Between a house and a Home

“Anju stood for a long while before the newly built house, as though it were something that might speak if he waited long enough.

A year of his life was standing there.

Twelve months of dust in his lungs, cracks in his palms, heat pressed into his bones. Brick by brick, the building had risen from bare earth under the weight of many hands, but Anju’s had been there from the first pale morning to the last thinning light of evening. He had watched the foundation swallow stone after stone. He had followed the slow climbing of the walls. He had felt the roof close over the space like a held breath.

The other laborers had come and gone, pulled away by illness, new contracts, or simple exhaustion. But Anju remained. He always arrived before the sun had properly woken and left when the day had already surrendered to night. Even now, he could almost smell the cement on his skin.

Only the finishing touches were left—doors, fans, bits of furniture. The body of the house was complete. It waited, empty and echoing, for life.

That afternoon, the contractor had come. His voice had been low, stripped of its usual sharpness.

“The owner built this house for his old parents,” he said. “But they were killed in a road accident. Both of them. He has gone back to his village. No one knows when he’ll return. Until then, Anju… this place is in your care.”

Anju had nodded. Nothing more. Grief that did not belong to him still found a way to sit in his chest.

A few days later, grief found him too.

The river had swollen. The village had drowned. The thin mud walls of his home, the narrow door, the corner where his son slept—everything had been swallowed and carried away. Even the place where Anjana used to light the evening lamp was gone.

There was nothing left to return to.

By evening, Anjana and their ten-year-old son Abhijay arrived in the city. They carried no furniture. Only a small cloth bag. And the quiet that follows loss.

They stood before Anju. Then they stepped into the unfinished house.

In that moment, the building changed.

It was no longer only cement and brick.

It became shelter.

A borrowed roof.

A fragile pause from falling.

Dusk moved gently across the sky. Pale blue thinned into tired orange. The wind carried a hint of winter, but Anju felt a colder unease inside himself. He stood before the house, eyes fixed on its walls, while his thoughts wandered far beyond them.

Abhijay came to him, slid his small hand into his father’s hardened one, and tilted his face upward.

“Papa… is this our new home? It’s so big. Bigger than our village house. Will we live here now?”

Anju lifted him. The boy was lighter than memory. Children always are, until life quietly begins placing its weight inside them.

A faint smile reached Anju’s lips, uncertain, unfinished.

“Yes, son. We’ll stay here until the owner returns. But this is not our home.”

Abhijay’s forehead creased.

“Why not? Mummy says you built this house. You and the other workers. You worked day and night. Then isn’t it ours too?”

Anju did not answer at once. He looked at the child’s face—so open, so certain that effort must lead to belonging.

“No,” he said finally, gently. “We only joined bricks and sand. We gave our sweat. But someone else paid the money. The land is his. So the house is his. We are laborers. We build houses. We do not own them.”

Abhijay was quiet. Then he said, softly but firmly, “But Mummy says a home isn’t made of bricks. It needs people. Feelings. Belonging. Without family, it’s only a house. A home happens when people live together. And we are together… and that uncle is alone now.”

Something shifted in Anju’s chest.

He met his son’s eyes and found no childishness there.

Only truth.

“Your mother is right,” he said. “A home isn’t walls. But the world runs on something else. Today, even homes are bought with money. We have family, but no money. And those who have money… often no longer have family.”

His gaze drifted back to the silent structure.

“For him, it may be easy to turn this house into a home. For us, building a home of our own is like a dream we walk past every day.

“We build houses, but not for ourselves.

We give our labor, but the ownership belongs elsewhere.

We have family… but no roof that is ours.”

He lowered Abhijay to the ground.

The boy did not speak. He stood still, as if something invisible and heavy had just been placed into his small hands.

Perhaps this was the first lesson no school would ever teach him.

Night gathered.

From inside, Anjana called, “The food is getting cold.”

Anju drew a slow breath, took his son’s hand, and walked in.

That house—which carried someone else’s name—had, for one evening, become a home.

Perhaps only for a few days.

Perhaps only until the owner returned.

“Every day, we raise structures in this world.

Walls. Pillars. Roofs. Paint.

But a home is not built of walls.

A home is built of relationships.

Of belonging.

Of laughter that finds its way into corners.

A home is built when a door opens and someone says,

‘I was waiting for you.’

And those who possess everything, yet do not possess this—

They are only owners of houses.

Not of homes.”

Review: This story draws the readers into the life of a construction worker. This is a heart-rending story about a labourer, who toils hard to build a house with cement for the owner but his own home has mud walls. The narrative style of this story tugs at the heartstrings when the protagonist who is a labourer explains to his son about the meaning of a house and a home.

The author renders this story in a coherent way. This is a story that will linger in the mind of the readers.