By Girija Madhavan
I have lived in many houses abroad before returning to settle down in my hometown of Mysuru in 1995. Each was a temporary home, a haven, claiming a place in my memories and sentiment; some in alien land and others in friendlier ambiance. But the house that remains in my mind as a dream-like experience, wreathed in little mysteries, is the one I lived in for just twenty days, in a dusty lane or “Hutung” in the heart of Peking (now Beijing). The house was just number “7” on a lane named “Kung Yuan Hsi Chieh”. It branched off the Chang’an Avenue (Everlasting Peace) which cuts through the heart of the city, past the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Sent to the Indian Embassy in Peking in 1968, my husband, seven-year-old son and I travelled there via Hong Kong. A train took us to the border of the People’s Republic of China. We crossed from Lowu on the Hong Kong side, to Shumchun in China, on foot. The country was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, a contrast to Hong Kong which was then a flourishing British Crown Colony.
