Home - a space between togetherness...
How would you describe your HOME? What are its constituents and how much time does it take to build these constituents? These questions as such seem to be very superficial or unworldly in the normal course… but not when someone sees their home being shattered into irretrievable pieces…
About two months back, we shifted from Mumbai to Bangalore.. lock, stock and barrel… and as a normal practice, movers and packers were engaged to pack and transport the stuff efficiently and safely… practice was right but packers were wrong… they messed up big time with extreme negligence… what was packed immaculately in Mumbai was delivered in damaged condition in Bangalore… what happened in the two days of transport is best left to imagination… putting up some pictures here to help that imagination…
Every single piece of packing came drenched in rainwater… water was dripping from every box… food and liquor, clothes and accessories, books and toys, DVDs and electronic goods, furniture and upholstery, paintings and souvenirs, my heart and my soul… seeing the damaged condition of all our belongings, tears welled up in my eyes… seven years of buildup and fostering lay wrecked and ruined mercilessly in front of us… one would say it was an accident and move on but no, it wasn’t… it was gross negligence on part of the packers… they had not taken adequate precautions to safeguard our things… and there is more… when we demanded an explanation and a compensation for the negligence, the management denied their mistake… after an inspection, all they had to say was “you can dry these things and use them.. nothing is damaged”…
How can such damage be measured anyways? Of what worth are those memories captured in old photographs of childhood, of family and friends (before digitization happened!!)… of what worth are those achievements and recognition in the form of certificates and accolades... of what worth are those remembrances of places seen and people visited in the form of paintings, souvenirs, gifts… of what worth are those walks in hot sultry afternoons on book street to add to our collection of books… of what worth are those days spent in checking out unending sales and arguments with husband back home, as clothes and accessories piled up in all our closets… of what worth are those hours and hours of hard work to make and save enough money to buy all the materialistic pleasures… all of it was rendered worthless by the management of packing company with that one line “you can dry these things and use them.. nothing is damaged”… felt so humiliated that we were in no mood to forgive… our fight with packers and insurance surveyors still continues…
It took one sleepless night and many a tears to regain strength and determination… we started by picking bits and pieces of what was delivered to us, discarding the unusable, restoring the usable, building our home again… in the process, went through the same excitement on seeing ‘end of season sales’, ‘festival sales’… through the same enthusiasm while choosing from the innumerable designs of furniture and fabrics… through the same restlessness while bargaining to the last penny… through the same amount of research and study before buying expensive gadgets… through the same arguments at home on every choice of mine and every spend of his… through the same ‘togetherness’ which tides away difficult times with much ease… today as I look around, there is this sense of contentment that we have moved on from that catastrophe… no fear of another such misfortune as we know together we can build something, that we can be proud of… have captured some glimpses of our home here…
Now ask me that question – How would you describe your Home??.. Knowing very well that bodies and substances don’t constitute a real indissoluble home, I say “Home is that space between togetherness – created by being together, for being together”…
1 comments
Last line is amongst one of the most profoundly original lines I have read in a while! :))
ReplyDeletePS: wo packers ko chhodna mat Gauri... photoz dekh k mera bhi khoon khaulne lag gaya hai... naani yaad dilwaa denaa unko!