The Memory House
For 15 years, it was home: The Memory House, with its yellow walls and stories etched deep. Though Jyotirmoy and his family have since moved to a new, sterile flat, he often finds himself longing for the familiar echoes of the life once lived within those unforgettable walls, as he revisits his cherished memories.
I lived there for 15 years.
The Memory House….
Indeed!
Or shall I say..
“The House that saw everything ”
Yellow walls, moss-covered gate, and a neem tree that dropped more leaves than anyone could ever sweep.
We moved out last month.
Now I’m in a new flat—clean, white tiles, no smell of wet earth, no familiar creaks in the hallway. Everyone says it’s better. New view, bigger lift, park nearby.
But I didn’t want better.
I wanted familiar.
The morning we left, I stood in the middle of my old room—bare now, except for that one sticker on the wall I couldn’t peel off completely. It was a cartoon spaceship I stuck up when I was five.
Funny how the things you forget to take become the ones that stay with you the longest.
I pressed my palm against the wall one last time. Cold. Silent.
This was the room where I learned how to read under a blanket with a torch.
Where I used to irritate my mom every minute every second
Where I cried when I lost my first gift.
Where I built a fort out of bedsheets and fought invisible dragons.
I could still hear echoes of Ma calling for breakfast.
Baba’s footsteps in the hallway.
The sound of the pressure cooker whistle during Sunday lunches.
Even the tap in the bathroom that always dripped.
In the new flat, everything works.
Nothing leaks, nothing squeaks, nothing smells like home.
Yesterday, I reached for the old switchboard to turn on the light—but it wasn’t there.
It hit me then.
Really
IT HIT ME HARD
I’m not going back.
That house—those walls—they’ll never be able to forget as well.
It knows how to keep secrets.
And it remembers who laughed there.
Now, I sit by the window of the new flat. It overlooks a busy road. I don’t know the names of the birds here. The wind doesn’t sound the same.
But maybe… one day, it will.
Maybe one day, this window will hold its own stories. This floor will learn the rhythm of my footsteps.
Maybe home isn’t a place that stays.
Maybe it’s a feeling you carry.
And maybe—just maybe—
I haven’t really left.
Not yet…..
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