The sale of the house was a sage in itself - the house abandoned in 2002 when my now late Grandmother moved to my Uncle's place in Bangalore - needing full time attention that she would take through to her death in 2007. Seemingly since around the time my Grandmother died, we had attempted to sell the house - as most of our members of the Mangalore community that grew up in what was a quiet port town had over the years. To no avail, due to false starts aplenty - of course it was not the worst luck given how much the property appreciated in value in teh intervening years. But now the sale is complete. In the coming months, the last vestiges of that home will be torn down, turned into a high-rise apartment building (I assume) that every neighboring plot around Lighthouse Hill Road has already become. A chapter over. But one chapter remains.
I've written about the other house in India before as well - my family home on my father's side. This one wasn't a large plot in a port town with barns adn sheds and coops and castle-like features of wonder. No, this was a fairly normal 3-bedroom apartment in the heart of Colaba - one that I probably didn't appreciate in its time, but now appreciate more than ever - the balcony overlooking the bustling Colaba Causeway, with the Leopold Cafe across teh street, and the Taj Hotel rising a few gulleys away.
These two houses, one large and palatial (admittedly because I was very, very small back then), the other cookie-cutter apartment with big city trappings for good and bad, have been a constant in my life throughout. One of my earliest memories that stays with me is eating food served on a banana leaf during Easter in the Mangalore house, with my Grandmother alive and well. She rarely would be well but for those first few trips, she very much was.
I don't know what my earliest memory of the apartment in Colaba is, but I do like that about a week after seeing the Mangalore house for the last time - that 2011 trip, I went to Mumbai and stayed at the apartment for the first time in 10 years (I had been to Mumbai once in interim in 2003, but by then my Grandmother had passed away and my Aunt and Cousin hadn't yet moved in). IN that time to, one chapter closing, one remaining. In a weird way, it mirrored my life - growing up in a suburb, then moving to a city. Granted, Mangalore is a city, but to a young boy, the house and the surrounding compound was in a mystical jungle all its own.
Some of my extended family in India went to Mangalore on the day of the sale, a few took photos of what is surely a dank, depleted, mausoleum to multiple lifetimes of memories. I want those photos - but my Mom quickly texted me she wouldn't share them because "let's remember the house for what it was in happier times", but to me, I do remember those times. I want to remember this time to, the fact that it stood for 20+ years uninhabited, the fact it was a plot big enough for three clicks on Google's streetview, with apartment buildings and commercial buildings surrounding its every side, is a testament to its strength and place in our history.
I do want to return quickly to my points about the intersection of these two Indian houses in my life (largely my maternal side from 1991-2001 and my paternal side from 2011-present) as an expose on my life. I was a curious child and that brilliant house and compound was perfect to keep a young child excited and enthralled as we waited out long stretches in Mangalore. It was the place I took my first steps, where I turned one year old, where I ate my first mango. It was the house I crawled, walked and played across all nooks and crannies, as did all my cousins before me. It was our little castle, aptly on a hill. It was a house made for childlike wonder.
The apartment in Mumbai is none of that - configured in an unfavorable way that there is nearly no cross-ventilation, amplifying the humid Mumbai heat. But what it does is have is a location in the crossroads of everything. There is a certain "coolness" or at the very least "curiousity" in living literally across the street from Leopold Cafe and The Taj Hotel, a site of an infamous terrorist attack (and yes I know how weird that is to say). The bedroom I normally stay in has a view of each across the street, but more than that has the constant noise and cacophony that reminds me of New York. I need fans and headphones and distractions to sleep in suburbia - but place me thirty feet above the Colaba Causeway and I'm weirdly at home.
I don't know if I ever will go back to Mangalore. I'm sure that is a slight overreaction, especially since I have scores of ancestors who are buried there and it is after all my ancestral home (on both sides of teh family). But I am ok closing that Mangalore chapter in my life for good - but happier more so that we went that one time in 2011. People like my Mom may prefer my lasting memory of it being what was a great summer in 2001, but at some point the memories of even that 2001 trip will waft away with age, and replacing them will be that last 30 minutes I had in the house, opening Mummie's cabinet and cycling through roughly 40 years of Pinto family history in my hands.
Similarly, I am more than happy that I was able to rework the memories of the Colaba apartment over the years. It was once a bit fallow - the last few years of my Grandmother's life were such that the place was clearly not getting the care it needed. But after my Aunt and Cousin moved in, bit by bit upgrades were mode, modernity crept in, and the apartment became a home again. With whatever odd tie-in the church has with owning that building, it is likely both the building and our family's claim to that spot will last through my lifetime as well.
And for good reason - the memories there, though newer, are all so imprinted - long discussions with my Cousin on Brady v. Manning while VH1 ZZZ played on the background. Meals we had on the same table that my Dad dined on as a child (granted, I am assuming that part - however that table was definitely the same from the mid-90's). The summer experiencing summer monsoons first hand, with that odd feeling of being in a room with clear view of the gloom behind the Taj, with even that being comforting somehow.
None of this is a unique experience - as I mentioned early on most of the families from Mangalore have already experienced this experience of loss of a home - selliong to developers years ago. If anything, I have in a way, with my Aunt's house in Bangalore having been sold and converted into an apartment building - of which she and my Uncle have a beautiful, large flat in. That is life. What's more surprising is how much at peace I am with this - if this is a trial run for when my parents sell our house that we've had since 1993 (the only one I remember), I guess I've passed.
But then again, I think the reason I'm okay with this is because I still have a home in India - a weird, cramped one but one that mirrors so many of the places I've called home in recent years, from apartments in New York & Hoboken, to hundreds upon hundreds of nights in hotel rooms in my career (and travels). There is a house in Mumbai I can still call home - in a dynamic city that of course will annoy the hell out of me every time I go there. There may not be one in Mangalore - but also from my memories, my Mom is probably right to remember the lived memories (as opposed to static 2D photos) to a time when Mangalore wasn't a tertiary city on its way to greater financial legitimacy, but a little bungalow of happiness for a young child.
I'm proudly Indian, and not any less so than a week ago - if anything, I'm more Indian now that I've seen an old house fully go into the process of becoming a concrete structure that is testament to the legitimization of my country. But I'm still so glad that having that I still have that house in Mumbai - in a very Colonial part of the city, that swept past a terror attack to rebuild itself seemingly instantly.
I shouldn't understate the chapter that is closing. I grew up in that home. I haven't done the math, but after my parent's house on 66 Kinglet Drive, and maybe now my Apartment in Hoboken, the single location I have spent the most time in is that house atop Light House Hill in Mangalore. As I mentioned, I literally took my first steps in that house. But life is about remembering and affixing youselves to these memories and facts and moments. I'll always have two houses in India - one a memory, one a living entity, but two all the same.
