It looked much bigger when we were young.
Not because we were smaller—because we were more imaginative. Hallways for running, kitchens for stealth, verandahs for lurking.
Time passed there, and was felt more deeply.
An afternoon held an adventure: a dusty trunk, an invented game, light through the jali. We lived in deep time. Not clocks. Weight.
The house remains. Same walls, but the hallway is just a hallway. The kitchen hides nothing.
What changed was the density of our attention.
As children, a crack in the wall was a river. A locked room was worth a summer. Adulthood is the withdrawal of this attention. We learn not to notice.