I was standing with my father in front of the building in which we were moving in. A four storied building in a residential colony in South Delhi, with one apartment on each floor. We were moving onto the 4^th floor. The labors were unloading our belongings from a small truck. A pair of cots, a large steel cupboard with a broken handle, a dressing table losing chips of Sunmica on the edges, a three-piece sofa set rarely used, a black & white TV, a refrigerator with ugly coils on the back, and wooden cartons containing utensils and other household items comprised our cargo. My father had arrived two hours earlier to receive the truck and I had arrived with Maa half an hour ago. A labor was now unloading the trunk which contained her puja set – a small canister of gangajal, a mortar and pestle for making sandalwood paste, a brass bell, and frames of Lord Shiva and Goddess Lakshmi. It was a hot afternoon. Father was sweating heavily and looked exhausted as he coordinated the unloading. The building had no elevator so all things had to be carried by the stairs. The labors wanted to get the job done quickly and were unloading and carrying everything roughly. Maa was concerned and tense about damages to the furniture and was constantly telling father to ask them to take care while unloading. But there was nothing my father could do.

By early evening everything had been unloaded in our new apartment. My parents and I were sitting on the floor taking a breather before mustering the courage and energy to get on with the task of unpacking our stuff. Yet again Maa would have to build a new home in a new apartment after having to abandon her previous home of two years. The furniture will have a new arrangement, the dirty kitchen shelves and cupboards will have to be cleaned before they are stacked with Maa’s spice jars and crockery. A new spot will have to be identified and cleansed with special effort for Lord Shiva and Goddess Lakshmi to reside.

Father began unpacking the wooden cartons. One of the cartons was filled with his books from his college days. He brought them along when he moved from Kolkata to Delhi more than a decade ago. He didn’t get the time to read them anymore but still carried their weight whenever we moved between apartments. He hoped to have his own home someday where, in a nice teakwood cupboard, he could give his books a permanent place to stay and possibly read some of them at leisure.

Our new flat had spacious rooms, but was poorly maintained as is the case with most government flats. Cracks had appeared within the walls and the roof with the plaster peeling off at many places. Due to neglect on part of the house owner, everything including water taps, piping and electrical wiring were prone to regular breakdowns. Yet the rent was high, almost one third of father’s salary. Within a short duration of moving in, we realized that the water and electricity supply to our area was also erratic. Maa was always particular about the upkeep of the house. With an erratic water and power supply, she often could not do her daily household chores properly and hence the house was always in a mess. This caused her a lot of mental discomfort. Father had to travel frequently in his job, leaving Maa to deal with the domestic problems on her own. The everyday issues with water, electricity and poor condition of the flat gradually started to affect her mood. For many homemakers like Maa, living in the isolation of a big city without any support of friends and family, life slowly assumes a monotonous and dreary existence. With no one to talk to and nowhere to go, Maa didn’t have an avenue to take a break and free her mind for some time. She would get irritated over the smallest of issues. Loneliness and depression gradually started to creep in leading her to further isolation. The numerous flowers she had planted in pots occupying the staircase from our flat all the way to the roof were her only distraction. During the winters, the stairs would bloom with dahlias, chrysanthemums, marigolds, petunias, pansies, roses, calendulas, zinnias and many more. The colors and fragrances of the flowers would bring butterflies, bees and little unknown birds as regular visitors to our stairs. When father would come back from his office tours, he would try to uplift Maa’s mood by taking us out for dinner or a movie but as more time passed, these things failed in reassuring her of things getting any better. My father’s consolations could not reach the deep recesses of her heart filled with a sense of loss.

During times when Maa was in a good mood, resting my head in her lap, I would listen to her talk about her life in the small town where she grew up. It was an industrial township with abundant water, uninterrupted electricity, warm and friendly neighborhood with people living an unhurried life. They had a reasonably sized house under the shade of mango and guava trees and a garden where she had planted many flower and vegetable plants. They would throw stones to bring down the juiciest guavas which they would then share with friends and neighbors. Father too would talk about his life in village where even though amenities and opportunities were less, people were still content. The air was clean, fruits and vegetables were fresh, milk was pure, people were healthy and supported each other during troubled times. That life of simplicity was left behind when they moved to the big city. Millions of people like my parents move from small towns or villages to the big cities in pursuit of a better life. As they keep up with the daily struggles of surviving in the big city, they reminisce those old times wondering if the life they chose is indeed better or not.

I was only ten but could comprehend the struggles of our everyday life and it made me sad. Maa, in spite of all her frustrations and sadness, would always try to keep up my spirits with her love and care. Taking care of my needs, preparing my favorite dishes, helping me with my homework brought her a lot of joy and satisfaction. I had some friends at school, but my books were my real friends with whom I could lose myself and take the flight of imagination. Like other boys and girls of my age, I liked creating fantasy worlds where everything was perfect and everybody was happy and could be whatever they wanted to be. I would picture myself to grow up as a powerful man who would solve all our problems and create a world free of pain and sadness. My father, aware of my love for stories, would buy me magazines and story books regularly so as to encourage my imagination no matter how fantastic they sounded. Those days Chanda Mama was one of my favorite magazines. Its pages were full of fables, fairy tales, and mythological stories of gods, demons, kings and queens; drifting through those pages would make me lose the sense of time.  

One day my father told me that I should write a story and send it Chanda Mama magazine for publishing. I was so excited at the idea and started fantasizing about sending a story which would win the monthly Best Story contest of the magazine. My father gave me some guidance on how to go about writing a story and during the next two weeks, every evening after finishing my homework, I would work on my story. After two weeks, I showed it to my father and he really liked it. He then posted it along with a hand written letter to the magazine office. After a week, when my father came home from office, tired and exhausted, he gave me a brown paper packet saying that it was from the magazine office. I opened it and there was a typed letter along with two issues of Chanda Mama. The letter said that the magazine people appreciated my story and writing skills and encouraged me to keep writing. The two magazines were a token of appreciation for my effort. I was so delighted to receive the letter and the magazines and ran to Maa to show them to her. She too was very happy and it was one of those few precious moments when all three of us were very happy and forgot about our problems. Encouraged by the letter, I started writing regularly in a dedicated notebook. I would give my stories to father who would then post it to the magazine office. He would give his office address as the address for communication as according to him, letters sent to our house address were often misplaced. Every once in a while, he would come home in the evening and take out a packet from his briefcase with a smile. The packet would have two issues of Chanda Mama and a typed letter addressed to me saying that my story was liked and appreciated and that I should keep writing. The sender however would never give a name. I would have liked to know the person at Chanda Mama who was writing to me.

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Two years had passed. We had to move again. Yet again on a hot afternoon I was standing with my father looking at a truck loading our home stripped to its essentials. My father was sweaty and disheveled. Maa was angry wondering if she would ever see that time in her life when her home would not be broken down. Both were exhausted with the physical, mental and financial tribulations of their unstable life.

We were now living in a new apartment and father had a new job which kept him busy for long hours. I too was in middle school and got busier with my studies. Maa had become lonelier and the frequency and duration of her bad moods were only increasing with time. 

One evening going through my stuff, I found a crumpled copy of Chanda Mama. I realized I had stopped reading them since we moved to our new flat. I had even stopped writing those stories. That night I told my father how I had forgotten about Chanda Mama. He smiled and stroked my hair. He said that I had grown up and matured by some years since I first read the magazine. That I too was slowly getting occupied with the vagaries of life, and that innocent phase of reading, writing and believing in fables and fantasy worlds was now being left behind. Soon, my innocence too would become a fable of the past.