Shifting homes can be a tiresome exercise. I recently moved to our new flat and was almost broken in the process. As is common knowledge, confusion, volatile tempers and unrelenting physical strain are all part of this moving game. But after more than twelve straight hours of packing and unpacking, with every muscle in my body crying out in pain, my head spinning and my voice hoarse, what I had not anticipated was the emotional exhaustion that it brought about. I was feeling raw and red within, exhausted beyond tears and laughter. I couldn't understand this emotional weariness as I wasn’t particularly upset about leaving behind our old flat, which I had always considered a sort of a way-stop rather than a permanent home, and I was certainly excited about the new home. Yet there I was sitting on the floor at 1 in the morning, all my stuff laid out around me unable to move a muscle not because of physical fatigue but because mind, that unfettered bird had taken refuge on a far off, lone post, exhausted beyond endurance, and was refusing to budge. As I think about it, I realise it was the exercise of moving lives that had drained me thus.
When you shift homes, you do not just shift your things but also lives, the memories, the laughter, the silences. That long day I had tried to scrape of our lives from the peeling paint of the old flat and paste them on to the smoothness of new walls. What of cracks and niches from where they refused to budge and simply wouldn’t stick? How much coaxing and cajoling it took to conjure up the spirits of our past, the spoken and unsaid words, the laughter and the spilled tears, the dreams, the pain and the fears to come away with us and reconcile with the vague, formless new ones into the promise of a new life! And how difficult it was to find them, in the odd places that they hid! In an old dented rusted Quality Street Mackintosh candy tin with a pair of a child’s large pink shell specs, an old lead battery, a couple of ancient pencils and a dangerously rusted pencil sharpener hid the spirits of two little girls who once lived in wonder world of dreams, the warmth of a hand to hold and the lingering pain of long distance calls; in a portrait of Gandhi was the indelible laughter of friendship; a miniature stainless steel Prestige pressure cooker held an old man’s idiosyncrasies and his undying love for the family he left behind; a tattered old Hindi dictionary, all of a woman’s good intentions; a sewing machine that had not stitched a single straight stitch ever, hoarded a million crooked, broken ones that had somehow joined together to a topsy-turvy beautiful print of family.
And with every picture I took off the walls, every piece of cloth I put into boxes, I could feel the spirits of our life move around, sulk, shout and scream. Finally using all our energies conjuring up all that would come, we stepped into our new home. And here we let them free, out to move around settle into their corners and make this flat our home. Now exhausted completely, with the pieces of our life scattered around me, I rest. Somewhere in the background I can hear my mother’s voice grow shriller and somewhere beyond the numbness of fatigue I anticipate happiness, a new beginning to an old life.
