Patriots for a day

Unpacking life at a new destination

 

Last week I had talked of ‘people like us’ in transferable jobs who have to move to a different city every two to three years. I had recalled the activities included in the whole exercise of packing up before you leave a city. Some people had even identified with that. So the next step naturally is, what happens when you reach the new city?

Even though you live out of suitcases, the few days in the transit accommodation/guest/rest house is the only time the lady of the house is at peace because the energy-draining household chores are not to be taken care of. Yet, a fresh to-do list is already growing in size somewhere at the back of your mind and very soon appears in a physical shape on paper or a doc file. The top priority on this generally is school/college admissions and looking for the house.  

If you are lucky, which most of us are not, the house is in a fairly tolerable condition, so when the kit arrives, you can start the other painful exercise of unpacking. But that has never happened in my life, so the house has always been a big cause for concern.

My experience has been similar to that of almost all of us. You look at the miniscule choice of houses, zero in on the one which is the best of the bad lot and requires the minimum of repair work, and decide you would make it your home for the next couple of years. Then start your daily trips to the accommodation allotted to you.

Everything from the main gate to doors, latches, windows, windowpanes, damp walls,  damaged plaster, seeping floors, electrical fittings, plug points, plumbing, water inlets and outlets, drainage, plants, lawn and boundary wall is gone over with meticulous care. Your keen eyes try not to miss any holes from where frogs and snakes can get in, the hinges of the cupboards, the shelves in the kitchen, the termite-infested woodwork and the painting etc. You try to decide where to put up the TV, the washing machine, the fridge, the computer etc. Everything has to be done now, or later the maintenance department would have hundreds of reasons or excuses to not do it. So depending on your position, you warn, rebuke, convince or cajole them to do it fast and well.

Old occupants: The condition of the house depends a lot on the how the old occupants had kept it. To give the devil his due, it is said that the houses civil engineers have lived in, are in the best condition even though they do not seem to get much credit for working in their actual official job.

One house we moved into had 34 plug points in the drawing and dining rooms because the earlier occupant was an electrical engineer. I was told wherever the couple sat, they got a plug point fixed into the nearest wall to plug in their devices and appliances. One of the strangest things I have seen in my life was the hole near the floor in the bedroom-bathroom wall. I was told Mem Sahib kept the washing machine in the bedroom and that hole was the water outlet into the bathroom.

It is only in a couple of positions that you get a furnished house. In the first few months of moving into such a house, I would find sewing needles stuck in sofas and heavy curtains. I collected all of them and believe me, there were 14 in all. It was a surprise that none of the needles ever stuck into the occupants’ body parts when they sat on the sofas.

On the other hand, I used to get hearty praise for the beautiful country roses & kenna plants in a house we lived in. I would shamelessly admit that it was the labour of love of Mrs Asthana, who lived there before we did..

While you are sweating over the house, telephone conversations and chasing of the truck bringing the kit are also going on. After much heart-burning, the kit finally arrives, the house is ready and the unpacking starts.

Generally the packing and unpacking exercises are in the months of summer and rains because you want to follow the school session. Heat and humidity are a cruel combination for this activity, so this is the time you remind yourself of the romance you had imagined about living in different parts of the country and get on with the job at hand.  

Me, I do not mind packing. It has a purpose to it. If you are feeling hassled, you might as well throw everything into cartons and boxes and forget about it. But unpacking affords no such laziness or carelessness. You reverse the process of packing but with great care. You start with the furniture as also large appliances to check if they need repair or replacing. Then you chart out how much to do in a day. 

Daily you sit on a stool or box and start opening carton after carton, box after box. You line the cupboard shelves, make a list-physical or mental, of what goes where and start emptying the bowels of cartons, boxes, suitcases and containers trying to find the right place for everything. You lose your temper and sometimes your heart cries at the items damaged or broken. You look for a carpenter to repair the broken legs of sofas and almirahs or someone to reshape the mangled pieces. There is so much of waste generated- piles of crumpled newspaper, bubble wrap, yards and yards of cellophane, twine and rope and a mound of cardboard cartons. Even as you empty the boxes, one part of your brain is already looking for ways of get rid of them or trying to find a place to store them for the next move.

Settling in

There is only one rule for interior decoration: the bad patches are to be hidden, so you fix beds, arrange furniture and put up the wall decorations accordingly. You hang the curtains, set up the TV, buy the cable connection, get the inverter connected. All the fittings and fixings are to be taken care of. You uncover and assemble things, rewash everything that goes into the kitchen. You buy groceries and fill up the containers. You arrange clothes. 

You put things not needed all the time like quilts and blankets back in wooden boxes, cover them with beautiful bedsheets and tablecloths and use them as tables or seats. Or if you have an artistic streak in you, you paint them like Nupur Dutt has done and repurpose them.

Photos courtesy : Nupur Dutt

Every nail, thread, spoon, bit of wire or paper has to be given a place and you have to remember where you have kept them to make the household functioning. There are times when something cannot be found in the unpacked stuff and you rush somebody to the market to find it, no wonder then that you gather unnecessary duplicates.

The exercise does not end here. For a few months after moving in, you try to familiarize yourself with the map of the house and where everything is as you wake up in the middle of the night trying to find the light switch.

You also try to keep your grey cells active memorizing the geography of the area.

Neighbours

Fortunately, God has been kind to me in respect of neighbours. Over the years from Chaturvedis, Sinhas, Dutts, Mohans, Dr Srinivasulus to Krishnarajs and  Pandeys, everyone has been generous with filtered water, hot tea, snacks, food and chairs and concerned queries. The bond grew stronger with time and now it is like life-long ties with them.

Similar is the case of house help. Sometimes the adjustment is mutually so satisfying, that you stay in contact for years to come.

Meanwhile, if the language is new, you already have another front to struggle on. You struggle to explain what you want and ignore the smirks on people’s faces every time you say the word wrong or the wrong word and look for some kind helper who can translate.

Children:

There is no doubt that children have a harrowing time because of these transfers. With new books, syllabus and uniform, maybe a new language in an unfamiliar script in a new school, they struggle to find a foothold. It can sometimes be traumatic as they miss their old friends and struggle to make new ones.

My son attended nine schools in his 12 years of schooling from north to three states of southern India and three years in Germany. I tried to convince him that he would be richer learning new languages, trying out different foods, meeting new people, making friends, and being able to adjust to varied environments which would prepare him for all the challenges ahead in life, but how much can a little boy understand when the immediate sorrow of losing everything that is familiar is more painful. I admit he found making new friends, then leaving them and starting afresh  tough. For him there was no excitement of moving to a new city or meeting new people. His last days in a city would see me hosting pal lunches and baking double chocolate walnut brownies so that he was happily occupied when I struggled with packing. Children did not have cellphones, so a friend gone was gone forever. Now though he can search for them on social media, yet the time gap has been so long that most of the children have grown up to be different from their childhood selves and reuniting feels like meeting new people after all.

Vidya didi also recounted how her son felt no sense of hometown or belonging because he went along with his armyman father from one station to another in different parts of the country. Now his own daughters are reliving his childhood as he moves bag and baggage from one cantonment to another every two years. Sometimes these children are happy in college only because they get to live in one city for four years.

As you go to schools explaining to the authorities how having your child on their rolls would put the school on the world map of intelligence, knowledge and achievements in various fields, you are also arranging milk and newspaper delivery, looking for vegetable and grocery stores, tailor and the fastidious ones, beauty parlours. You also leave the unpacking to dress up for welcome parties and overstrain your memory to remember all names at the getting-to-know meetings, even as you subdue your normal self which would have given blunt replies to most of the curious questions. Some of these people have already done serious homework about you and formed their own opinions or decided how to behave with you. You try to find solace in familiar and known faces, if there are any, some of whom too might already have drawn your image in the minds of the rest, based on their own experience.

A couple of times we preceded or succeeded the movement of the man whose job was forcing us to tag along, but that is another story. India is still waking up to women living alone with children and the practical issues of living without a male member in the house are still to be dealt with. 

So the family settles down in the new environment- house, school and job. You stop missing the old place and start appreciating the plus points of the new place. There are new neighbors, friends, responsibilities, places to visit and see, visits of relatives and exchange of experiences with the others. Your inner voice starts to yell – ‘begin your own life’ and you also go from one school or office to another selling your achievements till you can convince someone and land a job. Finally, there is a familiar routine and a life which feels as if it was like this forever. You wonder how it would be when you have to leave the place. Alternatively, you hate the place/climate and curse the moment you were asked to move and long for packing up and running off to a new destination.

The days start falling into a pattern and you get used to the system. Days turn into weeks and then into months. Just as the digits of the year change a couple of times, comes the time when you hear the magic words- ‘transfer order’ and you have to pack and move. Then, like an event manager working on a project, you enact the whole scene once again. 

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