"You can't go back home because it isn't there anymore."

Disillusionment. Countless books and movies and people have warned me about it. One gets disillusioned with the World at some point of time; that point probably lying somewhere in the Final Year. I don't like this word: 'disillusionment'. I'm not even sure what it means. But I don't like it. For years, I have warded off disillusionment by staying happy and spending money. But the circumstances now make it look like something inevitable.

How do you live your life after disillusionment? Is this what the Buddha was teaching? My mind craves for calm and peace and I shall have it. I fail to see the point of socializing feverishly as a sort of antidote to what is coming. Nothing is coming. This is but a depression that often strikes this part of the Year. What can be more depressing than pointlessness? What can be more depressing than pessimism asked Mark Twain.

When I am totally calm, I will venture out of my house, camera in hand. You know, its an interesting thought. I was sitting in my cousin's house and I couldn't help but think that that very place where I was sitting used to be a huge tank that was fed by a tube well. My ancestors, my family. When they came to Agra, they zeroed in on this plot to build a house for them because it opened up into a green field with wild grass and cows. Ugly, Soviet ugly apartment blocks stand where used to be the field. Whats left of the field is all filthy now, a dump.

Anyways, the interesting thing is that after venturing out to a new city, after decades and decades of living in a village that, for all practical reasons, was basically the Center of the World for them, my ancestors designed this house on the model of a village. Yes, its a big plot. But that's because so many people used to live in it at one point of time. This was how my house used to look like when I was, I don't know, five or six years old: A shed for cows in one corner of the plot. There used to be three cows then. Two rooms for storing hay that the cows ate. A structure for holding all the, uhh, manure. I remember as many as ten dogs roaming about but my family tells me that at one point of time there were as many as fourteen dogs in the compound!

So, for the dogs. There was a special room built where those dogs, which were especially prone to biting people, were locked. The other dogs were totally free to roam and sit wherever they wanted. They were all of them good dogs but people going out to the Doctor to get shots after getting bit wasn't anything new. For some inexplicable reason, even after years of coexistence, the dogs never did stop from barking at the cows. The cows, all cow-ey in their calmness, didn't seem to mind. At night, after 9.30pm, all the dogs locked up were let loose. We were pretty much used to all the noise they made but guests could hear them barking all night.

Then the farming. My family has had a very special attachment with its lands. Fields stretching out to as far as the eye can see. They were considered more of a treasure than anything else; not money, not anything. But land. It was but natural then that when my family came to Agra to settle down, they couldn't bear living decked in by concrete. Exactly half of the plot that was bought was converted into farmland. At one point of time, we had potatoes and a myriad of other things growing out there. It was a splendid example of a self-sustaining eco-system. The cows provided us with fresh milk, vegetables were grown inside the compound. Wheat, barley, sweet potatoes and sugarcane came in from the village. It was a singularly unique experience. I would go upstairs and just sit on the balcony and see the view below. There were houses on either side, in Kunwar colony, and a field of potatoes in the middle.

Then the gardens. Initially the plan was to have a garden on all four sides, so that each room would open up into a garden. But it was considered far too impractical because this would mean drastically reducing the size of the rooms. In the corner of the garden, there lies a structure, with bare metal beams visible. At one point of time, this was covered with plants of various shapes and colors and was used to serve drinks at parties. I remember planting plants there. Most of my dogs lie buried in that garden. Apart from the dogs and the cows, we have had fish. And we now find wild cats lying about lazily. Then we had store rooms, guest rooms, servant quarters'. Most of them lie locked today. A lot many people tend to see this as proof of decline, of time gone by. But then, they'd be wrong. Its just that the equations are changing, priorities ain't what they were back then.

I remember we had two jeeps. I guess a love of jeeps runs deep in the family. We had a Mahindra Commander and one of those ancient Willy's replica Mahindra jeep. All of us kids would just jump in and force the driver to drive us round the city. Sadar was a million kilometres away then.

Anyways, I find this idea of my house really great. My grandfather, and his grandfather, recreated their village here, in the middle of the city. They were loath to abandon their lives there, so they didn't. Its a different experience now. But we are all still in love with the idea and wouldn't have it any other way.

Its beautiful weather outside. Amen'.