The courtyard where time stood still

SOME houses don’t age, they wait — like old friends by the window, holding their breath for your knock. I did not step into a temple or dip my hands into sacred waters. Yet when I returned to my ancestral home, a temple awakened inside me. The bells that rang were not of bronze, but of memories — lodged deep in the corridors of my soul.

My roots run deep between Jalandhar, my father’s birthplace, and Kaithal, my mother’s. Season after season, we went there as children, gathering summers like sunlit laughter and winters like stories wrapped in warmth. Both homes greeted us with the same warmth — grandparents with eyes full of light, love ladled out in heaps, their pampering the soft currency of our childhood joy.

In the tangled lanes of Rainak Bazaar stood my paternal home — built by hands that fled the Partition fires of 1947.The bare earth of its courtyard was soon blessed by neighbours —trees were planted, food was shared, lives intertwined. It was a neighbourhood that pulsed like a village. My grandmother, silver-haired and serene, stood as its gentle queen. Her tandoor in the courtyard was no less than a shrine — its fragrance of roasted wheat still lingers in my breath. Her chapatis were warm circles of care. Her Panchatantra tales taught us the quiet heroism of the everyday.

One night — chilled and powerless under a dark winter sky — we sat wrapped in shawls on the terrace. My eldest cousin spun ghost stories, and though our grandmother warned us not to perch on the ledge, we did anyway. Suddenly, a shooting star streaked across the heavens. Our gasps became a chorus. My father’s hand found my shoulder. “Always look up,” he whispered. “There’s always something brighter coming.”

Years passed. I returned with my son. The gates groaned open to metal and muteness — cars now stood where once laughter ran. The peepal trees still stood, but cloaked in dust, more memory than presence. The home had changed — sleek granite, LED lights, modern airs. The sepia family photo had been replaced by a giant TV screen. But beneath the renovations, I saw ghosts of comfort: Grandma stooping at her tandoor, grandpa leafing through his newspaper, his silence rich with thought. On the terrace, the swing still creaked in welcome. I could still hear cousins reciting tales of forgotten queens and fearless girls. For a breathless moment, I was a child again — fingers curled around my father’s, heart wide open to wonder.

As we left, I turned back not to a house, but to a living being. A keeper of lullabies, laughter, reprimands, rituals and roots. A breathing archive of all that mattered.

My son asked, “Mama, why are you smiling and crying?” I replied, “Because some places aren’t made of bricks. They’re made of love.” As Gabriel García Marquez wrote: “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” And I remembered. And in that remembering, I returned. And I belonged.

Musings