Read this poem about spider webs and the concept of home the day I was clearing cobwebs that festoon my front door. Earlier while at the gym the same day I was reading Tagore's Glimpses of Bengal where he says this of nature and man:
Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow and darkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, his works, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towards posterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes the length of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has not time to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names are forgotten!
A home is not a monument for posterity. It is ephemeral as the spider-web just a little different time-scale. My grand-aunt used to live in a beautiful home as part of a joint family. Her husband and his three brothers had contributed to building it. A widowed sister had arrived at some point and found shelter for herself and her two children. The home overlooked a pond and had plenty of natural light. Everything was clean and polished to a high-gloss - wood, granite, brass and marble. Over the years, her husband, his brothers, their wives and the widowed sister all died.
There was a point when my grand-aunt lived their alone - everyone else had either left to other cities and countries or deceased. She was no longer able to upkeep the place even with a lot of help. Her daughter decided this way of life was not viable and took the mother to live with her. My grand-aunt's dying wish was for the house to be taken care of - not abandoned. A few years ago it was demolished to make may for an apartment building. So much like a spider-web I swiped away from my door - like it never existed. It had been a monument in its own way - a testament to the grit of four refugee brothers who did what it took to give their families a decent life, a home to call their own. But as Tagore says, the fate of monuments is to crumble - and not everyone is kind like the little girl who did not touch the cobweb in her bicycle.
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