Below is the prompt for NaPoWriMo Day 2:

Our (optional) prompt for the day takes a leaf from Schuyler’s book, as it were, and asks you to write a poem about a specific place —  a particular house or store or school or office. Try to incorporate concrete details, like street names, distances (“three and a half blocks from the post office”), the types of trees or flowers, the color of the shirts on the people you remember there. 

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1545- My Maternal House

 

About thirty miles away

From where I presently stay

Is the city of my birth

And the house where I grew up

From teens to an adult,

The house that witnessed,

The journey of a girl into a complete woman

 

 

House number 1545: A bungalow or our mansion,

Constructed under dad’s keen supervision,

We finally called it our home,

in the 1993 summer.

Of the three bedrooms ( apart from a huge lounge cum dining room),

The room painted in pink, which was next to the kitchen

Was allotted to me (the youngest), to be shared with my sister

 

 

Our mornings were loud and aromatic

With smell of spices and vinegar

Garlic, cauliflower and ladyfinger,

And the whistling of the cooker.

Evenings were often delicious

With pakoras (fritters), fish or rice chicken

Or freshly baked cake- a cuisine par perfection

 

 

I marveled the magnificence of the house,

The big courtyard with greenery abound

Papaya, guava and lemon trees

And a few seasonal saplings

I recall scouring the creeper

for bitter gourd, brinjal and ridgegourd

Even plucking some spinach and coriander

 

 

“Ours is the corner house,

Just two lanes across school compound,”

I would tell my friends with glee

As I walked back to the house at three

I would perch on the corner boundary,

Watching pedestrians crossing the street

As I licked the orange bar- my favored ice cream

 

 

A stroll on the wide terrace,

After rain swept its floors

And gaping at the beauty of vibgyor

As sun peeked thereafter, shrugging off raindrops

Sky gazing became my rejuvenation

Watching stars aligning in constellations,

Clouds cuddling in affection then distancing in retribution

 

 

It’s almost three decades

But memories are anew as ever

The grocer, the house help, the laundryman,

The association continues across generations

The house stands tall- aboding old and new members

But my maternal house- house number 1545

Will always be my childhood treasure!

 

©Vandana Bhasin

02.04.2020