Writing 101, Day 17: Things we leave behind

Writing 101, Day 17: Mine your own material or : Things we leave behind: Tell us about a time you’ve left an object, place,person, or even an idea behind_ and had to move on.

As I couldn’t mine my material, for there wasn’t much I wanted to write about. I  therefore chose to write about memories of a place we left behind, not because it was our wish to do so, but cruel  fate  ordained it for us.

I had just turned twelve when everything was going wrong, the place we loved the most, turned its back on us, it was no longer feasible to hold on to it.

My eldest brother and my mom decided it was time for us to leave Rawalpindi and go to my parents original country Bangladesh.

It was not only the city, but the house, the garden, the three majestic Eucalyptus trees we had to say goodbye to. None of these things belonged to us, we were tenants, but we  loved them and wanted to stay there  forever.

Our time was up, memories of that city, the house , the garden , the trees is still fresh in my mind,as if it was only yesterday we played, we walked all around the house, went to the nearby race course to watch the horse races and were  rooting for our gardener cum jockey’s white horse.In the beginning it was  leading the pack and suddenly  we saw all the other horses were leaping forward, and our favorite horse came last.

Disappointment was written all over our faces, when the gardener came to work next morning. I had too many questions he had to answer, he took the easy way out. It was not his fault, the owner instructed him to slow down. He tried to make it simple for me, I was a kid who refused to understand that the owner would do such a thing. These things although in the past brings back memories of our joyful days, and joy is always followed by sorrow. This unfortunately is the fact of life!

 

………………………..:)

 

DP Daily Prompt: Our House

Our house oh how I miss it. It was a bungalow. It had stables on one side. There was a separate kitchen on the other side. The front lawn was very long. There were three Eucalyptus trees at the far end of the lawn. We had a gardener who planted a variety of flowers.

He was an artist in my mind. He planted the short  flower plants in the front and the plants were gradually taller as they were farther from the house. I had to pick flowers almost every day because my teacher wanted me to take them for her.

Our gardener was very strict about his plants,he wanted us to be gentle when we picked flowers. Every day after school,he’d catch me and showed exactly where I picked the flowers from.He always threatened he’ll tell my Dad.

We had a long veranda,it was part of the house.

We had a hedge on the side which hid the house from the left where the stables were.

We had two gates ,between the house and the garden we had a long passage which extended from one gate to the next. It was covered with small red stones.

We had twelve rooms in the house. Four were large and eight were small. My parents had one large room. My older sister took possession of one, she claimed she has to have a large one to entertain her friends.

We younger ones were given one bedroom. The fourth large one was our drawing room AKA living room.

There were four bathrooms for us. We always used our parents bathroom, but were caught once by Dad, who warned us to stay away from their bathroom. I was allowed to use the bathroom because my parents always made me do chores. They thought I was the most reliable.

It didn’t smell bad it was okay.

It did sound like there were twelve of us. No it couldn’t sound like a library.

We played outdoors, when we came in we were quiet. All our energy was spent running around outdoors. The only time we were noisy was when we played Monopoly, my eldest brother had the bank beside him . I caught him a few times when he stole the fake money. He was not good at strategy, he had to pay up when he landed on the houses belonging to one of us.

My mother could hear us from the kitchen which was outside. She said I made the most noise so she’d call me  into the kitchen, to bring the noise level down.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/prompt-our-house/