Two years or so after moving in, the framing is done,
nails inserted into the wall and finally the pictures are up on the wall. Very pleasing indeed and all is well with the world. Phew, at last, I don’t need to think about THAT any more. Get on to the important things.
Get that research done
Get that paper written.
Get those papers graded.
Yes, of course.
But wait! What is that on the wall, there, lower left? Oh no!
That dreadful, creeping, creature ‘सीलन’ (no, not Golem) makes its feared appearance, seeping through the wall from who-knows-where. Much consultation. House-owner and local-almost-resident plumber-cum-broker-of-flats confabulate. Wise nodding of heads. सीलन है जी. Who knows where it comes from. Next door, upstairs, mezzanine — all flats are potential culprits. So is the rain. And we have to wait until the weather allows things like removing the plaster, replastering, painting…until the painters come back from the village where, no doubt, they are ploughing and sowing…
Come November and, by this time, inspiration strikes. This is going to 
different! It is going to be a nostalgia-ride (well, not quite but I did like that house)! Let’s recall those warm peachy hues — unbelievable, how could anyone possibly live in that? — but anyone could, and did. So let’s have a shot here. Now.
Takes some persuading, but it works, and after many days, much dust,
pain, camping in the house, trailing dust all over the place, it happens. Really. Not quite the same, but something different, certainly. And it is good again. And much noticed (admired, perchance?), it is a conversation piece. And cheerful.
Until, aargh! The dreaded सीलन strikes! Oozes its clammy fingers through that wall again. It looks much worse than ever before, because the patchiness is more obvious with the colour.
And it’s another wait. For the right time. The painters. Dry weather. Non-exam time. Not-so-busy-time. It happens. The plumber-turned-mason-turned-painter tells me he has put in the sealant that should keep out the सीलन. Yeah, right. Yes, it looks good. But I see no period of calm ahead.
And then, as expected, it appears again. The feared सीलन. This time it starts as unseen, slow damage that kills a photograph on the wall. 
An irreplaceable loss. A picture of a sahuaro (visible in the first two photographs above) taken by a photographer friend in days gone by. Its sad remains are visible as a patch on the orange wall. All the pictures come down.
This time the wait is much longer, It’s a bare orange wall for a long time. Come October and that wall is being stripped down
and…full circle, it is back to the white wall again.
Why? Because there is no way that colour is going to be matched. Because the colour was a mixture in the last painter’s mind’s eye, and the current painters are different, no doubt with a different mind’s eye. And because I am not going to do painting job again. On this wall. Ever.
So, I think, this is Maya–you think you have something, but it is a fleeting thing, a figment of your imagination, here today, gone tomorrow, perhaps it never was.
…
Oh but there is a bit left of orange we left in that end wall, which meets no bathrooms, kitchens, drain pipes, whatever. Only the world outside. Hmm. What about Maya, then?