Our house- Rooms

Our haunted house was located in IAF road, East Tambaram. It was on the main road, opposite to the huge MCC campus. Then it had only stringed compound and was pregnable of all animals. This was near the Farm gate, which was later closed permanently. Our house had an automobile workshop at the front, a HUGE wooden gate, which was quite tall for me to open. There was a jains provision store after our house.

The compound housed more than 10-15 huge trees. The shrubs grew everywhere and were knee high. You never know, what lies inside. Could be toads, frogs, snakes or even scorpions. The house was built in yester years, and the windows, doors and the walls were very sturdy, though they were ages old. The hall was huge, it housed nearly 5-6 big bicycles. We used to play paper cricket there. Dad had a room for his own, filled with calendar bundles, esoaps, screen printing tools, drawings,original paintings and loads and loads of books, comics, bibles, in huge big shelves.

'Enter at your own risk' was sketched in bold letters in the next door, which was my brother's room. When you enter, to the left, the entire wall from ceiling to the floor below was covered with posters. The left one had sports folks, all over. Maradona, Steffi Graf, Boris Becker and many many others. To the right, the entire wall is covered with musicians. Michael Jackson, Samantha fox,strypers, acdc. The third wall had posters of birds, animals on the move from national geographic books, weird pictures. The fourth wall had huge windows. The windows also leaked electric power, so we were instructed not to touch it. The window also housed a skull of cat, with some red bulbs on its eye socket. An old guitar was hung from the ceiling, and it housed a speaker I think. The room always had loud heavy music and was scary enough, to enter. This was primarily Prabhu's work,and I peaked in, whenever the boys weren't home.

There was a verandah, which was partitioned by Prem using news paper and home made glue. He had strings and closed the entrance with thick paper, so you cannot see what's going on inside. The way in was through the otherside, where you have to climb the opening, and jump in. Not feasible for the young or the old. Inside, we could peak in to see Horlicks bottle filled with Kerosene, and dangling scorpions and couple of snakes, frogs, cockroaches, and things he could lay hands on. A chart refuting Darwin's monkey to human story can also be seen hanging. This room thanks to the animals on bottle was another scary room of the house.

I also remember that much earlier, the boys had built Ooty with mud. There was waterfall, trees, Beulah park, chrispugg tea estate? prem bus stand?and lot of hair pin bends, and cars, and trucks going up and down the mud hill.

The dining room, had the huge table, weirdly I don't remember sitting and eating there. We did have the small 14 inch TV. Was it there or on the bedroom? Bedroom was huge, we could put 4-5 cots there. None of the rooms had any lofts. So dad had made a makeshift wooden loft to keep the pillows and other things, that hung from the ceiling in the bedroom. The windows were huge and airy. I remember our nick names written on a window sill. Puli, palli. The room between bedroom and kitchen and bedroom, ideal dining room, had the grinder and fridge? The kitchen was huge too.. But its funny, we did not have any water outlet or sink there. The vessels were kept on the floor. Mom made muruku and cookies, sitting on the floor in a kerosene stove. We did have 1 huge shelf. There was a basket hung from the ceiling of the kitchen to keep the onions. We also had the 'ami' the manual grinder used for making chutney, rasam etc( I don't think we owned a mixie or a fridge, did we?)

The bathroom was huge. It was bigger than our bedroom, we sleep now. The only outlet for water was found here and it was tilted, so you have to be careful when you turn it. You had to step inside rectangular block built probably half a feet high to get to the water. NExt to the door was the indian style commode, but it was so huge, enough for a little elephant to sit in. The funny thing was, it had to be climbed up, with 3-4 steps. Opposite to the only bathroom, was the store room, filled with boxes and suitcases of books, clothes, and things. I remember playing Monopoly here.. ( I wonder why we sat there of all the places. The way to these two room, was through a long corridor.I was afraid to go to the toilet at night, as we had a dim light only and it was quite far from bedroom.

There was a big well outside, I remember taking bath there. The kitchen vessels were washed here too. Strangely we did not have any tap here either. So the water has to be drawn out using an iron bucket, pulley and some thick ropes. I loved pulling it, and playing with it. We were never allowed to peek into the well. On the side of the well, we had an olden type pathway built in stones.. probably for water to flow through. Behind the well, were some abandoned rooms, which were so scary to look at. Broken windows, glasses, were there, filled with shrubs and weeds.
The corner of the compound was used to dump garbage. The other opposite corner had kodukapuli tree. At the front, there were trees, and the boys played cricket. Ahh memories! Thankful to God for the beautiful home we lived in.