Moving
I recently moved to my eighth house in ten years across five cities. Now that I look back at our movement, I am in awe of the amazing ability of my home in accommodating that frenzy and turning it into a simple peace. I moved with economic currents, with multiplying of love, with refusal to be taken advantage of. Every move was an emotional decision. To move so often, to have emotionally charged decisions to be made so frequently, points to a world in a flux, a world spinning at the end of the rinse cycle – manic, moving at breathtaking speed, unnerving. I am but a little flotsam, floating with the currents, trying to ride the wave, instead of being swallowed whole and spit out bitterly.
The first four houses were witness to my loneliness, my listlessness, my daydreams, my attempts at finding love and bouts of creative diarrhea. It was a place where time stretched out and wrapped around me like an anaconda; moving slowly and then suddenly. Sleep came from exhaustion from waiting, absorbing the cold bright light from glowing rectangles… that too slowly and then suddenly.
Gods
I come from hill country. Since childhood, hills, lakes and wide expanses were my gods. It was a spiritual necessity to return to them every evening. In an extended sense, hills were my home. When that was no longer possible in Mumbai, I turned to trekker groups for that necessary pilgrimage every other weekend. With Gurgaon, the hope was to experience the majestic Himalayas every month. But as it turns out, the travel doesn’t come cheap and there are only so many extended weekends in a year. So it became a yearly pilgrimage. I slowly lost my gods but thankfully found love in the meantime too. With that, the home changed from being a base camp to our own little haven.
Love
Love makes life worth living. Love turns a house into a home. A warmth, a lightness, a happiness permeates the air in the home. Things start to have a shared meaning. Milestones get etched into walls, refrigerators and scratched/ stained furniture. Things multiply. The meaning they carry weigh more than the utility they serve. The line between ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ gets smudged, obliterated, redrawn depending on how many of the chores were shared that day.
A triangular universe
Between the triangulation of homes of childhood and home we make together lies the entire universe. We can reach the farthest reaches of our capabilities, we can survive the deepest of falls and find unlimited happiness and weather new sorrows within this triangulated safe place.
Salmon
Talisman
Homes are not homes until it gets anointed with a few ‘things’ that must find the right and proper place in the house. For me its the books. The only constant in my luggage through all of our homes have been my books. Over the years, i have given away many and bought many. But there are always books in our home.
My wife is an artist and some of her beautiful and priceless artwork adorns our walls and display cabinets. Our home cannot be complete without the bowls, cups and platters made by her. So some of it travels with us in the in-between times. I can’t bear to drink tea/ coffee from any cup that is not made by her anymore. It just won’t feel right.
My books, her bowls and the two of us complete the home.
The lighthouse
Our hope is to build ourselves a home in the next few years that will stay with us, get old with us, that we won’t have to give up with vagaries of life. To make that a reality, we are planning on saving some money, which we have been terrible at so far. The roots of our future home is being laid in a habit of watching our expenses and being prudent with money, new territory for us.
Here’s to the hope of rising above the waves pushing us this way and that way. Cheers.
