Memories and new beginnings.

I was asked what I would save if my house ever burnt down.

That is a very loaded question because for me and my family, it is not just a tragic possibility, it was an actual tragedy. We were barely tots, cubs, kids. If you saw us now, you'd never think we were once a bunch of happy, dirty children with no inclination to vodka and "soft" drugs. (Vodka is a family inclination. We don't fight it. In fact we embrace it a bit too enthusiastically. We are closet Russians) That was when our house was razed to the ground by electricity. Before we were damaged by the world. That is why I don't habour kind feeling towards our national power providers.

So when the question came up, I had absolutely no idea what to say. I wasn't bitter or sad or even anything. The memory was like it happened to someone else a million years ago. Almost like something I watched on TV. I shrugged. We tried to save everything we could. We tried to save anything we could. You realise that some things do tend to change you for life. We don't talk about it. It never comes up in any kind of conversation. Some things are just never interesting anecdotes or ice breakers. When we talk about the past, we talk of everything else but that.

The changes were much deeper than I realised. I hardly ever leave lights on, any kind of spark sends me into a panic, I notice electricity meters inside people's houses and if I hear there's a fire that's broken out at the transformer, I hover out doors until I am sure the problem has been fixed. But not once do I carry anything out with me. Probably my phone and a book but never photos and shoes or my bed.

Strangely enough, when the house burnt down, we saved most of the photos, the curtains and my kid brother(our most important family belonging). Thanks to friendly neighbours. But something was lost in all of us that day. Life as we knew it changed. The fact that we don't talk about it at all. That changed. You can see a distinct difference between the "before" and "after" photos. The smiles were fewer. The dirt was less. Even the photos were fewer. Everything changed. And yet nothing changed. The world continued rotating around its axis. Everyone else was doing what they always did.

There are events that define your true friends. That define your true self. This, was one of those events in my parents' lives. We were too young to lose any friends. Children are resilient like that but for adults, things are a bit more complicated. When someone goes through tragedy, you generally sit around tweedling your thumbs because you have no idea what to do or say to make it better. That's how you lose friends. That's how they lost friends. But the ones that stayed, seem to have stayed forever.

That day is vivid in my mind like it happened yesterday. Unfortunately when I remember my childhood, that is what I remember. I remember the porridge, the construction workers, the clothes on the line, the clothes on my body, the weather, what time everyone reached.Amazingly I remember even specific times. Of course being the dramatic person I am, my memory is always in slow motion with background music, which made the memory more bearable with time.

But I guess if there is anything I learnt from that,it is that if I was to save anything, it's not the photos or the books or the curtains. I'd save the memories. Nothing but the memories. We can always recover the rest of the stuff. But once a memory is gone, nothing could ever bring it back. I never knew that then making that my earliest childhood memory.

But life has to move on and it did. We rebuilt, we rediscovered, we recovered, we hid and we came back. And life beyond the fence didn't stop moving.People still went to work and to school and to church. We still had to go to school and to work and to church. We still had to say hi and bye. We still had to eat, breath and sleep. Life was a new beginning every day. Regardless of the circumstances. Regardless of the tragedy. Dwelling on the past might have just hindered great things ahead.

The fire almost crushed my parents. There was a lot else going on and the fire wasn't out there making life easier. But from where I sit now; Maybe that fire was just out to make way for bigger and better things. I don't know, but I have to believe that fire had a purpose. I have to. The fire of new beginnings and old endings.