown old with nobody to take care of.

With mold forming on the doors, the area where our shoes used to be arranged now replaced with place mats for children to play. The interior of the masjid that would often change because my dad and his friends regularly put money towards it. It was all lost. Deeply ingrained into my memory. Forever. I will never get that masjid back. Or that house. Makes me want to think if I should have cherished it all along.

Maybe if I was kinder to my ex, it would have left me with better memories to look back upon.