Moving Experience: Lock ,Stock and Barrel

There are times in everyone’s  life  ,even if they have been  the side kick of Dawood Ibrahim   all their lives  ,when  Bhagawad  Gita  starts sounding true and one regrets not having taken its teachings seriously  , specially   while inside the temples of  consumerism called malls.

I have been having these pre -enlightening moments every time we decide to shift house. In last 8 years I have   set up  and wound up  house at 5  different places and each time being in a different phase of life. Each time Hubby and I  start  up with   a delusional   WOW , pretending to be two great travel   enthusiasts  of NAT GEO willing to survive on a backpack  , but as things start progressing we are  reduced to two house holders, prisoners of our own attachments to worldly things and trying to preserve the material things of our house  which would bring even a Magpie to shame.

Once  we decide to move  ,for initial few days the conversations  revolves around   “ should we keep this or chuck this?” This  phase of chucking things brings a great sense of achievement .We throw  expired medicines, old magazines , clothes and shoes . These decisions are actually easy to make as they are about  the things anyway out of use and are just lying  around for a long time as there was no urgency to make a decision.

There are  too many deliberations before some  decisions based on ground realities whether to chuck  , dispose ,sell or give away  certain things .We may  have  had some heated arguments prior to chucking things  but once  we are  in full agreement about  chucking certain things  and  show them the door ,we are pleased as punch to look  at the cobwebs  underneath them in the  empty space they  have created. After all ,it wasn’t a mere material thing chucked ,it was  a victory  over our   tendency of  attachment to material possessions.

The  sight of dust and cobwebs  never disappoint us. We gleefully hug  each other after each small thing sent out of the house. Out go his old study table and  technical manuals and I hug him ; out go my old magazines and physics books  and he hugs me back ; I remember so very distinctively that our most passionate hug was  when we threw away  a  bag  full of video cassettes .Yup ! the  video cassettes of movies we have always been planning to   see together some day . The darned  technology did not want to wait until we got our leisure. Only one  decade more and  both kids would be in college ,we done with changing jobs and places and then all we needed to do was  buy chips ,curl up in bed and watch those movies which we had selected  so carefully. On the hind sight  we   were not throwing away our dream of togetherness , we were chucking   only  the store keeping job  associated with it  plus the possibility of chips being replaced  by  metformin  cannot be hushed away.

A time came to chuck a plethora of  old mouses , a UPS of our very first PC ,many  wires and USBs.  We had contemplated very deeply about  giving the monitor and key board away to someone who needed it but the search for the ‘right candidate’  has always been very difficult , ( you do not agree?  go ask Congress party).

We still have our  very   co owned molded  ,non wheeled suitcases which had travelled   with us on our honeymoon  and  now  leading  a retired life housing  old mosquito nets and bed sheets for two decades . Once the honeymoon was over ,as an  integral  part of our household  those suitcases for a long time symbolized  romance in our marriage .Being   on the loft, forgotten  , catching dust yet  still usable  and reachable .While we were paying school fees, EMIs and entertaining ourselves with kids’ annual functions ,the romance was  waylaid for attention  dumped  inside those suitcases. We are keeping these  suitcases till our last breath for the sake of nostalgia  ,this is one of the rarest points  of agreement we have reached .

I found it easy to give away usable stuff like kids’ blankets, old bicycles, school bags ,toys, CDs etc ,happy that some other kids would use it .But  one has to be a real brave heart to throw useless stuff . I have no definite answer to what to do with kid’s scrape books ,their school projects and few  letters , containing  sonorous   sugary feelings,   exchanged  between  hubby and myself which now both of us are apprehensive to revisit or  even show to each other for the fear of them sounding like election manifesto.

Mom consistently added to this dilemma by every year knitting sweaters for her darling son- in -law who never could find a job in a hill station . His oil career  took him to  various sea shores and deserts and, with every job change I resignedly buy copious quantities of moth balls to preserve her love knit in wool.

You think from heart and allow to get yourself emotional ,take it from a veteran  yours truly that you will end up carrying even the plastic tubs and mugs and brushes  from your washroom but if you let Bhagwad  Gita’s  philosophy of “ only soul transcends the body and material” rub off  on you ,you would just float in the   superior surreal  state of trance and would tell yourself that  you can take only as much with you in your suitcases and rest is the soft copy  in memory .