I recently moved from my childhood home of over twenty years. Like most plans in life, it was simmering slowly on the stove of possibility. I wasn’t sure if it would even happen. Until it did.
When you decide to shift, you expect that something as significant would require a magnitude of time and effort proportional to it. But when you start working towards it, there are weeks where nothing happens and days within which everything does. There is a lot of anticipation but little fanfare. The world outside, spinning and revolving around a star, suspended in a swirling galaxy that is surrounded by millions of swirling galaxies, has no way of knowing that with every passing day, within those walls, another world is being taken down, a star, a planet, an atmosphere at a time.
So much of existence is just an accumulation of things. Suitcases upon suitcases of naphthalene smelling-garments – kept but not worn, remembered but not passed down, precious enough to be treasured but outdated enough to not be mended. Graying, sticky photo albums containing memories and relatives, who have since turned to stardust. Dusty boxes of frying pans and juicer-mixers holding anything but what the label indicated. And in crevices of closets and desks: stubs of pencils, rubber-bands, safety pins, bus tickets, food bills, monogrammed pens that don’t work, an abandoned yarn-ball. How did any of this make its way there?
A lot of life lies hidden in overhead attics. Clothes, cutlery, perfumes, lamps, clocks, toys. Things that carried promise when they arrived, enough promise that they were set aside to be used in another time in the future, a better time. That it never came is a testament to the upkeep of things that were unimpressive enough to be consumed daily. Or perhaps if something did break, the temptation to purchase shadowed what lay hidden. So many of these abandoned things could have had a story attached to them if a plate had broken in time. Or a shirt torn. Or a clock damaged beyond repair. Now we look at those in annoyance. What were we waiting for?
So much of being a person is dust. Over the almirahs, under the beds, behind desks, wedged into tiles, shoved into the smallest of nooks and crannies, collecting itself over time, impossible to clean easily. Once the beds were moved around, my mother lamented how much dust had settled despite her best intentions. It reminded me of our running joke; she nudged me to clean my room frequently, citing lessons from the chapter on microorganisms and how pervasive they were. I responded, if they were everywhere, why bother? In the middle of the packing, some cleaning happened, if you’re wondering. You can banter with mothers, you cannot refuse them.
No matter how many things you hoard, and how much life you attempt to stuff in those things, the sum total of your being can be ported across borders in a single truck, with space to spare. Your suitcases may be corpulent and the ticker tape may barely conceal the cardboard boxes but there is scope for more. The grandeur of your belongings is a facade held together by endless screws. It can be dismantled into solitary pieces that are pointless without those tiny metallic beings. All of the world’s fancy things are just blocks of wood or metal held together by spiraling entities.
No matter how adoringly you may have purchased the endless knick-knacks to decorate your home, you can always choose between them when it matters. Not all make it to another place or in one piece. You couldn’t bear to remove them from the wall they hung from but when you had to consider taking them elsewhere, you find it easier to give it away to someone else.
So much of life is trusting strangers. You can prepare all you want but what’s out of your hands is time and control. You can ask the Packers & Movers to turn up early in the morning. You can assume it will take 3-4 hours to pack and load. That you can supervise every bit of the job and ensure nothing stays behind. That the driver knows the quickest way. That there will be no traffic. That the other apartment complex will honor the piece of paper they said was enough to admit you inside. That everything will be carted and unloaded quickly. That the truck won’t run off to another state and sell off your stuff.
Despite your best efforts, something always breaks. A dent, a crack, a wonky wooden leg, a caved-in metallic frame, a shattered glass. There are casualties during migration, even without war. What leaves home may not enter another the same way. What is precious though, travels with you. You wouldn’t trust the professionals with the frame of your grandmother’s picture who is making this move in spirit but not in person. You can’t expect them to add another layer of bubble wrap to the documents that define your existence on this planet. You can’t pay anyone to carry your journals that reveal more of you than your closet ever will. For this, there are bags kept discreetly in the car that will follow the packers’ truck.
Try as you may, something packed is never discovered again. Though boxes and cartons may be labeled and sealed, fridge magnets go missing into an erstwhile dimension. Hand towels lie hidden in a box that isn’t opened before it is stored somewhere else. Like in life, it’s the little guys that go unaccounted for. A missing bed is inexcusable. Missing towels are just an inconvenience.
You grasp that if packing things was a headache then unpacking them is a migraine. The charm of finding space for the things you brought over with love turns into annoyance at the sheer volume of what’s left to unload. The process of making a house a home takes days, even weeks, even though the people who inhabit it are the same. But taking it apart is a day’s work, if you’re efficient. You can pay people to pull things apart and put them together. You cannot pay them to preserve and rebuild your home. There are some services out of the reach of capitalism. For now.
You can live in harmony for years without incident and without knowing anyone’s names but it takes all of 10 minutes for people to discover you’re an ass. I realized a neighbor was one when he threw a tantrum upon being asked to move his car because the Packers & Movers truck couldn’t turn on the street. Around 8-10 cars were to be moved. Only he protested. Within minutes, I heard past stories of him not getting along with others. Reputation proceeds name. Or number plates.
More people are tuned to your life than you would have guessed. In the afternoon, Mom sent me to buy some ice-cream for the Packers & Movers men. On my way, a neighbor stopped me, not to ask, but to confirm where and why we were moving. He knew already. I only had to confirm his statements. Who told him?
If you’re lucky, you get to leave your home with more people added to your family. And those who are no longer with you end up moving nonetheless, in borrowed sweaters and shawls, in chipped glasses and plates, in those cellophane albums retrieved from the attics. And as you age and look in the mirror, you see biology work its magic, and you see them in you, in your eyes and nose and phrases and habits.
It registers when you have to change the shipping address in a bunch of e-commerce orders, and you pause for a minute to fill the address bar in forms. Friends who haven’t met in a while realize you can’t catch-up over the same haunts. A new park is to be discovered for the occasional run or two. A new cafe is to be located for the coffee and reading session. Lanes and roads have to be ingratiated as second nature. The grocer, milkman, press-wallah, et al. are to be introduced with their schedules. Neighbors are to be welcomed, although you spot the cranky one because you parked your car in their slot one time.
Tired or not, life goes on. Meetings are to be taken, weddings are to be attended. Lunch, dinner, and the whole shenanigan of survival continues without break. It takes a minute for the brain to register where the glasses, plates, and spoons lie. Where the sugar container is. How the sonorous ring of the bell sounds. What the water tastes like.
The fear of change gives way to your innate ability to adapt. Settling in is akin to dipping in water. Once the jolt goes, you can sink in deeper until you trust the water to keep you afloat. And it does. Before you know it, all of it clicks. Us humans are conditioned to homeostasis. Drawn to equilibrium and routine. And once you’ve established the semblance of one, the house starts to morph in your eyes. The atmosphere, the planet, the stars from a previous life that seemed trinkets, grow into their celestial presence. The world outside stays unaware yet another time as a universe comes into existence.
The story of our universe is that there was a Big Bang and millions and millions of years later, people arrived. In this story, people arrived first, and a universe followed, not with a bang but tiptoeing quietly, while they were asleep in a new home.
Candid Wallflowers 
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