(Year 2008; Emmadee's daughter narrates.)
I was born in a full family financial crisis. I've had a happy childhood though. I lived in a house where during heavy rains, four persons squeezed up in a medium sized bed holding the mattress from each side in case it got drenched like all the other furniture had - fortunately there weren't much - in the rain water that had accumulated and reached knee length. My house was made up of metal sheets and wood and only one room has two concrete walls. I have no right to call it my house in fact, it was Dhananjay's house.
The house was pretty small and it shocks me when my mother says that before I was born she had to share the house with another family. Why did she have to share her father's house? Because the other family was paying rent and she was not. It was a house that when storms came, it did not matter whether you were in or out of the house. Where during rain seasons, you moved from one room to the other with a towel over your head. You must certainly be thinking that it was miserable, how dare I say that my childhood was a happy one?
Well, it indeed was. The memories created and things that happened are mine, no one else has had such a childhood. I have learned to laugh through my difficulties. I have learned to be strong like my mother. At the age of 5, there I was, on that one medium sized bed, with my 9 year old brother, and my parents, feeling cold, trembling like a leaf, yet enjoying the rain through the big wooden window.
