One Room Kitchen

I was born in a creche. I mean I was first kept in one after birth. 

During my birth and after that we used to live in a one-room kitchen. We had a crazy neighbourhood then. Crazy in a good way… The doors of the neighbouring houses used to be more or less open through the day and anyone could peep into the other person’s house. 

Most of the times my neighbours used to feed me meals just out of love. Being a cute little toddler, it was fun to get all the love and pampering… First … having home food made by mom and then hogging my heart out with two other families in the neighbourhood… good fun…

There were no concerns of privacy… or … sharing… There was no concept of this is mine and that is your’s… It was all our’s… Really… I don’t know if it was so everywhere or was I lucky to be around such a household… 

Then, as I grew up, at 4 years of age we shifted to a better house, a 1 BHK so to say. I spent a good 23 years of my life there before moving to our current house. Even there we had four families who were always there for one another. But why am I sharing all this with you all… I will come to it shortly…

My college years were spent in that house where we lived for 23 years of my life. During my college days, I had one friend. I mean I had a few more, but she was my bestie of sorts… We used to stay overnight at each other’s houses.

I remember when I had first gone to stay with her, I slept as if I was super comfortable. As if I was in my own house. Her family was so welcoming and they made it a point to feed me scrumptiously. I can say with an almost arrogant confidence that, that friend of mine makes the most wonderful tea I’ve ever had in my life. It’s all history now… Anyways…

That night and the many nights that we spent studying, or, sometimes, even just chilling after our exams at her house made me realise that there was some much peace in that small house… 

In that one room kitchen...

Just like our old one-room kitchen… 

Just like the creche where I used to live…

I realised that we all need very less place to be really happy… 

I realised we need only a small piece of land!

And it struck me that those dead bodies in that ambulance also needed a small piece of land… But can you imagine… 22 bodies were piled up on one other because of a shortage of ambulances. They were struggling to reach their last piece of land on earth… the burial ground.

As a child I have travelled in my uncle’s ambassador car, and, at a time about eight to ten individuals would be cramped up in the vehicle, mostly children during our Ganesha Visarjan. But there was so much joyous thrill in that ride… 

Space didn’t matter… 

There was a lot of comfort in that discomfort…

But I am not sure how the relatives of those covid patients must have felt when their loved ones were cramped in that small space… 

I am also not sure how the departed souls must have felt… May they all rest in peace…

What happened with those people was not a dignified farewell. 

Leave that alone… Even when the dead have to be buried these days, they have to be in a queue… That is the state of despair we all are in… 

We have to wait in a queue for a small piece of land even after we die…

All this does not fit…

It just does not fit…

We need to do something about it…

Turns out, space does matter!