The house

My dad had bought a plot of land in Bhubaneswar when we were kids, but he never had the chance to build a house on it. When he was about to retire, he decided to build on that plot. After spending most of his adult life working and raising two kids, he hardly had any money saved. So he took a loan of Rs. 1.5 lakh — a meagre sum even in those days. My brother and I were still looking for jobs at the time, so he gave us the task of building the house within that amount.

The process began. It was very close to my heart because this was what I had studied in college. The estimates I came up with weren’t looking good — they went beyond our budget. So we became ruthless in cutting costs. We removed anything that could be considered remotely fancy. A full structural beam-and-column construction was out; instead, we went with a stone and brick foundation just strong enough to support a two-storeyed house, even though the second floor wouldn’t be built any time soon. Marble or tiled flooring was scrapped in favor of bare cement floors. Wooden door/window frames were too expensive, so my brother worked with a local welder to fabricate door and window frames from L-shaped steel angles. Galvanized plumbing pipes were replaced with PVC to cut costs. The kitchen counter was fitted with plain, inexpensive Cuddapah stone slabs, which were half the price of concrete slabs. The walls were painted with lime and dye instead of fancy latex paints.

In the end, the house got fully built and we moved in.

Later, both of us brothers moved away and settled elsewhere. As the years passed, my parents grew too old to live by themselves. My dad sold the house and moved to Bengaluru. I visited Bhubaneswar many times after that, but I never went to see the house; I knew it would make me sad. Last year, I finally gathered the courage to go. When I stood in front of it, I couldn’t recognize it at all. The house had been modified beyond recognition. I felt emotional, and for a moment I wondered if I was standing in front of the wrong house. I looked closely at the plot number on the gate — 145, Paika Nagar. It was the same plot on which our house once stood, but it was no longer the house my brother and I had built, counting every brick, every bag of cement, and every rod of steel.