Dashback

I was jus reading a friend's blog and suddenly I was reminded of a very funny memory. In 1995, my parents had just purchased a new HDB apartment in Singapore. After living in shared rented apartments for few years, we finally were gonna have our own house. My dad had selected this place, it was totally empty and unrenovated.Pretty much in the same state as how it was whn it was first built cos no one had actually lived in that house. It was owned by a person who was not of good mental health who had not even bothered to ever unlock the house. My dad liked the place because of that, he felt that would give us the chance to renovate it as we wanted. Plus with out shoe string budget, most of the renovated houses were out of our league.

Anyways, we had already kinda moved into one bedroom room while the renovation of the kitchen and other rooms was still going on, as we had to vacate our previous house. We had to cook and sleep in the same room. The renovation lasted for about a week. One day while my mom was cooking, my brother suddenly asked "Amma, is dad the Raja (King) of this house?"

My mom laughed, surprised at such a wierd question, "Yes beta, he is..."

My brother continued "He must be a very poor Raja, the whole royal family is living in one room and the Rani (Queen) is doing the cooking."

I am still not sure why my brother ever said that, I dont think he knew wat he was saying. I remember we all laughed like crazy that day, we kept repeating his sentence. I think that day we were not just laughing at my brother's innocence and but also at our fate, where it had brought us. But over the years, the joke remained, rather the 'royal family' remained. Even now my mom n I sometimes joke about the 'poor Raja' and 'royal family living in one room'. How we struggled thru our initial years in Singapore, How we managed to laugh thru most of those times, I guess no one knows that better than us. While some memories are better locked inside the closet to be forgotten, there are some others that should always be remembered. While we have forgotten most of the hardships we went thru, I think we will never forget laughing our guts out that day.