On the move, perpetually

 On the move, perpetually

Ayesha’s message that her brother, an Air Force officer, has been transferred to Shillong, rekindled memories of my own life, not so long ago. For the next half hour I relived the nervousness and the excitement, the anticipation and the exasperation, the expectation and the reality as I imagined him getting his kit packed and moved and he and his family finding their feet in a new environment and an unfamiliar city.

Transfers and moving to new and unfamiliar places or sometimes old and familiar ones, are a part of life for people like us who themselves, or their spouses are in the central government services or as people say- transferable jobs. 

No, I am not experienced or qualified to talk about people who are in transferable jobs but whose sole aim in life is to stay in one city, mostly a metropolis or their hometown. For this, they may try all the formulas in the book-buttering and chasing the superiors, going on sick or study leave, trying for deputation in other departments, moving to other offices or branches of the organisation in the city or even applying political pressure. They are jocularly referred to as officers from their city cadres e.g. Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Lucknow cadres.

Getting back to the topic pricking my mind this week, as soon the transfer order comes, everyone in the family goes into an overdrive. You check the climate of the place you might have never heard of   (Andal, Jamalpur, Dangaoposi, Rayanpadu, Guntakal) or are familiar with (Chennai, Mysore, Bhuvaneshwar) and you are introducing your body to. You ring up people you know or who know other people in the city you are heading for, to ask dozens of questions about accommodation, schools, people in your office and even things which you might not get there easily. You make a long list of jobs to be done.

When I started this life of transfers, there were no organized packers and movers. You did everything yourself, with willing or unwilling help or paid workers. You took out your old lists of what was packed into what. Everything in the house was emptied into iron boxes (trunks) painted black or wooden crates and pellets with numbers written in bold letters and paper slips bearing name and destination stuck on them. There was a list of keys for the lock of each box. One had to be careful that every box should be packed in a manner that it did not become too heavy for two men to lift. The furniture was padded with burlap and newspapers, wrapped in large cardboard sheets and tied with ropes. Thermocol, cellophane and bubble wrap came much later. Some people even had burlap sacks stitched into huge bags so that the large ‘Godrej’ steel almirahs would fit into them. The attempt was to have reusable packing material so that it could last several house-movings.

Even when you now pay the packers, the agony in packing is as you take out things/items/articles from the drawers, cupboards, almirahs in the bedrooms, kitchen, drawing and dining rooms, even bathrooms and garage, whose bellies had hidden them for the last couple of years, you keep mentally calculating how they would be packed. Daily you pick out some things and send packets and containers of foodstuffs to friends and neighbours or give them away to the staff as you struggle to empty the fridge and the pantry. You call the raddiwala (waste paper and metal buyer) and try to get rid of as many useless and waste articles as possible. No wonder one goes through some moments of virakti (detachment) and promises never again to buy/keep/store so much.

Yet there are some things which are never thrown away. They merely go from one place to another, most of the times in the same box too. There is always the apprehension if you discard them, and some day you need them, whether and how you would get it in the new city.  (The photo below, however, is excluded from this list.)

Meanwhile, the seldom used articles are packed first. Assembled items are disassembled. Time permitting, curtains and beddings are washed and cleaned. Heaps of old newspapers cushion loved possessions of glass, crockery, crystal. This is the time you thank your genes for inheriting this ridiculous and space-occupying habit of keeping old clothes, towels and bedsheets for padding breakeable items besides bags and cartons for packing them before putting them in bigger boxes. The dusty, sometimes mouldy cartons of large appliances are taken out of the garage, attic or store room - cleaned, taped and repaired to once again transport their original or new occupants. A few days of strenuous mental exercise, sheer physical labour aided by several kilometres of cellotape, ropes, twine, mounds of bubble paper, and finally the house is empty and your voice echoes in the empty rooms.

I recall how scared I was that the insects and lizards scurrying out from behind the pots of plants did not enter my house when a neighbour had moved her more than 200 pots from the corridor to the truck. (Some women have boasted about possessing two to three hundred plants and how two, sometimes three trucks, are required just to carry the pots.) 

But simultaneously there is another exercise going on. There is worry and a lot of paper work for school admissions, travel plans to the destination, settling of all old bills, some last minute shopping, perhaps your own transfer or resignation.  You frequently refer to your checklist of what is left to be done, whom to talk to or meet before you leave the city, some thank-you gifts to certain kind souls who made your life comfortable in this city, packing for the travelling, perhaps a visit to the hometown before you leave especially if you are going in the opposite direction.

You check again and again if your saris, valuables, jewellery, books, and electronic devices are packed safely and how many important items of how much weight you can carry with you. You throw a party in the half-packed house to empty the booze bottles and go out for dinner. You transfer the gas connection, cancel the cable and wi-fi subscription, buy insurance and arrange for the transport of your personal vehicles. If you are leaving a house with space large enough for a kitchen garden or growing a crop, you look longingly at it as also at the fruit growing on the trees, fully realizing the new occupant of the house would also not be able to enjoy the bounty  because some alert mind and deft hands would clear it before the former steps in.

One also goes through the unnecessary custom of farewell lunches and dinners and the formality of making and listening to hackneyed expressions in speeches on these occasions. The cumbersome exercise is also deciding what to do with the ritual gifts handed over in such meetings as your luggage is already packed and maybe has gone ahead to the next place of posting. To be truthful, most of the times, your mind already gets on to thinking what to do if the brightly wrapped paper contains this or that.

Short time relief is experienced only when the whole house is packed and loaded in trucks (sometimes to be loaded further on a train) to transport it to the next place of posting.

Finally, the day arrives and you leave the station, a tear or two lingering on the edge of your eye for leaving some good friends and a dull ache in your bosom over having to leave your job which besides taking care of some indulgences, was a refuge from the spouse’s cloistered world within the organization. Yet, a part of your heart sings as you are being rid of some bad memories and the people who you blame for creating them. (The latter is a stronger consolation.)  

Perhaps the journey is long and a considerate friend like Anuradha has packed food for you in a cardboard shoe box because she knows the variety of foods at the farewell meals must have played havoc on our systems.

The rest of the exercise- the unpacking, the settling in and other related matters will be continued in part II next week.

                                                             

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