While watching a young woman who left her home when she came of age with only few dollars in her pocket and an address far from where she was born where she bought an old rusty houseboat falling apart for only ten dollars. Slowly but steadily, she rebuilt her houseboat after several months of hard work. People came to see her newly reborn gleaming houseboat she built with love and care because she had learned from experts how to rebuild a worn-out rusty boat no one was interested in buying and restoring. I started to think about how our parents built our home
So, my memories came back in a rush about a house my parents built with love, care and a lot of sacrifice. I was 12 years old so I was very excited when our new house started to come up and could not wait for it to be ready someday because it was to be our house for the first time in our life. We had to live in rented houses in a different part of the city, so we had to adjust to our new surroundings and get to know other residents.
At first, it was a three-bedroom house with a kitchen and a bathroom with a veranda in the front and a veranda in the inner part of the house that served as our dining area. The roof was flat like other houses, although the stairs were not done properly, and we had no electricity for more than one year, but we did not mind at all and were delighted to live in our own house for the first time.
It was my job to get kerosene and fill up all the lanterns in the evening after cleaning the soot from its glass and place the lamps in rooms. We did not mind the lamps either and did our homework and studies in its pale light. We had no screens in the doors and windows either, so the mosquitos and flies had a field day to make our life miserable, but it still was our home. Mom was very proud of our home, and she kept it clean and neat. My father after his retirement sat in his chair in the front porch and received his visitors who stopped by frequently.
We did not have fancy beds to sleep on, but we had hard beds and just a pillow, and we tolerated the mosquitoes, flies and the hard beds because it was our home and we were proud. My father saved his money to build the house on the lot he purchased near the main road, so the location was excellent. When he was short, it was Mom who gave him her gold jewelries to get the cash, so it was her sacrifice and effort so that one day we could have our own home.
As we started to grow up, we went to different schools for our primary and secondary education and later to colleges. Our parents never missed to pay for our school and later college expenses although we knew that it was hard for them to manage it with their limited resources, so we were very grateful to them and never asked for money from them.
After many years I graduated from college and went to Vietnam as an agronomist, but our father had died before I could go abroad. I wrote about it all in my biography, so it is not necessary to repeat them here. I just want to write about the time I spent in our new home from the age of 12 to the age of 23 when I left India. Our three sisters were married so they lived in their own places, but I still had two brothers and two sisters. We did not have television but had a radio that we turned on mostly for music.
One year after we moved in, the electric wiring was done so one day we were connected and had bright light in all the rooms and the kerosene lamps were retired. I bought a tube light and fixed it on the wall and father bought ceiling fans for the rooms. Slowly our home started to look like a comfortable home with a neat garden in the front where I planted a grape vine and a mango tree. My brother planted roses and other plants.
I brought from abroad a fancy record player, stereo speakers and electronic amplifier made in France, Holland and England. It was the first stereo in our neighborhood that people on the road stopped to listen to. Whenever I visited India, I brought with me other things like a Kodak slide projector, radios, tape recorders SLR cameras, watches etc. Later I built the second floor of the house for which I bought furniture, a bicycle and a motorbike and many other things because it was still our home.
My brother once bought an old organ that was collecting dust in someone's house, so we pumped the pedal furiously to get some sound out of the reeds, but it was hopeless. The sound box could not keep the air because it had cracks that was not fixed but it was fun and brought some gaiety. Later a television was bought but slowly they abandoned the stereo, the slide projector and other things I had brought from many countries. They were not interested in looking at photos from other countries.
Then one day the house was sold. Our parents and many sisters died so there was no one to live in that big two storied house anymore. We had made our life here in the Philippines so all connection to my hometown was lost.
Lately I searched the Google earth and found our house and was shocked. Google earth photos are in color and have very high resolution. I saw the house in a pitiful condition. The mango tree I planted is still seen and another tree is shown in the front that I don't know who planted. The paints have peeled off giving the house an abandoned look that made me sad. So many memories flashed back when I was there as a 12-year-old, but it seems that the new owner does not live there so the house is locked up.
I can imagine the inside where the rooms are thick with dust, and the ceilings are full of cobwebs that spiders make. The mouse and cockroaches are freely wandering around. The dark house during the night gives it a haunted look. The garden is full of weeds and wild plants. Once it was a lively place full of music and laughter but now it is no longer a home because a house is never a home if no one lives there.
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