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Want To Listen To The Article Instead? 

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Unlike refugees, who don’t have a home behind or infront of them, we have a home. But,

Will it remember all those mornings that the woodpecker made mating calls from its roof?
How on sleepless nights, someone read and made notes from a borrowed J. Krishnamurti’s Notebook?
All those times, we listened to “Ae zindagi gale laga le”? (Hey life, come hug me.)

Will it remember, how many times the kids yelled, “dumb” and “butt” and “dumbbutt”?
How friends partied and parted at the threshold of the front door?
How in those late hours, the kids slept on their parents’ shoulders as they left?

Will it remember, the silent farts and the loud snores, the confidence its privacy brought?
How we lived a week without a child when we packed and shipped him off to boy scouts camp?
How it greeted us solemnly when we came back to it, after losing a parent 8000 miles away?

Will it remember, the tents we built, the cards and carroms we played with cakes smeared on our faces?
How we stole scoops of ice-cream from one another, and tucked the kids quickly in, to watch HBO after dark?
All those arguments that we had, but can’t recall even one of them now, thank heavens!

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Will it remember, all the plaques, certifications and mementos that used to be hung on its walls?
The conference calls for work and the FaceTimes, on those days we were snowed in?
How we took refuge in the kitchen and the pantry everyday or foamed up our driveway washing our cars?

Will it remember, to forgive us for all those holes that cable companies drilled into it for antennae?
Our ignorant thoughts that a big backyard or a little stream behind it would make it a perfect house?
The times one of us would unearth a lost earring behind a cupboard while redecorating the room yet again?

Will it remember, how we took professional help to clean, and cooked the same curry a million times?
How it lived like a river surrounded by life and love, death and destruction, yet never showed emotion?
Those good old days, or look forward to visitors when a builder buys it and rents rooms at Airbnb?

Will our home remember, what it thought of us as it stood firmly despite not having deep roots, when we came back to eye it with diminishing value, after visiting a friend’s “better looking” home?

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Poetry