Staying grounded

The old mosaic floor tiles in my house have annoyed me. They have bared the friction for over three decades, and are way beyond their tenure with very visible cavities in the most evident places; like the one right in the middle of the living room or the one next to the sofa. They have lost their shine and charm, growing darker and out of fashion as they withered through the test of time. It embarrasses me when guests during conversations notice it, stopping for just a jiffy, their eyes narrowing to clarify what they had just seen, and then continuing to talk, as their eyes returned to their original shapes and sizes. Some guests are discrete, dropping subtle hints mentioning how the marbled floors of the rooms on the first floor were so beautifully laid, whereas there are others who are more direct; asking when we planned to change the flooring. I understand in a house that looks recently done up, the old withering mosaic floor tiles look archaic, a total mismatch. It was irritating still, when once in a while, my toe would feel the dent as I paced through the room wanting to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. The house was built by my father over thirty years ago. It was then a modest domicile; a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms, and one and a half baths. But dad had spent all of his life’s savings on it. The mosaic floors had been fashionable then and from old Polaroid pictures I gather that they didn’t look as bad; the floor did shine and add some character to the antique furniture that we owned then. But over the years the house has gone through several renovations. Shedding its initial modesty, now it is an elegant duplex with three large bedrooms and spacious baths, a study and beautiful balconies with roses and lilies. The flooring is of marble and granite and in other places of vitrified tiles. But for some reason the mosaic tiles in a part of the house, which hadn’t been pulled down during the renovations had stayed; reminding us of the days spent in the smaller house, when my brother and I shared a room, fought for space, when we all watched TV together, fighting for the remote and finally giving in to watch Pranoy Roy read the news at nine, and of times when we all sat together at the dinner table taking turns to talk about the day gone by; those were days when we seemed to have a lot of time for each other. I have now come to understand the meaning of dad’s silence when enquired about the reason for not stripping the floor off these mosaics. It’s a remnant from our earlier life that he wants to hold onto. For these tiles in many ways have kept us all, like they themselves have been for the last three decades, grounded.