The ghosts in our house

The house that is now ours is full of stories of the people who lived there before us.
There's Kaki, to whom the house belonged and who I always suspect has a soft corner for my Mian-who she calls her Panditji. There are their relatives, visitors, and the several people who worked on this land.

But the stories I hear most often are of the couple who rented before us. I hear of their ambitous garden, of how they imported the compost all the way from Pant Nagar, of how they were scared of the rural setting, of how they lit up the orchard every night to scare the darkness everyday.
And I don't just hear the stories, they crop up in our lives. They planted sunflowers, and gladioli, and lilies- all of which are now naturalised here. They erected a creaky bird feeder which scared the birds and that I now -in a most prosaic fashion- dry laundry on. They read Mills and Boons, and I now dip into the two books they left behind. They began to painstakingly stencil the walls of their house before giving up and laughingly painting a huge flower on a part of the last wall they worked on.

And this makes me wonder about the stories we are creating. Our black thumbs, the solar cooker, the way we take our trash all the way to Haldwani, these things will perhaps be talked about. But I hope that somewhere in those stories is also mention of our coffee mornings, of how Mian and I stand on the porch wrapped around each other and look at the sky. I hope their are stories of how he brings the water and does all the heavy work. I hope there are stories of the meals we make, of our little Bhaloo. I do hope that some of this joy lingers in the house.