“It isn’t Cruz’s fault that the house has a history.” I still remembered him telling us how, hundreds of years ago, an old monk, Saint Ignatius, traveled miles in search of the seven items of the Catholic communion service that he and his shipwrecked family had carried from Spain and found the final one, the crucifix, on our land. There he hid his treasure, built a hut for himself, and called it No. 7. “He believed that the site was sacred.” (Excerpt from No.7: They’re Calling)
My earliest memories, revolve around a church, or rather a real estate compound, Girjapara, built around an old church—girja—a legacy left by the British Raj. One of the bungalows in the enclosure was my childhood home.
The church was in ruins when I was born and little remained of its original architecture, other than a few dilapidated walls and a portal overgrown with weeds and vines. I loved how they sang with the wind and the rain and leaned into the sunshine, letting birdsong echo within.
A dreamer with a vivid imagination, I envisioned what the church looked like in its heyday with a steeple and corpse windows and trees soaring upward in feathery arches. But what really fascinated me was the cemetery, and sometimes I woke up at dawn only to I sneak in and take a stroll through it.
It was only on the other side of our garden fence yet felt strangely populated at that hour with people I could not see. I wondered if all those graves peeking out from under the unkempt grass had anything to do with it. Each one looked like it had a story to tell.
I was curious to learn about the people who lay in the graves, what they were called, what they were like, if they lived and died in the town, or came from afar. But there was no way to find out. Their gravestones were too dark to read, all except one that basked in the sun away from the trees, clad in one green hue. It had an interesting symbol engraved on it—a sailing ship.
I was obsessed with it. It gave me real food for thought, especially as at that point in time, I loved reading certain classics—The Swiss Family Robinson, Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey—and the word “shipwrecked,” came up again and again.
Nandita Author 