When I was around eight years old we rented a new house in a neighbourhood of Paschim Vihar I do not remember. It was a yellow house with yellow walls outside and yellow walls inside. The walls were the colour of depression and darkness, the colour of the cheapest paint available in the market.
I initially liked the house because it had two floors. None of the places we had lived in before had two floors. It was like a movie to me. In all the American shows I used to watch, houses always had two floors. I felt like I could have my own space, and that little treat countered the sombre shadow of the yellow walls.
I do not know if I found the house depressing because of the above reasons, or because of the hopeless atmosphere in my family. My mom would work either in the kitchen all day, or work on keeping the house clean. Watching her do the same thing over and over again to a house that did not treat her well added to the despair.
Initially when we moved in during the heat of the summer, we hadn’t installed any air conditioner. The humid heat contributed to the yellow darkness. In one room there was the dreaded black darkness. The lights did not function, and the roof used that as an opportunity to throw as many droplets of water as it could to the bed. These invisible drops and puddles were felt heavily by our bodies, who tried to fight against them.
Puddles would also sneak into this house in the form of drain water. The ground floor had trouble guarding against them, and it became a daily task for my mom to get rid of both the wet and its smell. Each time she would clean them up, her sweat would follow a trail down her face and fall to the floor. This way the puddles made sure they stayed alive.
Every day, we hoped that the roof would hold some of the water in its arms. Every day, we hoped that the malevolence of the dirty water would stop greeting us. Every day was filled with the same despair, the same yellow darkness that the puddles reflected.
