Pens and Pages

I was brought up in a different house, not the one I currently live in. The new house, I know it from only a couple of years ago. The old one, it was what I called home. Even when I dream now I see myself in the old house. It was cozy and it gave a comfort my new house could never give. The Sundays were perfect there. My home used to smell of marigolds when I would go by the room where the idols of Lord Krishna was kept adorned with flowers and a censer containing a burning incense spreading its fragrance in the entire room. Mother would be in the kitchen cooking my favourite dal and the smell of the chicken curry being stirred would make me hungry and eager for lunch. The parlour would have the TV on being watched by Dad sipping a cup of Darjeeling tea just before lunch, a peculiar habit. The smell of the tea would somehow remind me of a beautiful sunrise on a faraway field sans people but birds and cattle. And my room would smell of nothing else but books; there were five bookshel...