Third city in three years. How is it that this still turns out to be different?
Aren’t cities supposed to be same, stretching buildings defending the sun with their glass shields, lonely green gardens desperate for a tag of ‘open space’, and painfully vivid malls with underground parking that looks like the perfect setting for murder.
But then there are those magically peaceful houses with lonely driveways and mystical by-lanes and Royal Poinciana trees throwing confetti as you walk on the red brick footpath.
Our house, is located on the second floor of the newly embellished double flat building. We, Mom and I are on the second floor; we always prefer the terrace. The differences to other cities are visible, there is large verandah in place of grilled windows, a different room layout – with the bedrooms on either side of the hallway (previously they were on the same side). I take the bedroom on the left, a smaller, darker version of the other.
As one would leave the house, they would have to go down almost cramped staircase, with short straight steps and greyed walls. This short, scary journey would end on a rich marble patio. From here, you can see the door of our neighbor, an old couple with a son in another country. The father would be seen walking around the patio with a newspaper burning against the sunlight.
Leaving the block, down the grey street with broken white lines lead to the city. On the second right is the school. a ten-minute walk. Third left: the departmental store. Further turns ahead, the commercial complex, with offices with glass windows that look like sunglasses. The rest of the city is undiscovered and blurred, like a dark attic corner.
The parks are situated almost everywhere, that’s another surprise from this city. Where is the pollution and that broken signal? Where are the abandoned buildings and the dusty under construction projects? The city is so green, there is a creeper up the ‘no-parking’ signboards, and there are nosier and spying plants over the fences of mysterious houses then electrifying wires. I wonder, on the drive from the departmental store to home, if I would ever be visiting them, for a friend or mom’s friends groups.
The school is a magical place. A sprawled red building with beautiful bougainvillea trees, that gives it a magical appearance. It reveals the entire young of the area, which you would never think would be possible. Since the school has been extended into a club and community centre in the evening after classes, there are lesser posters and more brick walls and sloping roofs and busts of great unknown men on pedestals. It looks so… professional. Gives a sense of maturity.
Mom says ‘maturity’ and ‘change’ come together.
Do they go together too?
Even though I have hardly spent a day here, I have known the store really well. The moment we landed, we sought food, and supplies, and batteries. Now, I know where the frozen foods aisle is.
It’s my first day at school, second day with a difference, third day with fear, fourth with a lump in my throat and the fifth with a frown on my face.