My son zipped through the house on his baby car, honking loudly and carrying some ‘accidented’ little toys towards an inner room where he had made an imaginary garage. I followed him and found palm-sized sedans and hatchbacks sitting on top of two large suitcases.
My son was impatient; he had more vehicles to rescue and quickly left on his errand of mercy. As the toys stacked up, I looked at the two suitcases – nearly 16 years old – casually holding up their light burden and remembered the first time I had packed them.
I was within kissing distance of adulthood then, a few months short of turning 18. For the next seven years, I was going to study and work in a city made of glass and chrome, with perfect perpendicular roads and swift, dignified cars. A city where even the sun could seem scrubbed, shiny, and blindingly clean.
And so, while I was packing jeans and T-shirts and notebooks full of formulae, I was also trying to find space for fragments of my identity; things that would remind me of the fragrances of home, and the warm, familiar cacophony of brick, tar, dust, and noise. I created a small crater in the middle of the clothes and tried to make decisions. A photo album with 32 snapshots of family, or a larger framed picture that I could hang on a hook? A CD with nine carefully curated songs, or a Walkman with tapes of childhood gibberish? The books that I was halfway through, or the ones I had dipped into repeatedly over the years?
What Should I Choose, What Should I Leave Behind?
No matter what choices I made, I looked longingly at the things that littered the floor, and wondered what would happen if I was stuck 3,000 kilometres away, aching desperately for that one song, one photograph, or that perfect funny phrase in the middle of a book. There is nothing quite like adolescence to exaggerate loneliness and nothing like airline travel to shine an impersonal, unblinking spotlight on it.
Over the next decade, I would repeat this exercise nearly 15 times, either cleaning out my room at the end of every semester, or moving from one house to another as roommates, friendships, and contracts kept changing. Sometimes I would pack up, check out and move between countries and continents. Arranging my life into two cuboidal boxes would become easier, as I began to understand myself better.
I knew that I would read less and listen more when I was homesick. I knew that a good phone and a reliable calling card could build a stupendous immunity against loneliness. I realised that I would always wear the same soft sari for really special occasions and the same jeans and kurta for all the others.
As the decade progressed, technology came to my rescue. A laptop with a high-speed Internet connection could hold all the photographs and songs I could ever want (and a vast collection of things that I didn’t). A backpack became a part of my travel costume and I worried more about power cords than I did about clothes, food, or books. I found ways to carry a sense of home in small pockets of my heart, where I wouldn’t be charged excess baggage.
The Love for Temporary Furniture
Along the way, this style of thinking dropped parasitic roots into other parts of my life. Bulky winter coats were rejected – even though I had no immediate plans of moving from a maverick city that could go from humid warmth to bone-chilling cold in a matter of hours.
I began to love furniture that could be disassembled. I felt attracted to nesting shelves and stools. I couldn’t bring myself to buy dining tables or large sofas because, well, wouldn’t you have to sell them when you left the country? Floor mats were so much better. I was a susceptible convert to Mary Kondo and her minimalist Konmari lifestyle!
After many years of wandering, my airborne roots found a welcoming, loamy soil in Assam. I started to think about antique furniture. What would it be like to place my clothes in the same cupboard for the next 15 years and to watch the wood become smooth with age? How would I like to write at a table that my grandchildren could inherit? What would it be like to live in a house that had accumulated the quirks and habits of many years – stains, dents, and cracks, each with a half-forgotten story hidden in memory?
And yet, old habits die hard. In rare moments of solitude, when the windows are open and sunlight is filling the house, I look around and think, well, I could easily pack up and move to another place in a week, maybe 10 days.
(Yasaswini is a recovering scientist who now experiments on her toddler, students, and terrace garden. She also secretly believes that she is a writer. She can be reached @yasaswinisampat)