I wanted to buy a house.
I wanted to buy that house since I was young.
Why? I am not sure.
Maybe to boast that it was mine.
Or may be to achieve a sense of accomplishment.
I never had that cash.
Not that I was poor.
Just that priorities took over,
or the passion was missing.
But even a laid back guy has dreams.
Even now in my 70s, I still don't have the house.
I have paid for the bills.
I went out on parties with colleagues.
I was even saving a bit.
And then spending that.
I could say NO to none.
I paid for books of a few children at an orphanage.
I did that for years.
I took my parents for a trip across the country.
Helped my sister's husband set up his business.
Bought expensive gifts for relatives and acquaintances on their birthdays and weddings.
Even danced in them.
I always had nice smartphones.
I dressed well.
Nice jeans, smart Ts, branded shirts and shoes.
But that house seemed far from sight.
I talked to people about property.
Even went ahead and made research on rates.
Land on mountains are comparatively cheaper.
I never understood why.
What beats watching the sky while sunset behind the hills.
What beats the view of a fall from your balcony.
What could possibly beat the sound of stream running behind your kitchen.
Your fireplace, where you write some poem.
Your lawn which actually never ends.
But its all much cheaper than flats in a crowded metropolitan.
May be I am too stupid to understand.
But even then I could not get close to fulfilling this dream.
I was getting older. Mid 30s and 40s.
I was now tired always.
Not that I was a special case.
Every person in this age looks tired to me.
I never thought I would be like them.
But actually you are bound to be at your boring best at this age.
You know what?
I realized; even if I am not, my mirror shows me a struggler.
I haven't done anything extraordinary.
50s and 60s.
I thought there was a filter on all of the colors at this age.
A white filter that actually took off a lot from the blues and the yellows and the greens...
I have now become stable career wise.
Not frequent job changes.
A rented place nearby office.
Lazy like a sloth.
Earning good enough money and spending them on a few international tours.
What fun???
Mom and dad are dead.
My sister doesn't call me any more.
Relatives? They are always the question mark...
Friends are there always.
But they keep changing with place.
I took gifts for their children.
They say hello and go away.
Puberty is such an age when you never can associate with 50 year olds.
Our young days is what I always thought about.
I see young people and start thinking about mine.
Those days when I was handsome.
Playing all sorts of sports.
Hanging around with friends.
Our first encounters with some or the other form of addiction.
Going for movies and long bike rides.
Enjoying the female attention.
Those fights and suspensions.
All that funny shit we used to do.
And then if we are un/lucky enough to have long lives....
I was and got into my 70s.
I am like a zombie now.
It hurts when I walk.
I always had problems in my knees and now its like hell.
I have a wheelchair.
Those are my legs.
I have enough money now to buy that house.
I even called up a friend and asked him to talk about this property.
He did and I have actually a good deal now.
How much can I depend on my paid help.
How do I goto a bank?
How do I buy the warmers?
How do I goto a nearby station?
Getting a home build for myself on a mountain is out of ideas now.
If I ever got my own family...
My own wife, my own children...
Things would have been different.
I didn't marry.
I couldn't.
Not that I didn't want to, but situations...
If I had my own family..
May be I already would have had a house.
If not my dream house on the mountains, at least an ugly flat in a metropolitan.
I never thought that walls make a home.
I just think people do.
I believed that.
Many a times I pushed my wheelchair to kilometers on the road towards those mountains.
The other day, I woke up in hospitals.
Many a nights when i have tried to flee..
The cops brought me back home.
Sometimes I've even been robbed and beaten.
The neighbors are tired of my crying throughout the day.
Children fear me.
They say I am some sort of a psychotically unbalanced old man.
Why don't they understand that I am trying to find that lost dream.
May be when I reach that home..
I have a beautiful wife waiting nearby the fireplace.
My two little boys playing in the lawn and their paper planes flying towards the fall.
My lovely girl building a mud house behind the kitchen, near the stream.
My mom and dad talking to each other in the balcony.
Tomorrow I am going away.
Going to a home away from this place.
A home that I paid for with all my savings.
A home that I paid for to take care of me.
An old age home.
