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Published
in Gulf News, June 6, 2006
Travelling
light
The
last
six years have gone by so fast that I feel I haven't been in one
place long enough to put down a bag - leave alone roots. My fourth
change of country in five years was back to my hometown; but it
had changed so much that it has taken me nearly a year to settle
in again.
And
the instant I feel I have made the city home again, it's time to
pack up and move. Reactions to the news that my wife and I are going
to the US for a couple of years are mixed. Some people still look
at it as a journey to the land of opportunity. But most shake their
heads and give us their condolences. There was a time when international
flight was the natural thing to do, but now people who leave are
looked at as being ungrateful and foolish.
We
just shrug and say that now's the time for us to be hitting the
road, before we get any inexplicable longings for offspring - something
we've been assured will happen to us before too many years have
passed.
It
gets a little harder to merely shrug when looking around a devastated
room full of cardboard boxes and the detritus of daily life: ATM
slips, discount coupons, long-dead invitations, impotent Crocins,
scratched CD-ROMS. It's difficult to be young and carefree when
the packers are two hours late, and the glassware is suddenly looking
as if it'll need a 20-foot container rather than the two cardboard
boxes we've assigned it.
Luckily,
a monumental task for us is just another day's work for the packers.
It isn't long before our life is itemised, boxed and reduced to
the two cubic metres that will bob across the oceans, 45 days behind
us on our journey across the world.
And
as we pack away possessions, we pack away friendships. Our move
comes just as my best friend and his wife are returning to the city
after many years in Chennai. The timing is both sad and convenient.
The day they empty out cardboard boxes, we take those boxes to fill
them up. As they set up their apartment, we strip ours.
So
we curse and bless these few overlapping days. He sets up his Xbox
and we play one nominal game: a bout that would ordinarily have
been the first of thousands. We watch a quick scene on his new home-theatre
set up; the moment is fleeting, but we are well aware of the happy
hours that would have been.
But
finally, my wife and I know that friendships will endure. Our stress
- for we are quite stressed - comes from imagining ships sinking,
or crane cables snapping, or thieves plundering. Our tension is
triggered by the movement of physical possessions, and so I take
a breath and think about what most Indians have been told from childhood.
'Don't attach yourself to worldly things' goes the advice in our
epics and holy books. Even our comic books. There is no point in
worrying about spatulas, CDs, frying pans and speakers getting to
LA in one piece.
It
seems to work. Being brought face-to-face with the potential loss
of precious possessions drives home how life without them wouldn't
actually be very different. Hearts would still beat, relationships
would go on, and, I suspect, a sudden lightness of being would set
in.
So,
as our two cubic metres sail away to join us later in a strange
land, we go to the airport thinking about how little we actually
need to carry with us to stay whole.
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