Of the Inn and the Traveller
My childhood was very quiet. Both my parents were busy doctors and would return home late at night. I would get back from school in the afternoon and pad around the silent, empty house alone, walking in and out of doors, placing my ears on walls to listen. But the walls were reticent too. The house was tiny so there weren’t too many variations to my daily routes through it. Yet I would poke at corners and pull at things stacked away pretending to see them for the first time. On one such occasion when I was six, perhaps seven years old, I discovered two big boxes and one old almirah - full of books!
Illustration by Alia Sinha
These belonged to my parents who had to leave their homes in a hurry when they eloped. Busy with work and setting their lives on a new course, they perhaps did n...