Familiar kothi that hasn’t turned into nostalgia yet
Last year, I spent the afternoon with my paternal uncle and aunt at our ancestral kothi (bungalow) in Haryana. Back in Mumbai, as I reminisced the unadulterated embrace of the native and recalled the happiness I felt at each such visit since childhood.
Was it the to-die-for traditional churma that melted in my mouth? Or was it the drive along mustard fields washed in mist and mellow sunshine? Was it my aunt’s warm hugs and toothy smile? Or was it the camel I secretly watched regurgitate as a lump of food travelled up to its long neck back into the mouth? No. All these were ephemeral moments.
When I dug deep, I found the answer. My happiness was a result of sameness, the sameness of things at the kothi I’ve enjoyed over three decades.
At the outset is the kothi itself. When I held the steel glass of buttermilk, its white colour reflected the green paint on the walls, just as it did years ago when I could barely clasp a glass that size with my tiny fingers. The kothi’s architecture of the 1960s was something that grew on me. High ceilings, an aangan (courtyard) at its heart, toilet, and bath separated from each other with neither opening into the bedrooms, kitchen towards the aangan, and open spaces on all four sides as pomegranate, ber fruit, and neem trees gave cover.
When I lay on the coir cot near the vegetable garden and watched the blue sky, I remembered the times when I slept on that very cot during overnight visits. My uncle moved the cot to the sprawling terrace and covered it with a homespun bedsheet. I lay watching constellations all night until the sky began to turn ink blue.
And especially on this recent visit, I jumped like a happy bunny when I saw a room packed with mounds of plucked cotton flowers. As an adolescent, when we visited the kothi during the cottonpicking season, heaps of plucked cotton filled up that very room. I’d climb up and sit at the top of the fluffy hill, excited to feel my head touch the ceiling. At others, I mummified my body with the fluff and spun stories for hours.
Over the years, the kothi has seen its share of incremental changes, too. From washing my hands under the hand pump with a soap bar kept on a brick, now I go to the same spot in the aangan and open the tap at the washbasin complete with a soap case, mirror and hand towel. While during winters I used to sit by the burning firewood along with my aunt as she cooked makki ki roti over the chulha, now I sit beside her in the covered kitchen, while she prepares the same makki ki roti over a stove, cooking smoke-free. From bare hardened mud, the aangan floor is now covered with stone-tiles that prevent erosion during frequent dust storms. The coir cot has wooden chairs and a centre table for company.
Yes, the kothi has evolved. But each step of evolution has consciously carried along with it my grandparents’ vision and love, just as it were, when they laid the first brick 60 years ago. The kothi’s foundation is undisturbed. Its essence is same as before.
In times when we’re constantly reminded of the need to adapt, change, and surge with breakneck speed, the kothi shows me that some things in life don’t have to change for the sake of changing.
Some things in life can evolve without losing their core. Some things in life can be experienced with unblemished purity only when they are allowed to be right where they belong.
The next time I take that familiarlooking turn towards the kothi, I will be grateful for that feeling of familiarity. A feeling of familiarity that has not yet turned into nostalgia.