Houses are made of wood in the US, my husband informed me. He was hunting for a new home where we would shift after marriage. Recollecting my wonderful experiences of staying in wooden houses in Shimla, I was overly excited and enthusiastically started looking forward to reliving in one! During school days, I had often imagined myself in a wooden house having a Ruskin Bond book in one hand and a coffee mug in another, sitting besides a fireplace and a window, on a foggy winter day in evergreen surroundings! Such was an idea of heaven in my mind! But reality shows us more than what is imagined and desired!
We finally decided upon a house and he moved there a few days prior to marriage to make it comfortable for me when I arrive. It was one of his first nights alone in this home when he was confronted by an unpleasant noise of a shaking door! Next morning he called me on Skype to tell me about the scary night. Beginning to suspect a haunting, just like in movies, we talked in detail about it. We concluded that instead of a spirit on the loose, it was one of the doors that was probably loose, shaking whenever a heavy physical activity, and not a paranormal activity, occurred in that wooden building. Despite knowing about it in advance, I got a real fright when it actually happened in my presence!
"Wake up! Did you hear that?" I nudged my husband until he moved and groaned "What!! what happened?". "Shhh! listen, do you hear something?" I said. Motionlessly, quietly and intently, we listened. A closed door in our house vibrated. It was brief but frequent. Our Indian experience was hinting us of an earthquake. But our bed was still. "Yes I hear a door shaking!" he confirmed. We continued to hear even more intently to make some sense of it all. None of us was getting out of bed to check on which door was suddenly shivering in the cold of the night and why, for both scare and sleep were overwhelming enough to confine us to our places! "Oh probably someone is walking on the floor above, lets go back to sleep now" he said while yawning after having applied some reasoning in a drowsy state. "Who is walking at this time!!!" I revolted, not at all satisfied with his reasoning! "You live in a wooden house now!" he said and dozed off! After some confusion, I calmed myself by finally recalling that it had happened before without any harm and dozed off myself.
This wasn't the only incidence when our house had suddenly gone alive! There was a night when sounds were so peculiar that I literally forced my husband to check out the whole house, with me cowering behind him, fearing a break in!!! The sounds we hear are all possible noises wooden surfaces could make- footsteps, thuds, knocking, scratching! In fact, I know a lot about my neighbors from these sounds that I hear rather than having met them personally!
A lady on a floor above wears high heels, for her heels can be heard very distinctly trotting in a wooden corridor between 11 am to 1 pm. Her confident trotting reminds me of the girls from the novel 'The Devil wears Prada'. I have never met her though! A man with a naturally heavy bass voice lives just below and can be heard from anywhere in my house when he speaks over phone in his patio! He works from home. He is probably an insomniac or a workaholic, for muffles of his bass laden voice, which totally negate the theory of wood being a noise insulator, can be heard till very late in night! I have never met him either! A couple with a baby live next door with whom we share a wall. The wife probably exercises before lunch for a dampened energetic music plays from behind this wall, repeating everyday! I have never met them too! The other side of my house is shared by a middle aged Indian family, whom I saw while they shifted in, but confirmation happened only when I heard them seeing off their guests in Hindi. Despite this, I have never met them! A deep contrast to what I experienced in India!
Indians know about their neighbors right from day one! It begins by offering for help while shifting in, and sometimes hot chai if lucky! Even the great Ambuja cement in their walls lacks the courage to limit the might of an even greater Indian curiosity! It cannot be quenched by just eavesdropping, for their ears are too accustomed to hearing ginger being squashed in a mortar for chai, a mixer thundering, a cooker whistling or a Kaamwaali (a female maid) ringing a bell, that they can precisely tell at which time it will happen! Moreover, concrete does not vibrate like wood to tell them where their neighbor is standing right now. Why trouble eavesdropping then when they can know everything about their neighbors, their parents, uncles, great grand uncles or distantly related nephews directly from them!! And for something which they can not know directly despite various attempts, the Kaamwaali comes in handy! But there is always someone next door to talk to if feeling alone in India. No doubt why neighboring granny's quickly become best friends to talk about old-age pains or grandchildren or bitch about the oh so unfair doings of their daughter-in-laws! One just needs to peep out of the window or ring a bell for the neighborhood is always alive!
If it is India and a concrete house is vibrating, its occupants know for sure that an earthquake has hit the Indian subcontinent! Everyone rushes out immediately and wait until the tremors subside. But how can one tell when a wooden house is vibrating, it is actually because of an earthquake and not due to a large muscular maintenance man running after his dog in the building! My husband for once did not have an answer to my question, for he lacked an experience in this regard. Other questions followed, like what happens if important documents like passports, college degrees, or credit cards of a foreign national get destroyed in a natural calamity in a country not his motherland! Probably a copy of them can be requested, but he wasn't sure. I panicked! Since then I keep a satchel handy containing important documents in case I have to rush out immediately! I did not know whether there was anyone else freaking out similarly until I met a Punjabi friend of mine this week! She always keeps her car keys handy in case she has to run out in emergency!
Concrete houses have another advantage over their wooden counterparts - they do not catch fire as easily as the latter. Not even a day goes by here that a fire brigade's siren is not heard wailing loudly all its way to somewhere. Sometimes even thrice a day for the fire alarms are so sensitive that they go off even if the source of the smoke is not an actual fire! Thankfully my alarm has never gone off false-fully. My fears were almost realized when a little brown 'laddu' (a famous Indian sweet) burst in my microwave. It had gone black in its core with anger of being heated for longer than necessary. Such was the wrath of that black-brown laddu that it started fuming heavily with fury! So dense was the smoke that I was literally dancing below the fire alarm with a dusting cloth in my hand to lessen it! When it was not helping, I closed the microwave's door with the miserable laddu inside it and opened all possible windows and doors in my house! Thankfully the alarm did not go off!
Despite these comical occurrences, my rosy image of a wooden house still remains to be as cozy as it was before, as they are warm unlike the concrete ones which can get icy cold! I now read a Ruskin Bond book besides a lit fireplace, on cold days sipping hot ginger chai, sometimes looking out of the large glass doors of the patio into the cold and cloudy weather hovering over the evergreen pine and fir trees, happily reliving my childhood imaginations and the charm of Shimla!
We finally decided upon a house and he moved there a few days prior to marriage to make it comfortable for me when I arrive. It was one of his first nights alone in this home when he was confronted by an unpleasant noise of a shaking door! Next morning he called me on Skype to tell me about the scary night. Beginning to suspect a haunting, just like in movies, we talked in detail about it. We concluded that instead of a spirit on the loose, it was one of the doors that was probably loose, shaking whenever a heavy physical activity, and not a paranormal activity, occurred in that wooden building. Despite knowing about it in advance, I got a real fright when it actually happened in my presence!
"Wake up! Did you hear that?" I nudged my husband until he moved and groaned "What!! what happened?". "Shhh! listen, do you hear something?" I said. Motionlessly, quietly and intently, we listened. A closed door in our house vibrated. It was brief but frequent. Our Indian experience was hinting us of an earthquake. But our bed was still. "Yes I hear a door shaking!" he confirmed. We continued to hear even more intently to make some sense of it all. None of us was getting out of bed to check on which door was suddenly shivering in the cold of the night and why, for both scare and sleep were overwhelming enough to confine us to our places! "Oh probably someone is walking on the floor above, lets go back to sleep now" he said while yawning after having applied some reasoning in a drowsy state. "Who is walking at this time!!!" I revolted, not at all satisfied with his reasoning! "You live in a wooden house now!" he said and dozed off! After some confusion, I calmed myself by finally recalling that it had happened before without any harm and dozed off myself.
This wasn't the only incidence when our house had suddenly gone alive! There was a night when sounds were so peculiar that I literally forced my husband to check out the whole house, with me cowering behind him, fearing a break in!!! The sounds we hear are all possible noises wooden surfaces could make- footsteps, thuds, knocking, scratching! In fact, I know a lot about my neighbors from these sounds that I hear rather than having met them personally!
A lady on a floor above wears high heels, for her heels can be heard very distinctly trotting in a wooden corridor between 11 am to 1 pm. Her confident trotting reminds me of the girls from the novel 'The Devil wears Prada'. I have never met her though! A man with a naturally heavy bass voice lives just below and can be heard from anywhere in my house when he speaks over phone in his patio! He works from home. He is probably an insomniac or a workaholic, for muffles of his bass laden voice, which totally negate the theory of wood being a noise insulator, can be heard till very late in night! I have never met him either! A couple with a baby live next door with whom we share a wall. The wife probably exercises before lunch for a dampened energetic music plays from behind this wall, repeating everyday! I have never met them too! The other side of my house is shared by a middle aged Indian family, whom I saw while they shifted in, but confirmation happened only when I heard them seeing off their guests in Hindi. Despite this, I have never met them! A deep contrast to what I experienced in India!
Indians know about their neighbors right from day one! It begins by offering for help while shifting in, and sometimes hot chai if lucky! Even the great Ambuja cement in their walls lacks the courage to limit the might of an even greater Indian curiosity! It cannot be quenched by just eavesdropping, for their ears are too accustomed to hearing ginger being squashed in a mortar for chai, a mixer thundering, a cooker whistling or a Kaamwaali (a female maid) ringing a bell, that they can precisely tell at which time it will happen! Moreover, concrete does not vibrate like wood to tell them where their neighbor is standing right now. Why trouble eavesdropping then when they can know everything about their neighbors, their parents, uncles, great grand uncles or distantly related nephews directly from them!! And for something which they can not know directly despite various attempts, the Kaamwaali comes in handy! But there is always someone next door to talk to if feeling alone in India. No doubt why neighboring granny's quickly become best friends to talk about old-age pains or grandchildren or bitch about the oh so unfair doings of their daughter-in-laws! One just needs to peep out of the window or ring a bell for the neighborhood is always alive!
If it is India and a concrete house is vibrating, its occupants know for sure that an earthquake has hit the Indian subcontinent! Everyone rushes out immediately and wait until the tremors subside. But how can one tell when a wooden house is vibrating, it is actually because of an earthquake and not due to a large muscular maintenance man running after his dog in the building! My husband for once did not have an answer to my question, for he lacked an experience in this regard. Other questions followed, like what happens if important documents like passports, college degrees, or credit cards of a foreign national get destroyed in a natural calamity in a country not his motherland! Probably a copy of them can be requested, but he wasn't sure. I panicked! Since then I keep a satchel handy containing important documents in case I have to rush out immediately! I did not know whether there was anyone else freaking out similarly until I met a Punjabi friend of mine this week! She always keeps her car keys handy in case she has to run out in emergency!
Concrete houses have another advantage over their wooden counterparts - they do not catch fire as easily as the latter. Not even a day goes by here that a fire brigade's siren is not heard wailing loudly all its way to somewhere. Sometimes even thrice a day for the fire alarms are so sensitive that they go off even if the source of the smoke is not an actual fire! Thankfully my alarm has never gone off false-fully. My fears were almost realized when a little brown 'laddu' (a famous Indian sweet) burst in my microwave. It had gone black in its core with anger of being heated for longer than necessary. Such was the wrath of that black-brown laddu that it started fuming heavily with fury! So dense was the smoke that I was literally dancing below the fire alarm with a dusting cloth in my hand to lessen it! When it was not helping, I closed the microwave's door with the miserable laddu inside it and opened all possible windows and doors in my house! Thankfully the alarm did not go off!
Despite these comical occurrences, my rosy image of a wooden house still remains to be as cozy as it was before, as they are warm unlike the concrete ones which can get icy cold! I now read a Ruskin Bond book besides a lit fireplace, on cold days sipping hot ginger chai, sometimes looking out of the large glass doors of the patio into the cold and cloudy weather hovering over the evergreen pine and fir trees, happily reliving my childhood imaginations and the charm of Shimla!
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