Sankriti

That's the entrance door to my house. Its an old house with two floors and we rent only the upstairs. It wasn't designed as two houses so the entrance door just sits at the top step on the dog-leg stair. We have to lock and un-lock it standing one step down and I always feel tall when I stand at my door talking to someone standing just outside :)

The other great thing about this is that whoever rents the upstairs gets access to the terrace. Those are the steps leading up to our terrace where we sometimes have weekly carpentry classes and I sometimes skip (I swear). Currently, though, since the temperature in Madras is hitting 40 degrees every afternoon, John and I have been taking turns twice a day to go up and splash some water all over the terrace to make our lives just a bit more bearable in the baking heat.

The house is called Sankriti, named by the owner who is my grand uncle and here's the other fascinating thing about this upstairs part of the house. It has only ever been let out on rent four times. Each time the tenants have been a newly married couple. The first couple had only one child, a daughter called Anu.  A few years after they vacated, my parents moved here as soon as they were married. They stayed here for five years and no, I wasn't born here, just missed it, in fact, but I am an only child.

It then lay vacant for many years till Anu got married and moved in. They stayed for quite a long while and had two kids. When the kids grew up and the house was not quite enough space for them they moved out. A few years later I moved in the day I got married. It was such a cool story when I heard it back then that I had to move here and only here.