There is always an excitement in moving to a new place and new home. And if the place has a history it makes the experience of living there truly special.
I lived in a 150 year old house in a small town in India. And for once, our home address was really neat:
Woodall's,
Longwood,
Shimla -1
It lacked the house number, lane, colony name and all that is expected from an address.
All old residents told us the story of the house. It had been the home of a British officer and then when India got independence, it became the IG’s bunglow. The opening scene of a hindi movie(Kudrat) featuring Hema Malini and Rajesh Khanna(Indian movie stars) had also been shot in that house. Over time it lost it glamour and it became the residence of ordinary people. It was also split into two houses.
It was a house with large rooms, false ceilings and skylights(that sometimes leaked in the rainy season). The doors were large with brass handles and there were fire places in all rooms. the house had a coal house too.
Its name was an amusement in itself. A sign hung up by some wire on a tree read Woodall's. People assumed(and were probably correct) that it would have been the house of a Mr. Woodall or Col Woodall. But that never seemed to be the correct. Afterall, the other houses were Westwood, Silver Craig, Green Gates, Fair Holme, and I am sure there never existed a Mr. Green Gates or a Col Westwood. The postman over time had names it in its own way, so Woodall's became Woodhall cottage most of the time, and one day it became Budhall cottage.
There was a well at about 5 minutes walk from the house. And it was in the middle of trees away from the road and surrounded by a lot of greenery. Our maid's daughter was once told me that in olden times people used to be hung in that well before India became a free country, and I was aways too scared to go around that place along.
One of the first things that I saw was the dining room cupboard where my mom kept all the crockery. And someone(probably a girl like me) who had lived in the house at some point of time, had signed her name, her school's name and the year on the inner side of the door, and other children who had lived in that house later had done that too. I promptly looked for some chalk and did the same.
All these years, I wondered if anyone had opened the cupboard and seen those marks and followed suit.
