Moving out…and in

A friend and colleague is moving house today, from the centre of the city to one of its very far flung suburbs, across the creek and on the mainland, further on from where I myself call ‘home’. In his excitement and, indeed, mad frenzy of coping with everything from getting his new apartment painted to finding an air-conditioner that he can afford to learning where the best fish is available, he has found himself exhausted but somehow energised by the whole experience. And, as he speaks to me about it all, I remember the many times that I have moved house, across the city, across the country and across the world.

My first rather dim memory of this process is when we moved from a ground floor home to one that was perched on what seemed like the top of the world at the time. I sat in the truck that transported all our belongings and was excited at the idea of a new world to explore and get used to. It was great fun, perhaps more so because I didn’t have much to do, since I was only a little girl at the time. And maybe the thought of having my own room – albeit one shared with my grandmother – overshadowed all other feelings of living and being. Not too long after, we moved to Europe. Again, it was not much involvement for me, except that I had new clothes and was going to be on a plane flying long distance for the first time – short hops within the country hardly counted. Perhaps the process of starting a new school and making friends was more important than finding groceries and dealing with the garbage collection, I do not remember.

But this upping and moving thing really hit home when I had to pack to come back from my first stint at an American college. Until then, someone else did most of the dirty work of finding cartons, coordinating shipping and dealing with packing and unpacking. When I graduated and came home, with only vague plans to continue with my education, I had to do it all myself. It was fun in that I could look at all that I owned and sort out what to keep and what, not, but it was bone-tiring and painful in that I had to leave a place I actually had got somewhat fond of, along with the people that mattered to me. The actual moving process was simple – cartons were stashed safely away in a friend’s garage, my suitcases were stuffed full and sat on by various large people so that they could be locked and my tickets were checked for the millionth time. And then I got into a plane and flew back home.

When we moved from one part of Mumbai to another, it was a rather more complicated process. There was a lifetime of stuff to be sorted and thought about, a whole world (and more) of books, pots and pans, bits and pieces and, surprisingly, very little in the way of clothing and very personal effects. We packed and repacked, labelled and fought, finally throwing piles of uncatalogued volumes of everything from romance to crime to old magazines into enormous gunny sacks that were loaded into the back of a truck that seemed to open like the humungous maw of the Loch Ness monster…or worse. We finally drove out of the city in a convoy – the truck, a smaller tempo, a large car and a small car – and lugged everything up three flights of unfinished stairs in a spanking new apartment block that had running water in the lift shafts and no elevators. By the time it became home, we had decided never to move house again…until I did it a few years later, moving across the country to a different life that was temporarily mine.

So I understand exactly what my friend is going through. After all, I have done it enough times myself. And, even if I do it again, I will still make the same mistakes, feel the same fatigue and find myself at that same high-adrenaline level of excitement.