Fiction: An abandoned house in the neighbourhood becomes the site of three young people’s friendship
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On Sundays, I went to the Hospital with my shaving kit. I both dreaded and looked forward to this pilgrimage all week, though I’d been doing it for the last 12 years; ever since I’d graduated from college. Unlike Priya, I attended college from home, but when I graduated I had a job lined up in Bombay. My mother had asked that I stay back for a little while longer, only a couple of weeks until I got my certificates in the mail. But I never left.
It was the same cycle of emotions in the same order every week: fear, first. Then lethargy, complete and utter unwillingness to move. Followed by an irresistible need to move, unbearable restlessness till I got to the Hospital.
Before leaving I’d check the shaving kit to make sure it had the good Gillette in it, then I’d set out, taking the same route – walk down the street, pause on the corner from where the Red House was visible, then turn and go the other way, to the bus stop.
Only this morning, when I awoke, for the first time in 12 years, I didn’t immediately think about my pilgrimage to the Hospital. I thought about the slip...