Har ghar kuch kehta hai...

I have always had a fascination for old things. History used to be my favorite subject in school. My secret ambition was to become an archaeologist. Appreciating ancient architecture still remains a passion. I lose myself completely when I visit an old church or a historical monument. But my all time favorites remain the lovely Goan Catholic ancestral villas which represent a unique blend of the two cultures: the East and the West. The Portuguese left Goa in the 1960s but till date, the 450 years of colonial rule is clearly reflected through these homes. Probably another reason for my affinity towards these ancestral villas is coz I was born and brought up in one of these ancestral homes too.

My home has had a very interesting history. It seems a brother and a sister bought the plots back in the beginning of the 20^th century and decided to build two mansions side by side, so they could live next to each other.The brother built our home and the sister built the house next to ours. Technically speaking, the two houses were exact replicas of each other. Due to the colonial rule in Goa,a large number of Goan residents had moved to Portugal in the quest of well-paying jobs. After Goa got liberated and became a part of the Indian Union, these immigrants did not wish to come back. So they started selling off their ancestral properties in Goa. The brother who had built our home was also one of them.His family was to leave Goa and settle in Portugal forever so he put up his house for sale. This was sometime in 1970s when my grand-dad was also looking for a big home to accommodate his large family.He came across this offer and it was too good to let go and that's how the brother's house became our home!

People often wonder, what is it that makes these ancestral Goan villas so unique from the other houses? According to me it is their grandeur-the large French Windows, the tall doors and the high ceiling.As you enter a typical ancestral villa, you are drifted into the past. These villas were built spacious with large halls coz during those days,weddings, ceremonies and other important family gatherings used to be held in the house itself.Even after he bought our home, my grand-dad had to spend considerable time and money in making a lot of modifications to convert some of these dance halls into bedrooms. I still remember the reaction I used to get back in school when any of my classmates would discover about my home.Their eyes would widen with excitement and I would have to answer the same question umpteenth time-"How does it feel to live in such a huge, old house? You are so damn lucky!"

Over the years, as much as we have loved and boasted about our home, there have been others who have appreciated it as much. First there was a professor from Goa College of Architecture who was doing his PhD and his thesis consisted of exploring all the ancestral homes in Borda. Borda is that part of Margao which houses maximum number of Catholic ancestral villas. So naturally, he was at our doorstep , asking us the permission to let him look around and we were most happy to let him in. He came in with his professional cameras, clicking every door frame and window and jotting down the dimensions and other details and all the family members were wondering what he was finding so interesting in those old walls. He later had an exhibition where he showcased all those photographs and we realized how beautiful every frame looked. We remembered the good ol' saying then -Only a connoisseur knows the true taste of his wine!

Another one of our home's admirer had a very strange story. On one lazy Sunday morning, we had a visitor. He was a European man, in his early thirties. He said our home had belonged to his grand-father, that is of course before his grand-father sold it off to my grand-dad and moved forever to Portugal.His father was born in our home and he had spent the first few years of his life in the Borda neighborhood. Now, his father was on the death-bed and as his last wish, he had sent his son to Goa, all the way from Portugal to get pictures and memories of his old home, the church in which he was baptized, the chapel which he visited every Sunday for mass. Our visitor had a small piece of paper, given to him by his ailing dad which had a vague map of our neighborhood, with all the intricate details such as where he could get the best choris-paav (a Catholic delicacy made from Pork sausages) in the area. Mamma and I were a little apprehensive of letting a stranger, that too a foreigner inside our home but I don't know what it was about him, we felt he was genuine and we asked him in.

He was clicking photographs of each and every thing he could see as he walked around. His original family altar was replaced with a mini-temple by my grand-dad to accommodate all our deities. The master bedroom of the house, which used to be his grand-dad's bedroom had become my grand-dad's bedroom and after my grand-dad passed away, I had become its new owner. It is the largest room in the house and also the most beautiful one with 3 doors and 2 huge French windows. During those days, furniture used to be custom made for individual rooms. The original owners of the house had the carpenters build a grand master bed from scratch inside the bedroom itself. The resulting bed became so grand that it couldn't be moved out of the room in one piece when the owners sold the house so my grand-dad had to ultimately buy the house along with this piece of furniture! When we narrated this story to our visitor, he was touched. This was a bed not just passed through the generations of my family but it was passed through the generations of both our families.

We finished touring the house and sat on the couch, he got busy sipping his kokam sarbat, another Goan delicacy he could go back and tell his family in Portugal about. He was extremely happy he had collected enough pictures to make his ailing father happy.It occurred to me then, that the two of us were connected in the strangest possible manner-our house. He was the grand-son of this house just like I was the grand-daughter. A house is not just a bunch of walls with a roof on the top,every house is special and every house has a story to tell. Har ghar kuch kehta hai....

Har ghar chup chaap se yeh kehta hai ki andar usmein kaun rehta hai?
Chhat bataati hai... ...yeh kiska aasmaan hai.
Rang kehte hain kiska yeh jahaan hai.
Kamron mein kiski kalpana jhalakti hai?
Is farsh par nange pair kiske bacche chalte hain?
Kaun chun chunke ise pyaar se sajaata hai?
Kaun is makaan mein apna ghar basaata hai...
Har ghar chup chaap se yeh kehta hai... ki andar usmein kaun rehta hai?