MEMOIR
My Home Is No More
Loss of place can leave you unmoored
I grew up in a factory township. It was a sprawling place and contained within itself everything that one needed to live a life. There was our school, the hospital, libraries, sports club, movie theaters, a market, a railway station and a bus route, a river, several playgrounds and all the wilderness to fill a child’s world, everything within a 20 minute walk from each other.
There was the factory as well, though it didn’t really figure in our calculations growing up. It was just a place our fathers (and a few mothers) went to and back a few times a day (they would come home for lunch — remember everything was a short walk). Those times were regulated by the siren that could be heard throughout the township. It marked the starts and ends of the work shifts, as well as mealtimes for the different shifts (it was a chemical factory with continuous production, so all 3 shifts needed to be manned). But for us, it was no different from a clock striking the hours. Having lived here all my known life, I never wondered why these ‘hours’ were oddly specific times like 7:35, 12:25, 4:25.
The market area was called the Gate. And it took me a long time to realize that this was because it was situated just outside the factory gate.
