Bohemia Village Voice

Describe your perfect house

The teacher said ‘Class begin,’ and the little girl shut her eyes tightly …

She was already in a far-away place. Far from the thoughts of her class mates as her teacher watched, wondering why this child spent her life day-dreaming.

However, this time the girl was really thinking about the title of the story. She looked around her ‘house’ seeing them, feeling their needs and ‘talking’ to them in a way that no-one would understand. She had to write fast to catch up.

However, her story was never told until now.

Years later, she began to write a poem as Puss played with her pen. She called it “Tiger in my living room – not just a tiger in my head.” Puss looked like he approved, even if her father hadn’t when all those years ago he had screwed up her story and thrown it in the bin, telling her she had to start again and write about pretty rooms and babies. Getting off of the hammock, she just had time to feed Puss’s family – they usually dropped by at this time for dinner, easier than hunting for it, she guessed. She hoped they wouldn’t be late because she had to leave soon to make the long drive to the airport to meet her father on his first visit to India. She hadn’t told him about Puss and his family, he might think she had an overactive imagination or whatever it was he said to her all those years before.