Acts of departure

A week ago, I sat on the floor of the house I had just moved into and popped the last bubble on a small piece of bubble wrap. I had just unwrapped three tin mugs I had bought a decade ago from a junk shop near the ship-breaking yard in Alang, Gujarat. They were the last items in the last box, which mostly held “stuff I won’t need” — things with no apparent utility that I have dragged with myself wherever I have moved. Over the years, these cups have patiently held nothing but out-of-commission pens, bobby pins, half-used candles and dust. And yet, here I was, back in an empty room with three tin cups from a 1960s’ Russian ship called Volgograd. They could be radioactive for all I know.

My moves between houses have been primarily acts of departure. They’ve involved more than just latched windows, emptied cupboards and doors shut one last time. They’ve been transformations, movements that have propelled me from one chapter to the next, cleaning up messes, tying up loose ends, pruning the useless. Moving has given me the opportunity to take stock of my life — sometimes requited, as when I have split from a partner or left college; sometimes not, as when I’ve been handed a notice by the landlord. But it has always forced me to stand akimbo and ask myself: “So here we are. What now?”

An old friend, when she was leaving India for good, called me in tears to say, “I’m all packed and I’m sitting in this empty house. Everything fit into two suitcases. Two suitcases. I spent five years in this country. Is this all there was?” It wasn’t, of course, but packing up everything you’ve ever owned is a systemic shock, a break in inertia. It bestows the audacity to discard, the bravado to make tough decisions, the chance to leave behind. Moving helped me decide if I should invest in matching ceramic bowl and plate sets, if I had outgrown cane shoe racks, if I should give someone another chance (I did), or never go back to another (I didn’t).

Though common sense, financial intelligence, WhatsApp spam and my mother all entreat me to buy a house, I prefer the one-sided, uncommitted relationships I have with rented accommodation. What I treasure most is how a memory of a house is a recall to the person I was at the time — to the objects I thought reflected who I was, and what I thought a good life should look like to whoever walked in. I can pinpoint my aspirations on my life chart almost in concurrence with changes in residence. When I moved into a south Delhi barsati in my mid-20s, I rushed to buy fairy lights I could put in jars, an open bookcase (a terrible idea in dusty Delhi), giant floor cushions, rustic mats — and absolutely nothing for the kitchen. (Understandably, I have no memory of what I ate over that year.) But I remember, in the first week of the move, sitting by myself on the sprawling terrace, popping open a beer bottle and a new book, and thinking: “This is life”. Because that is what I imagined a good life to be at the time.

Next move: Out went the floor cushions, the mats — the low bohemian seating wasn’t for me, I decided, because I needed my knees to be at an ideal distance from my bum. In came a proper worktable, a Prussian blue futon that I thought looked arty but was extremely unpleasant on the back, framed art prints, and storage cabinets for notebooks. Needless to say, the futon was the first to go.

Moving has been a journey of accumulation and deletion, of careful image-curation, and of numerous purges of lifestyles. I’ve cut out a chronic host of couchsurfers, a petulant housemate, and an easily excitable home décor shopper, moving finally on to a person who understands the need for a linen closet. I’ve also moved and set up houses enough to realise that I will never quite achieve what I consider “optimum good taste”. That will always be one step out of reach. What we consider “great taste” is more about who we want to be than who we are. It will always be: “In my next house, I will…” I build a box of desires — a barsati, a large oak dining table, an urban forest at hand, the background chatter of a loud family, a personal balcony, one great electrician, an amaltas that blooms audaciously every summer — and somewhere in there is the promise of perfection.

There’s one moment every morning in which reality cuts through the haze of sleep. Depending on the enormity of the circumstance, I’ve found that that moment can be overwhelming. The day might involve a job interview, a daunting time at work, an unpleasant conversation, or just plain discontent, but the quickening of the pulse and the associated breathlessness have often convinced me to shut my eyes and go back to sleep. The first few weeks in a new house have a similar effect on me, but every passing morning is a calmer beginning. Even though this halt has just begun, I know which part of this house will move with me when I leave: the three enormous trees that enfold the living room balcony, and that will eventually root me to this house and the person I am within it.

( Padmaparna Ghosh is a Delhi-based writer )

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