Skeletons

 Skeleton. I just began to wonder what the effect would have been like if Barney Stinson had chosen to say 'skeleton' for forty minutes instead of the word 'moist'. 'Interesting' just doesn't seem to be the right word for it. 'Crazy' sounds better. 

Jokes aside, how many people know what the bones of a house are like? The very room you're sitting in right now, at some point of time, was nothing more than a dark grey room with rough surfaces, wires sticking out of every wall and no tiling. Just take a second and imagine your room without all the furniture, all the paint, all the appliances. Without the flooring. Seems bigger, doesn't it?

The funny part is, most people don't know what their room or house will have looked like in this stage. It's not that they don't know every time; some just choose to forget it. Many people will remember what their home looked like when it underwent a renovation and it's probably very similar- a war zone. Renovation or remodelling, however, are different from the actual construction of a home. 

One is a plastic surgery, while the other one is like watching something come into being. I've seen it in bits and pieces, so I have something akin to an idea here. We've all seen a building under construction, but rarely the finished product afterwards. What may have seemed a dingy, dark corner can get transformed into a well-lit nook in a lively home. Metamorphosis never seemed a truer word to describe this. 

Even the biggest and grandest hotels were nothing more than skeletons of concrete once upon a time. First, the foundation was put in. Even that was done after extensive research and thought, as the soil had to be firm and stable enough for a building to stand on it. The concrete for the foundation was laid first. Then began the building. 

One by one, steel rods and girders and whatnot were brought and then the scaffolding began. First the columns were made, but not all at once. Only up to a certain height, after which the floor was laid. This goes on, repeated several times until you've got a building without an actual building. Once the skeleton's done, muscles are put in. By 'muscles', I mean brick walls.

So now you're getting muscles put in. They're vital, but they also take up space inside. Walls done, you now get the electricians in to do their thing. Wires everywhere, dust everywhere. Holes drilled into the wall at specific heights from the floor and specific distances from the walls. Once this is done, the flooring begins. I don't mean carpets and whatnot here; I'm talking about tiling, or cement flooring, or marble. 

Marble looks great, but cleaning it might be a bit of a hassle; once the stain sets, there's not a lot you can do to remove it. Vitrified tiles are the easiest to clean, although they don't have the same oomph factor as marble tiles do. Now you have yourself a house finished in all but name. Plastering, sanitaryware and doors. That's pretty much all that's left. 

You know what's funny, though? The people who built all this can never see the building from the inside once it's been decorated and made up. Hotel or house, they rarely see the final results. There's another point of view, too. The person, or people, buying the house, are always rich to these people. What they don't know is how the buyer has had to run from one place to another to get the money, how hard they've had to work to earn the money with which they are buying the house. Both groups have had to work hard for it; in different ways, that's all.

People are like that, too. Sometimes they're just skeletons until you finish them up. Or maybe you come along and redecorate them. You can't get too attached, though- you have to move on once you're done. That's sad, but beautiful too. It's the people who stay the longest that change you the most, but there's something funny about the way they do it. You never realize it until someone else points it out to you. Much like the little nook in your house you never knew looked good until someone said so. 

It's been a tiring day, and a cold one too. That hasn't happened for a long time in Calcutta. Stay safe, everybody. Adios!