Minimalistic aspirations!

I have shifted homes more than a dozen times during my very long tenure on planet Earth. Of course I have no recollection of my earlier lives or my existence on other planets. Anyway half of the shifting I did before I got married and the other half continues to this day.

When I was a child and we moved. There were no ‘Movers n Packers’ so my father and I packed up each of our possessions (My mother stuck to her personal belongings and kitchen, and my sister was somehow not there when we were moving!). The possessions I recall, included the tube lights and bulbs, air conditioners and air coolers, books and magazines, showpieces and photographs, in short everything. I was in charge of the packing of small things (Not Furniture) and it was my responsibility to see that each packed item (we used old newspapers, towels and dresses and saris to be thrown) was carefully fitted into the wooden crates lined with hay and straw. It would be inspected by Dad and then nailed shut.

My mother was a hoarder. She loved buying stuff that were new in the market and then used maybe once and stored (Ovens, juicers, grills, barbecues, biryani makers, rice cookers, induction heaters et al) during each of these shifting there was the eternal arguments of what should be kept and what should be thrown. Every time my mother agreed that somethings needed to be left out but when we unpacked in the new place they would all be there!

When I started my adult life I did the other half of my moving. We did have packers by then so neither I nor the rest of my family needed to pack anything but we did need to sort things out. I too, like my mother, am a hoarder but not exactly like her. I began by hoarding used gift-wrapping papers (sometimes I did use them), I also kept shoe boxes (to store some unwanted things u know!), then there were magazines, letters, visiting cards (of plumbers and electricians!) and before the arrival of the cell phone I hoarded telephone books with their numerous cuts and numbers! Pens which did not work, pencils which were blunt, paints which were almost dry and I am sure you can add a lot of things that you do and I might respond with “I did that too”.

But this was the time when I did weed out my wardrobe. I did this so that I could, without guilt, refurbish it in the new place. This did not include the heavy saris which were my wedding trousseau, they were well packed (having never been opened after they came from dry cleaning after they were worn once!) so it was not a great deal of trouble. I of course used my judgement to weed out the kid’s wardrobe. I failed in this aspect of my ‘lord n master’ wardrobe as he had his own ideas about what should be thrown off!

When we last shifted to the current abode, I had been ruthless in throwing away clothes, papers, books, utensils and even things like ribbons and artificial jewellery. At first settling down in the new house was heavenly. Every storage space was meticulously planned out and only things that had any usefulness in them were kept and I even made a kind of excel sheet to catalogue my belongings (though it tapered off after sometime!)

Then one by one the crisis happened. We needed old towels for random cleaning and so were the requirements of old bedsheets. The tool box filled with feviquick had been unfortunately thrown off. Those extra wood planks had been inadvertently left behind! Those mismatched tea cups had been thrown off (so useful when you have the whole house filled with painters and electricians and plumbers needing cups of tea at regular intervals!). The old paint brushes though too hard to paint were great for cleaning the sliding window channels. The list is endless….

So started my various Amazon deliveries to fill in the holes of unnecessary items. My ‘minimalistic’ ideas went out of the window.

Now after four years I have come a full circle and every other day is filled with “to keep or not to” as I wade into cupboard after cupboard listing, cutting, throwing and rehashing stereotypes.

I look longingly at new dinner sets, cooking sets, furniture, curtains and thingamabobs, for I cannot buy a new one if I have four sets languishing for use in the unlabelled cupboards.

Now I need to get away from the house into someplace there is nothing to buy, every once in a while. Do you think this malady is curable after all it is a genetic disability and it is NOT MY FAULT!

 

The Moving Bug

My heart was palpitating; sweat was pouring down my forehead; nausea enveloped me from all sides; if there hadn’t been so many people on the road, I swear I would have fainted, I was feeling so dizzy.

I know what you are thinking, but I assure you all, you are wrong. I wasn’t being attacked by menopausal hot flushes!

This was happening frequently enough for all of you to assume the worst. But I have my own explanation, do bear with me as I meander into my past and give you a scientific hypothesis why this was happening.

I think (I must have told you before), I have nomadic genes. From the time I was born I have moved on an average of every three years. In fact in one place that I lived for four years, I moved three houses! There have been exceptions but mostly my fate has made me move. Do not pity me! I am very proud of this fact.

I just adore moving. The whole process of packing is a pleasure to me. I love sorting things through; throwing out whatever I haven’t used in the three years we have been in that particular house; lovingly dusting and packing my books of over thirty years (which I haven’t read in the last twenty years!) and the many artefacts that I have collected from the world over (they might be cracked and faded but I never have the heart to throw them off!) I do love to throw away my old clothes though (My maids love me for that!)

Many of my friends feel sorry for me. The first question they ask me, when we speak after a gap, “Where are you these days?”. Of course Facebook has been good to let them know where I am at that point in time. But now a days Facebook is out of fashion; all the young people have migrated to Instagram for their socialising and the older generation (I mean the seventy plus) have taken over Facebook! My generation is somewhere in-between- totally confused about what to do. We are sort of undecided, with one foot in each arena! If the boats stop moving in unison, we are going to fall into the water! I have three sets of friends- the one that starts from seventeen to thirty, then the thirty to sixty and the third set is the sixty plus!, So I try to keep track of all of them through various  Social Apps.

Getting back to my ‘moving times’- well! as I was saying, I love it! I love the pre-moving exercise(sorting and packing), the ongoing moving exercise (staying in a hotel after the hard work and just chilling) and the post- moving exercise (Unpacking and finding new places for my old stuff!)

I never did feel sorry for myself, in fact, I feel sorry for the people who stay in one place throughout their lives! I feel they are missing out. They argue that they learn from their vacation travels, but I argue that visiting and moving are totally different things. Depending on whether you are the nomads or the settlers, you can pat me on  my back or throw rotten tomatoes at me!

Back to my ailment, I seriously started to find some common denominator for all the episodes of my ailments. I was normally always outside, mostly when I was going to the garden for my walk; there were always plenty of people and traffic around me at that time; my irritation at the stray dogs being fed on the roadside was also there; I kept on collecting my data from these episodes. One more common thing was, I was always feeling healthy and fit before these attacks!

Nobody, least of all myself, gave much importance to this new development in my life. Like a wood splinter under the skin, it started poking me very frequently. As I am a self medicator, I did not even think of taking professional help.

Maybe it was hot flushes, I admitted to myself. But what about my data collection, my parameters and a burgeoning hypothesis? So again the Hot flush theory was flushed down and I waited for a new episode to add to my data.

“Didi”, my maid had just come in, “The front door neighbours are moving”.

I wasn’t really surprised. The Lady of the house had told me before that they are looking for a new house. I did wonder why she hadn’t told me that they were moving so soon. To cut a long story short, out of neighbourly concern I went over to their house.

The men were packing and talking amongst themselves. The house was a mess, everything was laid out and the packers were doing their job.

It started, my heart beat faster; the sweat poured out and I felt so dizzy that I held on to the door. The disease was in full form.

“Are you okay?”, our neighbour asked.

“I think so”, I said smiling weakly.

“Can I get you a glass of water?”, he asked.

“Thank you, but I am okay”, I said steadying myself, “Do let me know if I can help you in any way”.

How could I tell him that the smell of the packing boxes, the rustle of the bubble wrap and the mess, all made me feel so jealous that I was nauseous!

As I entered the latest data into my journal, I realised one more common factor during these episodes was the presence of a Movers and Packers truck on the road! In fact this has happened when I gaze down idly from my twenty sixth floor and see the Writers  (A favourite Movers and Packers of mine!)yellow and black truck moving or taking things from the Apartment opposite us.

We had recently completed four years in this location( way above my average of three years!) and all these signs were like a knife twisting in my nomadic heart. The intense desire; the painful jealousy; the restlessness within me were all signals telling me it’s time to move!

My hypothesis was proven beyond doubt!