As somebody who has moved houses more than thrice in the entirety of my life, I can tell you confidently that neighbours come as a blessing or the absolute opposite. Although, when I do count my blessings, I am eternally grateful that I’ve always had neighbours that were more than just people next door.
Some lessons that I learnt about being family, showing up when it’s most needed and love are from the people I’ve grown up with, people who were next door.
So, let me walk you through why I repeat over and over that family does not mean blood.
It is the same family that carried when I was a baby that still sends me presents 20 years later on my birthday, it is their face that lights up when they see me parking in front of their gate with a no parking sign. I’ve been told numerous times that the first thing I’d do when I wake up as a two-year-old was run right across the street straight into uncle’s arms. He’s 86 now, still very charming and aunty passed away last year but the tales that my mother still tells feels more than just a memory.
While I moved into the next house and the following one, I made friends that are the best parts of my childhood. Some I still talk to, some I lost touch with before smartphones were a thing, but when I look back, I remember every how I got bitten by the small boy who lived on the ground floor, I remember learning to dance to bole chudiyaan, some steps I may remember now too, I remember celebrating Dusshera and Diwali and I remember my heart not having one care in the world.
I remember the first broken heart I had was over a neighbour, I was a mere 14 and he was 15. I remember feeling like a broken heart was the worst thing to have ever existed, it made me bitter. But like all else, you outgrow the painful things and I listened to so much of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘What doesn’t kill you’, that I can recite the lyrics like a poem even now. What I didn’t know then, was that was probably something I’d look back at with so much love. Let me warn you, nothing will hurt like your first heartbreak. Fast forward to now, he’s a very close friend and maybe someone that transgressed the boundary from a friend to family.
Moving on to the next house, the house that I have lived in all my life, my beautiful home, my body. In a love letter to you, I’d say, thank you for healing all the scarped knees, But leaving the scar when from when I fell on the first day at school. For growing through the years, through the people and the experiences. For carrying me this far, for taking the steps that are the hardest and for loving me on days I couldn’t. For the tears and the laughs and the crazy teenage hormones Thank you for holding it all in, blood, guts, bones and for tying them together and for the beating heart.
Thank you for this beating heart that beats for all the people that have come and gone, that I’ve loved and lost and that will every day in my memory.
To all the those who are neighbours and have neighbours, you don’t know what part you play and if you’re lucky enough, one day, someone may write about it.
No Comments
Leave a comment Cancel