Once upon a House

Once upon a time, there was a house.

 
For the longest time, this house stood waiting; its cupboards empty, its walls bare and its closets yawning wide open in anticipation. Year after year it remained empty, wondering if it’ll ever get to become a home. And then, one fine summer day, just when the house had almost given up, the boxes arrived. The house embraced it all – the clothes that had travelled across the ocean and smelled of plastic flowers from sachets tucked in each box, the pots and pans that had borne the brunt of a once newly wed still learning to cook, the toys of a three year old who seemed to love books more and of course, the zillions of books. The house beamed and gleamed – although its shelves groaned under the weight of so many things. It welcomed the new comers with the sweetest breeze it could snag from the trumpet tree right next to the balcony, and a living room flooded with an afternoon sun that wiped all shadows away. It enveloped these three tired souls in all the warmth and love it could muster, and in return, they loved it back. They poured their lives onto its walls, and filled each nook and cranny with the one thing the house loved the most – stories. So many, many stories. Each brick in the wall oozed laughter and music. And before the house knew it, it became a home.

It saw the three year old turn four, five, and six. It saw Christmases that grew grander and brighter. It saw drunken late night conversations and hungover mid-morning brunches. It saw dance parties in the living room where everyone jumped and squealed and laughed, and it saw lazy evenings where a tiny ukulele brought in the warm yellow beach right to the balcony. 

And then, it saw a pink squishy bundle brought into this world – one moment a bump in her mother’s round tummy and the very next, a living breathing kicking screaming entity of her own. It saw that swaddled bundle outgrow onesies like nobody’s business and before the home knew it, it saw tiny feet fumble and stumble on its wooden floors. The home was replete – lulled by the rhythms of a five year old routine. Books, music, good food, laughter and most importantly – love. It couldn’t ask for more.

But then the boxes arrived again – all ominous and empty. And there they stood in the living room with their greedy hungry mouths open. The books went in first – and the empty shelves shrunk in misery. But the boxes wanted more. Toys. Trinkets. Pots and pans. And oh, even the door nameplate! The figurine in the kitchen with one eye missing and grease on his ceramic white apron that had stood witness to the million meals cooked in there. The rooster holding a sign called “kitchen” just in case anyone needed directions. The set of three wooden kittens all glued with tape ever since that unfortunate incident with the then four year old. More more more, the boxes seemed to say, opening their mouths wide, swallowing everything until they were taped shut. There they stood, holding five years worth of things within them, looking rather smug.

The home looked on – its walls bare again, the cupboards empty but for those few things that didn’t quite belong anywhere – a motley assortment of misfits and undesirables. But the stories will always be mine, the home mused, even as the toddler bumped her head on the piano, hurt her finger while closing a drawer and falling for the umpteenth time. Even as the now lanky seven year old bounced off the couch to land on the floor and did a perfect somersault without breaking her stride. Even as the harried mother walked from room to room stripping more things here and there, trying to recall what the house looked like when she had first stepped inside.

One of these days, the boxes will be packed away and taken in a truck. For a while, the home will be a house again – lying in anticipation. There will be fresh paint on the walls, burying the old stories under a layer of white. There will be silence – utter silence. No more music, no more fumbling feet on the floor, no more laughter.

Until one day, when the boxes will arrive again.  

The Melancholy of Moving

The house is starting to look like a house again.

It is something… Walking about the house looking at each object that made it a home, and mindlessly wondering whether you wished to take it or toss it before you left for good. Each thing comes with a story attached, of course. The “days of the week” glasses that came free with milk cartons that we zealously collected over several weeks? Funny how they don’t make the cut for the “to take” list. The couch that we bought because we got sick of our old couch sucking us in? A happy bunch of people took it away just last week, and along with it, took away the very first piece of furniture we had bought for ourselves, and had loved immensely, food stains and all. The IKEA armchair the husband got me right after little girl was born to make those marathon midnight nursing sessions easier on me? Yeah. Sold. The little one’s crib and changing table will be soon gone too, and with them, that afternoon the husband and best friend spent assembling them while I plonked myself and the tummy on the couch, would be gone. As will the microwave that the husband bought for me on impulse because he felt bad having hot lunches outside while I managed the best I could with cold leftovers and a baby who refused to nap.

The playroom, that just a couple of weeks ago looked like a toy store gone all homey, looks at me disappointed as though I have let it down. The grand red kitchen we bought about a month ago has left a yawning space with nothing but a bare wall in its place, and I had to hold back tears when I saw it being carried away to its new home, although the sight of the cute little girl in pigtails giggling at the sight of the kitchen was some respite. For the longest time the little munchkin would keep looking at the wall as though not quite figuring out what was missing. It breaks my heart but I tell myself she is too young to remember her toys being sold off so we could buy her new ones in her new home. So bit by bit, one by one, her toys keep disappearing, and the playroom keeps getting emptier and sadder.

The walls are starting to get bare. Photographs, lovingly put up, carefully aligned, gazed at and sighed about are being taken down with only their imprints as testimony. The wall decal that we had put up with all the excitement we could harness as would be parents I took down alphabet by alphabet, flower by flower. The more recent wall decal, featuring our most favourite mother-daughter photos, I took apart a few hours ago. I remember everything about the afternoon I had put it together… A tug here, a pull there, and it’s like that afternoon had never happened. Making memories is hard, erasing them…. Hmm.

I have moved enough to know that each new house is like a blank canvas in which to paint my memories in. But this house, this was special. Sorry, is. It is still special. These walls had witnessed me walking from room to room with amazement as I discovered it for the first time. The huge breezy kitchen, the water feature in the living room and the Asian bed in the bedroom… I was sold the first time I had set my eyes on it. These very walls saw me cry in happiness soon after we moved in, the day I knew I was going to be a mother. It was to this house that we brought in our tiny bundle of everything, and life was never the same. This house has been tied to way too many firsts to be cast off as just another pit stop before the final destination. And as though trying to prove a point, the last few days have been breezier than ever before, with the sunshine hitting just the right spot every morning, and the trees that I can see from my windows just on the verge of bursting into pink and white blooms.

It’s two weeks until last day, and yet, this disintegrating is unsettling… Like having to say goodbye again and again. We will set it all up again, the husband says, look forward to what’s coming up. And all I can do is lament about letting go of all that was familiar to me, plunging deep into the unknown yet again. Even as I type this, I keep sighing and looking about the house as though I were lost, and the Norah Jones playing in the background is doing nothing to uplift my melancholy. So I will wallow in it for a bit. Let the emptiness sink in a little more. And then, tomorrow, when the sun shines and the breeze gets all gutsy and gusty I will resume packing in my memories yet again. One photo at a time. One memory at a time.

 

My Travelling Harry Potter

Chapter I:

Once upon a time, a young girl managed to get hold of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets book for a night. The book was on rotation and on high demand and she’d had to beg to have that coveted copy with her for a night. She got sucked into the book from the very first page. She dived into it deep and got lost into it, and a few hours later, she emerged from it a different girl altogether. And then she decided to stay submerged in those words long after she’d finished reading. Over several years, she found five more of those magical books to read, not in order and not one hers to own but she read them all, always feeling a tinge of sadness at having to let go of them to her benevolent borrower. Okay, maybe a lot more than just a tinge. Maybe something in the lines of feeling like a chunk of her heart was being taken away. She’d never actually wanted to possess something so precious for herself, never thought she was worth it, until the seventh and final book got released and she found herself desperately looking for a copy to read, and not finding one grew increasingly flustered and sad. She needed her Harry Potter fix, really really bad.

Enter the then would-be brother-in-law, who’d kinda gotten himself into a fix by avoiding her calls for three months straight. In his defence, she was not really an easy person to talk to when upset, and she was upset that he hadn’t talked to her for a long while, which made him all the more anxious about talking to her. They would have forever been caught in that vicious cycle had he not decided to send her a gift that was guaranteed to make up for all the months of not talking to her. And when that gift reached her, she decided to overlook the fact that it was in fact, a bribe to win her favour back. It instead made her more accepting of the fact that her brother-in-law was not exactly the chummy kind who would make regular calls and indulge in mundane chit chat, but would be there for her when she needed him. The gift was a boxed set of the Harry Potter series, with a hard bound copy of the final book. She broke her rule of not writing on books to mark those books as hers (not anyone else’s but hers) and scribbled “Ji’s first gift!” in her best handwriting on the first page.

Chapter II:

It was 2011, four years since that blessed gift, and the girl was about to get married, and was looking at being transported from the safe haven of Asom to the enigmatic adventures of far flung Vietnam. She spent days making lists of stuff that she wanted to carry with her; trying to fit bits and pieces of her pre-wedding life in a suitcase that weighed no more than 25 kgs. Twenty five years of living in the same state within India, never venturing anywhere outside, and facing a new life in a completely new country with a brand new husband. And all she decides to carry with her are some clothes, shoes and her precious Harry Potter boxed set. That her (by then) husband might have a word or two to say about her choice of stuff she wanted with her was lost on her. That he would even mumble about having to pay for extra baggage was not an issue. She wanted those books with her. Needed them to give her comfort when everything else was new and sparkly. Needed the solace that came from knowing that she could always slip into the warmth of familiarity among those books anytime she felt the new a little too cold, a little too shiny. And so the books traveled with her to Vietnam.

Chapter III:

It was July 2011, eight months since the Harry Potter books’ maiden flight to Vietnam, and those books were the first to get packed into an open suitcase as the still quite newly weds decided to shift to Malaysia next. Anticipating that the following weeks would fly by in a haze of travel and transition and house hunting in yet another new country, she carried the Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (the first “thick” book in the series) on her at all times so she didn’t have to dig it out from the suitcase of books. And so she snuggled with it on the living room couch of the guest house from where she could see the Petronas Twin Towers, and she wrapped herself around it, drifting in and out of sleep in the master bedroom while the husband went to work in his new office, not feeling so lonely after all in a new country. In her new home, it was the first bag to get unpacked, and she had a minor heart attack when she couldn’t find the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book for fifteen whole minutes. Panicky and palpitating she flapped about the house until it appeared in a different bag, although how it had reached there is still a mystery. So the Harry Potters were lovingly set on the bottom shelf of the TV table in the Kuala Lumpur apartment, and they had by then accompanied the girl on the verge of womanhood, witnessed her transformation from a shy wife to a confident homemaker who even dabbled in English teaching for a while.

Chapter IV:

To lug them in a suitcase in the flight or to send them with the movers? Decisions, decisions. Yet another move, yet another new country. For the third time in two years, she packed the Harry Potter books, and it was only after her husband assured her that the boxes would arrive in Singapore the same day they would, that she relented and parted with them. Of all the things that she was anxious about (her swanky new dinner set, her glassware, her silks!) it was those books that she was worried about the most. From Vietnam to Malaysia to Singapore, she lugged them loyally with her, and they in turn provided her with security. Those books saw her through all the unpredictability and confusion. Kept her grounded when she couldn’t seem to find her roots. Because no matter what changed outside, inside those pages, everything remained the same. The books gave her company through the nine longest months of her life, helping her will time away specially when it seemed to trickle by slower than ever. She sunk into those books to keep anxiety at bay, and even carried the Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince book with her to her ultrasound because she didn’t want to sit in the doctor’s clinic idly and let her blood pressure rise in anticipation. Those books carried her through her metamorphosis from wife to mother, just as they had carried her through her metamorphosis from daughter to wife.

Chapter V:

Unbelievable as it seems, the books now sit on the shelf waiting to be boxed along with the other books and the little one’s toys for the fourth time in four years, this time to dazzling Dubai. Lending their service whenever demanded of them, they are now an inseparable part of her home, wherever that might be. When she envisions a future where she will finally have a home to call her own, where she can allow the roots to grow deep, she sees her Harry Potter books sitting pretty on a mantelpiece, the yellowed pages and brown age spots a testimony of a lifetime of companionship.

The epilogue of the story would probably be about how years down the line the silver haired grandmother sits her grandchild on her lap and with a sparkle in her eyes carefully opens up a fragile page and starts reading: “Chapter One: The boy who lived….” only to have her husband ask her, “After all this time?” to which she would reply “Always“

On drama, excel sheets and “Inside Out”

What on earth, you might want to ask me, do these things have in common? And I’ll tell you… In a bit, actually. This makes for a nice story and I do love telling my stories elaborately.

By nature I hate drama. I mean I like excitement as much as the next person but I don’t like my emotions being taken by storm, and I absolutely hate tumbling down the roller coaster of anticipation and disappointment and back up to hopefulness and down through despair… You get the gist.  The last month has been nothing but that, and I can now finally say we’ve emerged from it miraculously sane. Which is where the excel sheets come in.

Now, numbers I love. How can I not, when my very name means numbers? I love how numbers are not ambiguous, and how they always mean the same thing, and they never lie. Numbers appeal to the rational side of me, because in the end, I am all about the binary. All, or nothing, and no in-between. And although I vehemently steer clear of anything that turns numbers into well, data, I am married to a man who sees everything through an excel sheet. From household budget to future extrapolations to decisions about which resort to stay in and which flights to take during our holiday, there’s nothing this guy won’t or can’t depict in an excel sheet.

Including our, ahem, fourth move in four years.

There, I said it. We are moving. Yet again. And this time to a whole different continent. Goodbye, Singapore. Hullo, Dubai.

To say it all started with an excel sheet would be just the right thing to say. Around four months ago, the husband and I sat down in front of one, looked at the number he had highlighted (in red, mind you) and decided that things need to change. So we let go of our helper, I decided to take on full responsibility of the house and the baby and the husband decided it was high time he started looking out for greener pastures. The job hunt began, and each opportunity he came across was accompanied by an excel sheet. Pros and cons, bulleted and listed. Discussions, decisions. Three months it took for him to find the job most suited for our circumstances and his expectations, and for what we thought was the one final time, we stared at yet another excel sheet and nodded our heads and said yes. If only we knew…

With just two weeks left for him to join his new company, something came up that again shook the ground on which we’d based our decision. Note how I say “our” decision, as though it is as much my career as his. Back to excel sheets, back to crunching numbers. Fingers flying furiously on the keyboard. Eyebrows furrowed, eyes squinted. Best scenario, worst case scenario. Swinging back and forth; starting each sentence with “But then again you know….” Until one night, with just two days left for him to join the company, I threw my hands in the air, named all the reasons why we should stick to the plan and went to bed furious.

Remember how I mentioned “Inside Out”? This is where it comes in. If you’re with me so far, this is where it all gets tied up, I promise you. Without going into much details about the movie (which I loved beyond measure) let’s just keep it at how despite being an animated movie, it weirdly gave me insight into how my mind works. I mean it’s all chemical reactions but thinking of my emotions as little people inside my brain makes it so much more fun, don’t you agree? Anyway, next morning when I woke up, I had every mind to apologise to the husband. Tell him that I was sorry, but that I still stand by my decision. But the moment I saw his face, it was like that bubble of certainty in which I had wrapped my opinion suddenly burst. I stayed silent and walked away to go brush my teeth, and suddenly something changed. Maybe all those tiny people in my head got into an ad hoc panel discussion, came to an agreement and flicked a switch inside my head and I went “Hey wait a minute… Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea after all” And if at any other time this sudden change of mind would have surprised me, having watched “Inside Out”, it somehow made sense to me.

I ran back to him, breathless in excitement and told him that if he still wanted to do this, I was with him. And happily so. So, show me the numbers, I said, and he opened up the excel sheet. Like I said, the numbers never lie. They remained the same, but it was my attitude that changed this time I was looking at them. Suddenly they looked happier, healthier, and combined with the magic words “We’ll manage”, they basically made our decision for us.

Dubai it is then. Let the craziness and turmoil and adventure begin.