Those Mud Walls

“It looks smaller than I had imagined,” I muttered. My imagination of 20 years had deceived me; and it was difficult to digest the fact -- all these years I had dreamt about it, with vivid images of my happy childhood, or should I say pampered childhood; all of that had shattered in a second. I was a bit disappointed, but nevertheless happy. It wasn’t looking good either: there was a melancholy in the dilapidated wooden structure and staircase, mud walls and cemented floor, and the tinted rooftop. The big plastic bucket wasn’t there, in which I used to throw my perfumed eraser, and spend hours in retrieving it, with my short slender arms, like the way you search treasure in the deep, vast ocean. I was small, merely six or seven years old -- the only child, so this was my favourite pastime. Spending hours in silly things. The mud walls of my room were intact; they weren’t chipped unlike the walls of other rooms. Licking those mud walls was my secret activity; so many times I was chided for that, but cleverly, I would sneak out, when no one was around, to lick it. I have always loved the petrichor fragrance, and those mud walls were my easiest gateway to heaven. This time, those walls didn’t recognise me, and I too didn’t lick them. We were strangers, they couldn’t recognise me, and my eyes full of tears were still in daze to acknowledge the fact that my imagination had deceived me. When I had left the house, I was a kid. Those humble walls, the house... they appeared bigger to me, they were warm to me. But today I have grown up, and they looked smaller and were cold to me. After all, I had abandoned them on the fateful June 30, 1990.