Nostalgia in Ruins: Watching My Childhood Home Fall and My Memories Rise

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My mother visited her (and mine) childhood home for the last time today as it will be demolished starting tomorrow. Nostalgia, as it turns out, will not have a home anymore. Yet, somehow, we’ll have to continue living on.

Since I’ve moved to the US 23 plus years ago, I’ve visited my home town Vijayawada atleast 25 times. And yet, nothing makes my nostalgia more pronounced or palpable than the way my grandmother’s house does.

The visits are always a perfect blend of familiarity and a novelty of what has changed. I walk around the house as if I’m the boss looking to see if the jackfruit tree is pregnant with more fruits this year. Is Rangamma still our domestic help through her tumultuous life of drama and chaos? And will the guy who used to sell salt on his pull cart ever going to visit us again? Poor guy, did he finally die?

For years, Pitchiah veedhi (street) was our stomping grounds through our happy childhood and reckless teen years (as reckless as one could rebel in a family commandeered by our patriarch grandfather). In spite of changes around us, one thing we could count on in our lives was the stability and the warmth the presence of this home offered to us. Even when life moved fast, we grew up and moved away across the world, our shared experiences in the house kept us anchored.

I used to fondly think of all the pillow and bedsheet fights all of us would have as we slept on the living room floor during summer holidays. There were the days we’d watch television and be completely scandalized by the scenes in Titanic and I would be secretly annoyed that the “important educational parts” were censored by the channel. Oh, the betrayal to the teen angst, what can I say?

And then one visit I saw a giant stub in place of a tall coconut tree. The same one under which my grandmother had fainted after hearing that my aunt had passed away from cancer. Just gone. As if time had quietly erased a memory I hadn’t approved for removal.

But isn’t that how it goes? Life moves on, sometimes without informing you. And your connection to your DNA can’t live on square footage alone. It has to move into our relationships, our rituals, and the stories we will continue to share among ourselves. A few weeks before today’s demolition, our family gatherings had already migrated to my mother’s house. The relay baton of nostalgia had already been passed, and I hadn’t realized it then.

Last month, when I visited the place for the final time, I stood on the upstairs front veranda and thought back to some good old times. When the local exhibition was in town, they would send out a rickshaw into town that was covered from head to toe in giant colorful posters. The rickshaw puller would have a guy in the back annoucing the arrival of the carnival in town using a loud speaker. The guy yelling out through the speakers would mock echo his message for everyone to hear.

“విజయవాడ లో ఎగ్జిబిషన్ … బిషన్ … బిషన్ … బిషన్”

“Visit the Vijayawada Exhibition… bition… bition… bition” 

My sister and I would run to our front veranda when we would hear them approaching and imitate them calling out after them, బిషన్ … బిషన్ … బిషన్.

Peak childhood comedy and pure marketing genius, I tell ya! Because we would continue to beg our parents to take us to the బిషన్ … బిషన్ … బిషన్, until they did. LOL.

As I write this, our home, the one that held decades of laughter and heartbreak will cough up dust smokes as it gets demolished. But like good ghosts, those good times will continue to haunt us in magical ways and will not need to stay anchored at Pitchiah veedhi.

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The Original Salt Seller

Me With My Grandma