Stories Happen

A simple move, not at all that easy, must be done. If you change the place you live, you pack up all your stuff and go. Me, it is a complicated matter with its own rites of passage–

I need to reminisce about how many happy memories were spent in these walls. Of the many victories celebrated and the bitter taste of defeat sweetened by a hopeful word. I remember the parties, the get-togethers; the place filled up by people, each with a link to me. Somehow, by a miracle of fate they all transpired to be under this roof at the same time, and all made possible by this place. Having one-to-one dinners with a friend; eating out of take-out boxes while holding whimsical conversations about our daily schedules. Those hours spent scribbling omens and motifs on the pad with the phone to my ear; whispering words of consolation to a heartbroken friend or just catching up with an old friend after being struck by an acute sense of déjà vu.

However the moments that really shine through are the ones spent alone, staring at the distorted serenity of the moon, through the skylight in the corner of the bedroom. Watching a procession of clouds stream by, marching on the beats of falling raindrops, and yet sitting by the side stranded in my pensive thoughts. Or, those monologues in front of the mirror, which always made me, look thinner, trying to gain confidence. It’s rueful to think that all this will be just another line in my story of a lifetime.

Every nook and cranny has a memory associated with it. A story tucked in here, a wordless poem spilled there. The cracked cement floor with its myriad array of shapes and hues mirrors the inner self irrespective of the mood. If seen from the door of the bedroom, a collection of dots resembles an amused smile, from another angle in a different light, a ghastly leering skull. The walls I spent many a hour boring with my eyes stare back at me – blank; as if already ready for a fresh start. They have already bid me farewell, but I still cling on.

To what? Every cardboard box is gone. Is it that easy, to just get up and go out the door, never to come back? Just throw away the keys? To walk by indifferently every time I cross this street on my way? To surrender the right of calling it my own? Is it that easy, like all the tenants in the building’s past have done before?

I confess its quaint charm enchanted me for a while, but after, there are no more enchanted days. The fascination which seemed it would last an epoch, is already wearing off. The magic has been discontinued; the quaint charm is off-centre. I tried to hold onto it for too long, in the end it was just another exercise in useless futility.

Now I need to go. It won’t answer my questions anymore. It is too mundane, too old, too known. Once it seemed its beauty was in the knowledge of every little secret, from the creak of the third floorboard from the door to the small space just enough for ants to crawl through beneath the kitchen counter. Now, it dawns on me - I was living in a fool’s world. All of a sudden, the ‘solid ageless’ walls have cavities I never knew of; secret passages for the rats, doors waiting to collapse on the next shove.

The company tells me it is beyond repair, and is surprised how I was able to stay here for so long. I am lucky they say that I got the best use out of it when I could. And now, I should get out before the whole thing just caves in on my head while I am reading a newspaper. It is beyond salvage for my modest means.

So it was ordained, and so it is. I guess I’ll go. I’ll walk out this door I have considered open for a long time, to close it permanently behind my back. Perhaps, one day I may return with nostalgia, to gaze at it and invoke the happier memories I left behind, but not for a long, long time. Meanwhile, I guess I’ll treasure the ones I do take.

The lesson learnt from this painful process of disassociation is to throw away the extra baggage and breakables I have, it is just too much of a hassle to take care of them anyway. I’ve already found a new place, one of those like-a-million-others-pre-fabricated tenements. It happily merges in and does not stick out. Still, I have signed the rent agreement for the shortest duration possible. Till the workplace is close to this place, I’ll survive here. The moment it becomes inconvenient in anyway, I’ll pack up and move in a jiffy. That is why; I have also gotten rid of all those clothes I always promise myself I will fit into again someday; along with all the extra baggage.

Better not have much stuff, because it just builds up my inertia to move. That feeling of belonging and laziness to let things be slowly creeps in, to not change, to hang onto the vestiges of a lost life are the things that make the process so intrusively painful. Don’t sink your roots too deep. Sometime or the other, the roots will wither away into dust whence they came from. I guess it IS easy.

To do what, you ask? To move on.