HUNTING FOR A HOUSE--THREE

LOST

Believe me, hunting for a house to live in is the most daunting task I have ever faced.  When one has lived for a long time in a house, the comforts of the house one has configured and enjoyed,  cloud the vision from seeing the comforts of the houses inspected for possible occupation.  It appears to be a matter of mental readjustment; it takes time to ease the old house out and see the new houses with an open mind.  However, there are certain indisputable aspects in a house which stick out as sore thumbs.                                                          

*

I spotted another advertisement in one of the local journals about a house overlooking  the beach near the Murugan temple in Besant Nagar.  I was overjoyed at the prospect of living in that  house, because I loved to look at the sea and watch the sun rising over it as a muted orange globe.  Also, I loved the atmosphere of the temple called “Arupadai Veedu”, where I had occasionally spent the evenings sitting in one of the mandapams, leaning against a stone pillar carved with curvaceous figures, pondering on the purpose of living.  That very morning, I zoomed in on the advertised house and knocked on the door.

A beautiful young woman opened the door.  Before I could tell her why I was there, she invited me to step in, assuming that I was there to inspect the house for renting it.  How I regretted I was not a thief and a rapist: I could have been doubly fortunate, with such women around, throwing open doors and  invitations to enter.

The main door opened into a spacious hall, from which I could enter two bedrooms, one of which was well ventilated and roomy enough to contain a double-cot and space to move around.   The young woman then ushered me into the other bedroom, slightly smaller than the first.  It had only one small window along a wall.  I walked over and opened it and got a big jolt!  I saw a wall of unplastered bricks, which I could touch, thrusting my arm through the bars of the window!  It was the wall of the adjoining house!  I was speechless for a few moments. 

“Is this a store room?” I asked her, attempting to give her the benefit of doubt. 

“No, this is a bedroom,” she asserted.

“I see,” I said, “And the ventilation?”

“The fan,” she looked up.  There was only the ceiling there.  “I can fix one,” she added, “You may also install an AC.”

“I see,” I said, “Where?”

“Where the window is.”

“If the power fails?  It does, every day, you know.”

“No, it won’t.  Not here.”  I have heard such irrational answers all my life.  One has to be merely loud and assertive to sound truthful and convincing.

She then took me through an open corridor, covered with iron grill for safety, to an enclosure with a washbasin, beyond which was the kitchen.  As I was looking around, she excused herself and disappeared.  I waited for a few minutes, for her to reappear.  She did not.

I decided to leave, if there was nothing more to see.  I left through a door, I thought would take me back the way I came, but it did not.  It led me into a room, which could be used for dining.  Satisfied that I had seen enough, I opened a door I thought would lead me out, but it was a bathroom.  I stood there for a while, wondering if that was the only bathroom, so far removed from the bedrooms.  Then I saw another door out of the bathroom and opened it to enter a kind of a small storeroom, where brooms, scrubbing brushes, cleaning liquids, rags, and whatnot were lying helter-skelter.  I opened a door, which I thought was the one through which I came in, and entered the bathroom I had been through.  However, when I took a good look at it, I realized it was a different bathroom.  When I went to open the door, through which I came in, I noticed that there was another door next to it, looking exactly like the one next to it. Suddenly, I panicked.  I was scared to open either of the doors, fearing I might get lost, deeper and deeper in this confounded maze, if I was not lost already.  I stood there paralysed, not knowing which way to go. 

“Christ,” I prayed aloud, “help me out, you are the shepherd of the lost sheep.”  

Miraculously at that moment, I heard a voice from somewhere in the house, but it could not have been the voice of Christ, because it was the voice of a woman.  Was it the voice of Mother Mary, as Jesus was too busy rounding up  other lost sheep elsewhere?

“Where are you?” asked the voice.  It could not have been Mother Mary, as she would have known where I was.  Further, it was not in Aramaic, the mother tongue of Mother Mary I had not learnt.  I concluded it must have been the voice of the pretty young woman, who showed me half way through the house.

“Where are you?”  I threw the question back at her.  I sounded like her male  echo.

“What is the point in telling you where I am?  You wouldn’t know anyway, literally.”

Her answer made profound sense to me, so I decided to answer her question, “I’m in the bathroom.”

“Oh!...mmm… which bathroom?” was her next question.

Shit, I thought, how was I to answer that question?  “Look, I am in the second bathroom.”

“You are in the second bathroom?  But that’s impossible,” she retorted.

I was really pissed off, a bathroom being the most appropriate place to do so.  “Why not?” I too retorted, trying hard not to show anger in my voice, lest she abandoned me a second time.

“Because I am in the second bathroom,” she answered with some authority.

“Well, I must be in the other bathroom obviously, whether you call it the first or the second.  Can you come and get me?  Because if you are sure you are in the second bathroom, you must be sure where the first is, although I’m not sure if I am there.”

“I think I can,” she replied. 

I waited for about a hundred years.  Was she also lost?  Or, was space really warped, that you could never make a beeline for anything.

Suddenly, one of the doors in front of me opened and out came a short, lean man of middle age.

“What?  Who are you?” I almost screamed.

“I am the voice you were talking to,” he replied in the same female voice I have been talking to. 

“Sorry, I thought you were the lady of the house, who was showing me around.  Doesn’t matter, but where is she?”  I asked  him.

“Yes, where is she?” he asked, now sounding like my female echo.

“What do you mean ‘where is she?’.  Are you not her husband?” I asked, annoyed already that he was not.

“What?” he recoiled, “Who put that silly idea in you head?”

“Well, nobody, really.  I guess I was hoping you were, so you can get me out of here.  Then who are you?” I repeated the question, but now stressing the verb. 

“Me?  I wish to God I knew.   After a week of wandering about in this house, I feel like Jeremiah in the wilderness, looking for a house to live,” he wailed.  I was sure, his Bible was all messed up.

I did a double-take.  “What?” I screamed again, sounding like my own echo this time.

“Yes, I came about a week ago, to see this house.  She showed me around, but excused herself halfway through.  Since that cursed day, I have been going round and round trying to get out, but getting nowhere.  My friends used to call me ‘fatso’ but look at me now, a scarecrow.  I have neither slept nor eaten for a week.  I am famished.  Do you have something on you I could eat?”

I felt like a scared crow now.  The only thing I had on me was me.  I could already see him eyeing me hungrily.  Instinct warned me that I should get out NOW!  But HOW?

Precisely at that moment, one of the two doors in front of us banged open and the pretty woman of the house breezed in.

“Well, gentlemen, if you have seen the house fully, I’ll show you out.”

“YES!  YES!” we both cried in unison.

She then promptly opened the other of the two doors in front of us, and we walked through to find ourselves bang on the street!

A.V. DHANUSHKODI,  June 23, 2011