Notes from an almost-empty-nester
Dropping by quickly today to share a slice of my hometown.
I was in Lucknow this last fortnight for my father’s surgery. I arrived two days in advance and was a little wound up. A day before the surgery my sister dragged me out for a morning spin. There’s a particular road I want to show you, she said. And with that we drove off and here’s where we landed.
Continue reading “A little bit of Lucknow”
April always is the most eventful month of all. This is the time that the children finish their exams, get to see their papers and we travel to Lucknow.
This year we also changed houses (in the same city though).
We hadn’t shifted in a decade so it was a huge step. The amount of clutter we accumulate is amazing. I am pretty proud to say that for once I gave the hoarder in me a rest and got rid of quite a bit of it. Nope, it wasn’t easy but having done it I feel lighter and happier.
Settling in the new house remains a work in progress since we left things midway to make the annual trip to our hometown. That’s something I like to think of as non-negotiable. Not only do two sets of parents wait for us anxiously each year, but also it is my annual recharge more than any other holiday I take through the year.
What with shuttling between hardware stores picking out things for the new house and coordinating with carpenters while also trying to help the children with their studies, April was crazy. The pressure took much of the fun out of doing up the house but in the end I’m grateful most of it is done. It’s going to be a while before I get the new house in order but I have to keep telling myself that there’s no hurry.
While saying goodbye was hard it was gratifying to realise how very many connections I’d made over the years without even realising it. The farewells from friends, acquaintances and everyone in between were warm and heartfelt.
is something I cannot but be grateful for. There’s something exciting and happy about doing up a new home despite the work it entails. The curtains have to go up and the ACs fixed but most of all I’m looking forward to re-organising 12 whole cartons of books. I’ve saved it up for the last as a delicious pleasure. And I’d love for ideas on how to organise them. Should I go author-wise or genre-wise or should it be according to the continent they’re set it? This is going to be fun!
Through the crazy last month it was reading, friends and reading-with-friends that kept me happy. I don’t think I’ve spoken about it earlier, but I’d been longing to join a book club – a real live one – for a long long time. Finally, at a cafe near my new home, one was launched and obviously I was there at the very first meeting. It was as wonderful as I’d imagined and I’m looking forward to happy times.
I also buddy read 1984 by George Orwell. This was my third time reading it and I managed to do so without skipping a single page. That was a bit of a feat because it gets heavy and pedantic in bits. It was good to chart my progress along with that of others and that kept me going.
..shuttling between multiple homes, for I have more than one here in Lucknow. Somedays when I’m torn between how I should divide my time between the large family I wish everyone lived in different cities so I could have undivided time with everyone. However, in my saner moments I realise how wonderful it is to have them close by, despite the time-management I have to do. I’m set for flitting between my parents’ home and my in-laws’ as also those of uncles and aunts and cousins and childhood friends. I know the month shall fly past and I’m looking forward to it.
Linking up with Vidya’s Gratitude Circle.
Last November I went home on a short trip for my college reunion. It was the first time I was there without the children and it felt strange, too quiet. One morning I took my cup of tea to the swing on our terrace.
It was a cool morning and the sun felt good on my face. The tea was hot, with a hint of ginger, a little sweeter than necessary, just the way I liked it. Multihued bougainvillea bloomed cheerily in large planters at the far end of the terrace. The freshly watered plants gave off a delicious petrichor.
This wasn’t the house I grew up in. My parents shifted from our University home to this, their own bungalow, about a decade ago, when they both retired. And yet how easily I called it home. The children of course had known no other. This was their nani’s house. Each summer when we went to visit, they marked the room on the terrace as their territory, forbidding anyone to go there in their absence. Such was the sense of belonging. But me? I moved out long ago. I don’t have many memories in this house, there’s no history.
How has this house, where I spend just a few days each year, come to mean ‘home’?
Perhaps it is because of the sounds of the city that seep in uninvited – the North Indian lilt in the call of the vegetable vendor on the road outside or the maids exchanging gossip and greetings in a familiar language before they rushed off to their chores.
Perhaps it is the flowers that bloom in profusion no matter where my parents live. From our first home in the old city where together they sifted mud and gravel, adding just the right amount of sand to coax out the largest roses, to the carpet grass in our second home that they lovingly tended, spending long hours with gardeners discussing which seasonals should go where, to these gorgeous Bougainvillea here on the terrace, we’ve always had flowers.
Perhaps it is the odd pieces of furniture that have survived the moves, like this swing that I sit on, each creak familiar, each squeak telling a story, every languid move bringing with it a memory of long hours lounging on it mugging up for a Geology exam or solving Math equations.
Or perhaps it is simply the sense of space that ‘home’ has always had, the sense that I try to bring to my flat, hoping to make it a home for my children. I have always loved my home, no matter where I’ve been but it isn’t the same. I can never quite re-create ‘home’, perhaps because the feeling is only in my head.
Or perhaps it is the comforting presence of my parents as they sit talking, bickering vigorously about everything from why he shouldn’t travel so much to why she shouldn’t stay so long on Facebook.
Perhaps it is all of that.
Perhaps home is not a physical place after all but a feeling, a feeling that I belong.
This winter we decided to change our quilts.
It was like the passing of an era.
For years we’d used the ones I’d carried from home when I moved to Delhi for my first job, decades ago. These weren’t the light fluffy ethnic creations one finds these days. Nor were they anything like modern comforters.
These were big fat heavy cotton quilts encased in old-fashioned paisley patterned cotton cloth.
Up in the North, seasons are well defined. Winter is winter and summer is summer and the twain barely meet. Sometime after October when the days began to get shorter and the nights slightly cool, it would be time to pull out the quilts. Quite a ritual, that was. We waited for the massive storage boxes to be opened and the quilts taken out, officially heralding the arrival of winter.
They’d be laid in the sun for a day to rid them of the smell of naphthalene balls. Then, encased in crisply ironed white cotton covers, they were ready to be snuggled into. When you pulled one on, not the slightest whiff of a draft dared enter. They were the best partners to have on long winter nights when your teeth chattered and your feet refused to warm up.
If the rain gods decided to visit, the quilts would be out all day. We’d sit long hours wrapped in them, despite the heater burning bright. We’d munch peanuts with coriander garlic chutney and tell endless stories. And when it was time for bed we’d shake them off to rid them of peanut husk and cuddle down for the night. The faint smell of naphthalene balls mingled with that of peanuts and mum’s Lakme moisturiser and lulled us into the best sleep ever.
After years of use, the cotton would gather together in bunches becoming a thick, tough, heavy mass. Then it was time to look out for the rui dhunane wale. They roamed the streets calling out ‘rui dhunwa lo’ accompanied with the twang of their instrument. They’d get out the cotton and bit by bit transform it back into soft and fluffy balls to be refilled into the case. Freshly filled it would be carried up to the terrace or laid out in the courtyard. Then, our grand moms would sit for hours in the afternoon sun, their daily chores done, gossiping about friends and family as they threaded the quilt. Once done it was ready to use again, good as new.
Those weren’t just quilts, they were a bit of my childhood, perhaps that’s why I clung onto them for so long. But then, old has to yield place to new, and so we finally gave them away. As we turned in for the night in our brand new comforters the Husband said, so very rightly, ‘Woh baat hai nahin in me. They’re just not solid enough!’
For more winter nostlagia do drop by my older post here.
The irony of life is that each time one makes a rule to handle it, it goes and does something (quite on purpose, I’m certain) to make that rule completely absolutely redundant. That’s its way of keeping us on our toes. A not very nice thing to do, but that’s how life is.
If you’re one of the few sweet wonderful people who have been dropping by my blog despite the minimal activity here, you will remember I mentioned that for some time I had been feeling friendless and lonely. Anyhow, so then I went ahead and decided I’d try to make my own happiness. And I did. I took myself to lunch, went for solitary walks, crafted a little bit, did some neat bit of colouring, read, had mini binges on Netflix (Gilmore Girls which, by the way, is a fabulous series) and I was quite happy.
Just when I thought I was in a good space by myself, all manner of friends, delightful ones at that, began to show up in places I’d never imagined, as if to convince me that life really was better with friends.
As I was ending my walk one morning a couple in our complex carried me off for another round. I’d known them for a while but never really interacted much with them. I have no clue what made them overrule all my ‘nos’ and drag me along.
With them I discovered this huge tract of land, barely a five-minute drive away, and had the most delightful walk. I have to admit I enjoyed their company almost as much, maybe more. Only rarely do you meet a couple so positive, so happy, so mutually appreciative of each other. I felt blessed to have been included in their little circle with a standing invitation to join them any/every morning.
Then, I bumped into another acquaintance/friend and we got talking. As we ranted about life, specifically the kids and the education system, it turned out her daughter was facing the very same issues as mine. There really is nothing more comforting than meeting someone with the same stresses as yours and trying to figure your way out together. And so we fixed a coffee date which I’m looking forward to.
Oh and the biggest biggie of all – I went to my college reunion. That should ideally have been a whole post in itself but the writing slump I’ve been in, took that away from me. When first I heard of the meet I was quite certain I wouldn’t go. And then my sister who always begins with ‘Don’t go if you don’t want to but think about it’ and then proceeds to work on me in insidious ways, did just that. Before I knew it I found myself booked to my hometown. As usual my sister-in-law stepped in to take the children for four whole days. I maintain I struck gold when I married the Husband as much for him as for his family, maybe a tad more for his family considering he’s not around too often these days and his sister is there. Always. So there I was in Lucknow revisiting the campus, interacting with teachers but most of all spending time with old friends.
Time had chipped away at the cliques of our youth, mellowing differences, easing friendships, letting us laugh at shared memories. All in all I totally root for reunions.
I know this is turning out to be one long rambling post but I have to mention this last incident. Early last month my site was hacked. In complete panic I reached out to my service provider and to their credit they sorted me out in a jiffy but at a bit of a cost. Later I found out a lot of other bloggers had faced the same issue and unlike me they reached out to other blogger friends for help and managed it with much little stress and at a lower cost too.
Sigh!
It didn’t even occur to me to ask for help. I wonder why, in times of crisis, I only tend to draw up on all of my own reserves and can think of no one at all. That’s something I need to remember. In the words of JK Rowling:
Replace ‘Hogwarts’ with ‘life’ and I have my November lesson.
I’ll end with a great sense of gratitude for friends and acquaintances this November. Without them it would have been a dull dull month.
PS: Thank you all of you for helping me with N’s pen-paper Vs Tab decision. I’ve decided to stick with pen and paper for now and give her the tab during the holidays when she would probably/hopefully be doing more writing. She’s also writing in her journal so that’s something.
Linking up with Vidya’s Gratitude Circle.