My family moves a lot. Not the one I was born into — they stay put: same street, same house, since 1968. We move because of the husband. You could call him a nomad. He thrives on change; in six months, he’s restless and raring to move; and his itchy foot is infectious. I say this as someone who had lived in the same house until I got hitched. I had loved it — the stability, the security of knowing everybody in the colony; of never needing to throw out anything, not even my fat 12th standard science records ...
And then, the Nomad walked into my life. I fell for his sharp nose, and his voice, when he asked me “where’s the rest room” (referring to what we called the ‘toilet’). So we got married, and moved.
House No. 1 was in a sleepy street in a sleepy town — Tiruchi. It had coconut trees and friendly cats. Oh, and bossy neighbours. But when you’re newly married, as if you care. Why, we even came back and visited them after we had moved. To another sleepy street, in the same town. And that time, with the baggage, we took along a sleepy bundle. The daughter had arrived.
“Now that you have a child, you must settle down,” friends and family advised us. They meant well. So I went around asking people for good school options — the daughter was almost nine months old! Then the husband’s feet began to itch. In a few months, we moved to Chennai.
The apartment was perfect. If I looked out of the window, I could wave to my daughter, in her playschool sand pit. But usually, it was her teacher who waved back. She scolded me for waving. “How will she ever settle down, if you keep doing that?”
The waving stopped when we moved to another apartment. This time, though, the bank had lent us a lot of money and we bugged a lot of carpenters and it became our ‘dream house’. We took visitors on ‘the house tour’. We pointed out the carved beading and the big mirrors and the textured wall finish and looked all modest when our ‘fine taste’ came in for praise.
We lived there for six months. By now, the nomad had external help — he had joined an IT company. They transferred him all over Europe.
In the beginning, to their credit, they didn’t quite say that: they just said ‘go here’ and threw a dart on the map. And when he had settled down nicely, and had found the Indian store, they asked him (nicely, of course) if he’d like to move. He always obliged.
When the daughter was small, we only made ‘recce’ visits. (Recce is a fancy word for sitting in an apart hotel, and watching TV with a toddler in a language neither of you understand, until the husband comes back when he’s very hungry, and very tired and the park is closed). But when she was five, we moved with eight cardboard boxes and enough sambar powder to last a siege, to London.
The London house was a ‘split-level maisonette’. The real estate man had highlighted all the good points — and there were many — and the husband was sold! He signed the rental agreement, and moved in. We joined him in summer. The split-levels were hard work — lots of stairs to vacuum. When winter came, we realised what was so beautiful in summer and autumn — the very high ceiling, very wide glass windows and terrific views from the 10th floor — was impossible to heat. The heating bills soared, but my feet and fingers cracked from the cold.
We were actually relieved when we had to move. Back to Chennai. But we were only there until we got out visas stamped. To go to Holland.
We flew to Amsterdam when the daughter was in Class 2. A veteran at making new friends, she made Dutch, Japanese and English ones. She spoke many languages, ate many cuisines, and loved it. I hated it. I was ‘possibly the only Indian woman who can’t cook well’ (not my words!). It was a blessing when we moved to Edinburgh.
Scotland took my breath away. It was all so beautiful, I often cried happy tears. But then winter came and froze everything. ‘Cold’ took on a new meaning. It stayed well below freezing. I slipped and fell on the ice; my knees seized up on especially chilly days; and yet, I didn’t want to leave. The daughter loved her school, the husband his job, and we all loved the city, the country...
So, of course, we moved. The last time, we told ourselves and everybody. Nobody believed us. But we came back to Chennai anyway. We refurbished the apartment. It took a little over two years for it to become home. And the husband began asking, “Aren’t you a little bored?”
My heart skipped a beat. “But why ever would you want to leave this lovely city? Everybody here understands me, I speak the language, I belong here,” I argued. The husband would back down. For a week. And he would ask again, “Aren’t you a little bored?”
Bored again A few weeks later, the daughter said yes, she was, indeed bored; and that she’d like a change, thank you very much. “I like new experiences, meeting new people, making new friends ...” she said, her eyes shining with excitement. The husband scratched his itchy feet and picked Mumbai. Because there they speak not one, but two languages I do not know at all.
And that’s why I’m sorting and sifting and chucking, for the tenth time in 19 years.
“There’s going to be so much stability in your life! I promise you, we will stay in the same house, in the same street, for two years,” the husband told me when the truck left with our goods.
“How come?” I asked suspiciously.
“I’ve signed a lease with a lock-in period of two years. The penalty to break it is just too stiff ...”
aparna.m.karthikeyan@gmail.com
