Just another mug

"And this is the 27th gift", she said, handing over the last of the set of twenty-seven hand-picked and neatly wrapped presents she'd collected for my 27th birthday. 

"And it's a ..... mug?", I said, a tad disappointedly, after painstakingly unraveling the tape off the golden gift wrapping paper and folding it up neatly so we could reuse the paper again.

"I started to run out of ideas after I hit 24", she said a bit dimly.

"Amma, you could have simply packed the pens individually or even stopped at #10." 

She had bought me a bunch of pens because I'd told her that pens, like all basic stationary, were expensive in the States; each costing a dollar at minimum ("That's sixty-eight rupees, bubba!" my dad had shrieked.) That was then, in 2015, when I was pursuing my master's at USC. It had been 5 years to this discovery and this woman was gifting me a set of pens now for my 27th birthday, pens I'd managed to pilfer from my office pantry, because they were...well, free (and the dollar now in mid-80s on the INR conversion).

"But then, it wouldn't have been 27 gifts now, would it?" 

There was no winning with this woman.

"Thank you!", I said smiling and hugging her, then glancing at the mug. It was the GO-TO Archie's standard, when you ran out of gifting ideas for people or occasions. An archetypal Rakshabandan return-gift, a "mother's/father's day" momento bought using pocket money, a first Valentine's day gift (well, if you started dating in high school), or your daughter's 27th birthday's 27th gift. Archie's had a mug for all occasions and when they didn't, they'd oblige by digitally printing on to their plain mugs, whatever your heart desired and your creativity lacked. 

'Happy Birthday, 

dearest Daughter', 

it read; the D and G working overtime in cursive to hide the lack of artistic influence in the rest of the mug. The body cylindrical, the handle plain, and the text unevenly distributed such that the last bits of the second words almost overlapped with the first letter in both sentences. 

I gave her a tired, dejected smile. Not because I hated the mug, I hated the idea of her having spent so much time and effort on things I did not need or might not use. Her toiling in the harsh Mumbai afternoon sun, finding knickknacks I was too old for and did not have the luxury to carry with the stringent TSA luggage weight restrictions. 

She saw right through my smile and said, "You hate it all, don't you?" 

"No ma, I don't hate it. I just... I just think you could have bought something for yourself instead of these things I may not be able to carry back". 

That was then, the beginning of what we did not know back then, was going to the world-changing global pandemic of COVID-19. Forget luggage, I wasn't even able to get a flight confirmation to sit still in my inbox, without a subsequent cancellation coming in right at its heals. The wait turned days to months and I fell into step, with my perfectly choreographed hybrid India-US working schedule, done entirely remotely from my childhood home, with my parents over me watching dotingly; cooked meals with fresh cut fruits, freshly done laundry, old movie re-runs, et al.

Those months gave me clarity over a thought I'd held close to my chest. Ever since I had left home at 23 yrs of age, I felt like a person who didn't fit, didn't recognize herself anywhere. 

Too foreign to "belong" in the States; a professional Vaulter jumping rental houses or cities every time a lease ended or a contract tenure neared its expiration. Too absent to catch up with things back home in India; as though my parents and friends have moved onto the next best thing and I was stuck on the same verse since 2015. I was always catching up, feeling like I was falling behind or missing out. Like I'd left life happen to me, while people out here were busy living it. 

As the years went by, my "Amma, where did you move the sugar jar?" turned into her or dad's, "Baby, you're a guest, you need not wash the dishes!"

Each trip home felt less and less like homecoming and more like..... a vacation. It haunted me that what was once home was now a reprieve, a PTO transacted temporary escape before life took over again.

However, the lockdown months, staying at home, being with my family, I saw that this was the case with everyone. A sort of FOMO about missing one's own life as a consequence of one's choices. My parents had FOMO about missing seeing their only child grow from a hyper dependent, emotional bag of anxiety and tears to a somewhat self reliant woman sustaining herself and doing fairly ok at it, albeit consistently anxious. My friends had FOMO over the events of my life they'd missed, like I'd over theirs. They all had the same tiny pockets of grief I recognized in myself, yet there they were, living & present. And seeing that spirit in them co-exist with the familiar grief was .... weirdly soothing.

It took me embarrassingly long to realize Amma wasn't just buying pens or mugs. She was buying proof that she'd been thinking about me while I wasn't here.

In November, the restrictions lifted and borders reopened. My United flight had not been cancelled for 20-ish days which was a telling sign, a sign that I had to pack my bags. Holiday's over! 

Six months ago, on my 27th birthday, I was already mentally mapping excuses to leave the mug behind. Luggage limitations, fragility of porcelain articles, usage, yada yada. 

Six months later, as I packed my bags, after having had my morning hot water in it throughout the course of lockdown, I grabbed the cup and carefully bubble wrapped it, stuffing it between my sweaters, without a second thought. 

Here at home, what I've now begun calling my rental caves, I've a small cabinet filled with mugs. 

Some aesthetic, that I have found over the course of this decade, at Target, Ross, Goodwill, and Home goods; every time I go in to pick up "just that one furniture item" that would complete the living room wall or the Skinny Mixes' Flavored Syrups for my morning coffee and walk out with yet another mug I did not need but "spoke" to me.

Some nostalgic, like the ones I've hand-painted at Color Me Mine with caricatures of my favorite characters from shows like The Office or Parks & Rec, the ones from the Wamart home basics' set I'd inherited from my maasi before she relocated to India, the souvenir ones I've picked up from tasting Glü wines and hot chocolates at Christmas markets.

Some gifted by friends who couldn't bear to see me use yet another cracked, deformed, or stained mug. Mugs with lids so my hot water could stay true to its name and not need a third spin in the microwave. Mugs that they (friends) stake their claims at when they're camping in my living room over the holidays. 

At the very back of the cabinet, sits this one. The one I wasn't going to write about when I started thinking of mugs. The one most people write off as just another mug. Little do they know, that a mug picked up so mindlessly at a run down Archie's with its kitschy little calligraphy, is bringing me home wherever I go. 

A house that learned my ghosts

I remember the first time she stepped inside me with shoes still on, apology already forming before her heel touched my floors. She always (and only) apologizes to things that cannot hear her. Doors. Cars. Sides of the CPU when there's a lag.

She stood in the center of my living room with the solemnity of someone entering a temple she footed with her bloodstream. 

Endless documents - application,  inspections, fixes, fees, letters still live in her email like unslept ghosts. I could smell the bureaucratic panic clinging to her, the kind that comes from signing your name so many times it stops feeling like ownership and starts feeling like confession. 

A cage. 

She hates cages, she hates structure. Not structure from routine, but structure that exists because it's a norm. Structure that she doesn't approve of. Like Marriage.

A cage. 

Marriage, she says, is signing your soul off to the Satan named society.

She walked my perimeter that day like she was mapping a new country and simultaneously checking for sinkholes.

She had been here before, through the course of the touring and inspections. Came in with a tape measuring my walls, end to end, taking down the measurements clumsily - half in her Whatsapp personal chat, the other on a teensy scribbling pad and some on her arm. Like she was going to remember which is which. "I know what I'm noting down" she claimed smugly.

She touched my walls like pulse points. She hated the blue almost grey whites the previous owners had chosen to coat the place just to put it on the market. She says it reminds her of the base coat that goes on before the actual shade. Like the peticoat of her granny's saree that she washes with neel detergent liquid. Like hospital walls screaming for color. 

Cage.

Later she would paint them in colors she insisted were "neutral" but were, in fact, emotionally defensive. Warm enough to look alive. Pale enough to never commit to being remembered.

She built a closet inside my ribs with the fragile arrogance of someone who had never held a power drill but believed deeply in YouTube tutorials and late-night determination. She loved tearing down the old frames. A veteran of paper cuts, she confidently started to yank the bearings off with the strength of a mouse and the courage of a naive deer trying to befriend a lioness only to find mysterious bruises all over from frames that seemed to have no rough edges.

She measured the paint pints twice and still got barely enough for a single coat, which she laughed about in a way that sounded suspiciously like relief that imperfection could be repaired with wall hanging mirrors and cheap decor from home depot.

I watched her line my shelves, first with wallpaper. She gave up thrice as she yelled that wallpapers were a conspiracy while disentangling herself from the sticky sheets. Then, with relics of elsewhere.

Miniature elephants that had survived USBP Customs more easily than her emotions. Ticket stubs that had lost their ink but not their authority. Trinkets, plushies, shot glasses purchased in cities where she never drank, preferring instead to let them stand like glass soldiers guarding proof that she once left and returned successfully.

She designed me a movie room as if she were constructing a sanctioned space for alternate lives. She positioned the convertible couch with the precision of someone who wanted the screen to feel close enough to believe but far enough to escape from. She tested acoustics with the free vinyl player cum Bluetooth speaker she won using her company's rewards portal and a karaoke mic that was returned to amazon faster than it took to get delivered.

She put a shiny disco ball (that she scavenged the lengths of the state to obtain from a GenZ vintage store) in the corner and a spot light underneath. She claimed it was for ambience, but clearly it was to hide the mirror that was her face, as she watched her favorite movies indoors. Her favorite form of escapism outside of reading, a hobby she had fallen out of love with in the recent years. Or so I've heard her say as she arranged three large U-haul boxes worth of books borrowed or stolen from free libraries, facebook marketplace, and gifted by well meaning friends.

She watched a few films in this home theatre - Films she had already memorized front to back, mouthing dialogues slightly ahead of the actors like she was correcting their delivery.

Sometimes she watches tragedies there and laughs at scenes that are not meant to be funny. Sometimes she pauses romantic scenes midway, stands up, reorganizes pillows, runs to wash her hands for the nth time, checks her phone, returns, rewinds, rewatches, as if calibrating emotional volume.

At night she moves through me with her fuzzy warm socks, and her footsteps carry the hesitant confidence of someone who still expects the rental company to call and say there has been a clerical error and she must vacate her own life by Thursday.

She arranges each relic and each furniture the way one arranges chess pieces in a game played against memory. She gets irked when her mates check the pieces out and don't place them EXACTLY WHERE THEY BELONG. In the small dust free shape that's left behind where they were picked from.

She places fairy lights and tea-light candles in corners like surveillance devices for loneliness. She keeps all big personality lights off. At night, the space seems like it's hosting a coven of witches about to perform a ouija service. Dark, silent, softly lit with flickering candles.

Sometimes she stands in my kitchen holding a bag of frozen salmon she bought with nutritional optimism and eats her usual yogurt bowl instead. 

She scrolls through conversations that ended years ago, that she revives from the archives folder of her gmail, with the reverence of someone revisiting archaeological sites.

She laughs here. Loud. Real. 

The kind that makes my ceiling vibrate in approval.

She also fights loud like a child prone to tantrums until it ends in tears and then she cries, like a wailing widow.

She also goes still here in ways that make my walls lean inward slightly, the way forests lean during storms they cannot prevent.

She drifts. Often.

I have learned to recognize when she leaves without leaving.

Her body remains seated, usually near the living room couch where afternoon light interrogates dust particles into confession, but her gaze begins to focus on distances that do not exist within my square footage. Her fingers sometimes curl like they are remembering another gravity.

She returns abruptly. Always.

Like someone startled awake in a theater after dreaming inside someone else's dream.

When she returns, she looks around at me the way survivors look at shorelines - relieved, confused, slightly betrayed by safety.

She confirms my counters have been wiped clean with ritualistic discipline, as if outward tidiness could negotiate with inward turmoil, chaos. 

She puts spices in discrete repurposed nut butter jars, organizes them into a catalogue, the index to which lives only in her mind. Yet she uses them emotionally rather than sequentially. 

On the beds and couches that overflow with pillows and linen, she demands blankets be folded with an artistic precision, and yet she collapses into them sideways like a comma in a sentence she is not ready to finish.

I hold her routines. I cradle her collected evidence that she is building something that does not evaporate when morning arrives.

But I also watch her pause in doorways like she is waiting for someone to walk through behind her, someone who exists only in the draft between memory and muscle reflex.

I have sheltered her moods, her aches, ambitious grocery hauls, abandoned hobby equipment, impulsive amazon purchases, and several versions of her that she believes were temporary but have quietly applied for permanent residency.

I contain her stability. I contain her rehearsals of catastrophe. I contain her quiet negotiations with a past that still occasionally knocks without using the doorbell.

And sometimes, when she stands in my center again, the same way she did on the first day, spinning slowly like she is trying to confirm I am still real, I want to ask her something.

Not whether she is happy.

Homes are not naive enough to ask that. I want to ask:

Are you building a sanctuary, or are you constructing a museum for a life you are still not certain you chose?

Where the heart is

Home

It would not be (entirely) wrong to say that I've been a "nomad" for the past decade.

Nomad: 

Pronunciation: Nōmád

Latin: nomas, meaning roaming . A person having no permanent residence. 

Subconsciously as I romanticize or dramaticize (she has a penchant for drama, this one) everyday tidings, I have thought long and hard about home; the concept of it, what does it mean, where is home, where do I truly belong? One may say my birth and childhood home, the place where I spent 2/3rds of my life, where I went from pediatric -> adolescent -> almost adult on paper, is home. And I agreed.

Hence, nomad. I left for the states about 10 years ago, leaving a "permanent" abode and venturing out into the absolute unknown. Maybe not as risqué as shown in "the man vs wild" but not too far off in concept. Ever since, this question has been looming over my head like a hankering hangover. 

One of my most frustrating qualities is the strength of my attachment (or detachment). I am attached, deeply, to people, things, ideas, and sentiments. And it comes as no surprise, that this attachment also extends toward my childhood home. I'd like you to imagine that my soul is made up of rays that fill every crack in the home and mind you, it's an oldie - mi casa, so imagine many! 

(You're reading a piece I wrote, so go along with it, will you?!)

I've dreamt, envisioned, transported, and wept about and for that place, not once or twice but every time I return. That is for landmarks and reminders of every phase of my being and yet, it has an inate ability to bring me unparalleled comfort.

So I was convinced, that there is nothing that could ever come close. I'd always feel like a nomad after leaving home. Too alien too fleeting to belong anywhere else, too remiss too absent to fit right back where I started... because time is a biyotch and does not wait for anyone (especially, the depressed lost souls) to (mentally) move on. 

So I'd say that the 'stary eyed- no worldly experience Noob-quickly turned into a horrified FOB' that stepped into this country would be "shooketh" to learn that the bull was able to put down roots and find a semblance of normalcy (after what seemed like an eternity) in this space.

An unassuming space, a blank canvas that basically said I'll be whatever you need me to be. Saw me and nurtured me through seasons, relations, crises, and opportunities. Gave me reassurance that it'd be my refuge. My space. 

Countless moods, celebrations and brawls, chapter after chapter, my constant. A silent spectator, seeing me trying to build my habitat, when I was actually building my constitution.

Every nook, every corner, I've touched, I've felt, I've lived in. I can confidently say that about this space over any place else where I've resided. 

Today, as I prepare to bid adieu to this house, I'm plagued with all the memories I've created here and an intense desire to leave more traces of me back....maybe filling in that screw hole in the wall (that the superlatively well endowed yet utterly stingy rental company will charge me for) with a love note to this place and caulk-sealing it shut? Maybe carving my initials under the apartment number plate? Maybe penning my name in some blind spot....but I resist. Because that's not her, this space. Loud oversaid, permanent (irreversible) declarations of possession, na. She was never meant to be owned, to be possessed - only to be held.

If there's one thing she's taught me is to love from afar and let time drive the needful. So instead, I will take her medals on my soul. The little crack in my mind she healed by giving me my own space. The small gash in my heart she sealed by letting me see my loved ones enjoy her warmth. The tiny bend in my spine she straightened as she said stand tall.

I'm sure I'll autopilot back here the next few times that I exit the highway from work (habit, just like one would with the new year date 202⅘), I'm sure my chest will feel a little tighter each time I pass by the adjacent mall, I'm sure I'll tell someone I live here only to correct myself mid sentence..

And just like that, in fleeting flashbacks of the past, she'll always be part of me and me, hers. 

Thank you home, for all that you are and have been to 

me. 

Your grateful daughter. 

Depression

It hit me out of nowhere in 2015. 

I wish I could add in a simile to explain its unpredictable nature. I wish saying," it hits you like a ramming vehicle in the blindspot of your car's mirrors" or "its hit you like a thunderbolt" could capture the abruptness and the gravitas of the matter. But it doesn't.

Just like being diagnosed with it doesn't capture its essence from an outside perspective. They'll say you should have seen it coming, the move/the break-up/ the change of work/city/environment/fields/months/days/minutes/seconds should have been a blatant indicator. At the risk of sounding just too dense, it's not.

They'll say you have it better than him/her/it/them. They'll say it's temporary. With each passing breathe escaping their vocals, they will make it so diminutive and guilt you into feeling miserable, for being ungrateful for your existence, lifestyle, materials and stature and privilege. 

They'll provide hollow unsolicited advice like "feel better" , "be happy" , "don't be sad", "don't be a loser/ wuss", " mingle/ excercise/eat/ breathe/sleep more", "take a vacation" and condition you into believing that what you suffer from is nothing but a made up story, a first-world-problem, if you will.

And just like that, they'll abandon you "She's too weird man, always weeping", "he acting pricey and not responding to my texts/calls", "how long is she going to be a partypooper?", " I've tried, he doesn't want to be helped, so to hell with him!"

Wrapped in sheen, shine and monochrome and packaged with a label of self-care, they will market things to soak your hair, skin, fingers and toes in blatantly displaying that 

your crisis is stemming from your physical flaws.

In the end, it'll be as it was before. You. Alone. Solitary. Until you see that the key lies in you. That only you can turn "you against you" to " you for yourself". Whether you have a companion, a drug, a help, or a device...in the end, your war is against yourself and you're your only teammate.

And in the aftermath, there will be no victory calls, no celebrations. There will be no medals and scars to show, no numbers to gloat off of. But there will be a victor, a survivor, a story to tell, a lesson to share. A story that will perhaps help those in the same darkness that once engulfed you. A story that will make u feel that every new battle you face is easier to take on after this feat. So fight it with all your heart, with all your might. Because no one else can or will fight this for you. 

Work-Haul

PS: Wrote this back in 2019 and finally unearthed it from a pile of random musings. Here you go.

--------

Everyday I long for the clock to strike five,

I'd get to go home and bid work goodbye.

But I glance at the time and it's only half past ten,

"Oh well", I sigh "the day has just begun".

So I immerse myself in the abysmal world of toil,

Until thoughts of being overlooked start to make my blood boil.

And I read and read but nothing makes sense,

Until I start to wonder, "am I that dense?"

I gulp down a bottle full of water,

In hopes of me being able to author,

Documents and Reports with technical verbiage,

Funny how I got myself stuck into drafting this garbage!

My mind gets flooded with thoughts of being a misfit,

And then I harp on endlessly about wanting to quit!

Tell me, does it make one dead-beat,

for not having the desire to compete,

In a race to reach nowhere,

Where being contentious is a flair.

Where snobbishness is acceptable for experts

And the world gives you a hard time for being an introvert

Where the vertex is an appraisal

And an offense is a reprisal

So I tell myself to show some valor

The world cannot punish you for candor

Until I notice people starting to walk away

It's almost five, maybe another day

Where my heart sings

The rays of sunshine seeping in 

through that tiny gap in the curtain

The little birdy by my window sill

And the secrets of the world that it spills

The bananas that I organize by shape

My little reading nook and its rustic blanket cape

Sharavati, akruti, aksinya, and vedyayi

Our morning gapshup as I sip my chai

The *line-in* lady creaking through the chinese speaker 

Those hundred cranies where I set my tea cup

Being astounded by your binge watching talent

Or when you relocate spider nests with moves so gallant

Our daily rundown of *What's for lunch, breakfast, and dinner*  

And discussing how the overcast makes everything grimmer

Our make shift dynamic work out zones and moods

Followed by feasting to a wonderful spread of your homemade food

This constant feeling of overwhelming gratitude 

And your tolerance to my ever changing attitude

My room, my books, 

my art, my terrace

my desk, my memories, 

my shelves, my space

I will yearn for it incessantly, I will miss it all

But it's you, my darlings.. that I will miss most of all.

Traces

I had a dream, a vivid one. I am standing by my brown almirah back home, the one with all my notes, books, keepsakes, 22 years of memories.  

As always, I start going through the pile and pick up books to browse. To an outsider, my actions look random. It's like watching a kid trying out candy from a Christmas assortments' box, I certainly must not know what I'm going to get, right? 

Wrong. Because I have a plan. I start with kindergarten calendars (this was our schools version of a planner for every child), making my way up through the grades. Then moving onto junior college, degree college, and grad school. Only this time's different. I've an unwavering focus, like a woman on a mission. I only sort through my school pile.

And you know, I can find traces of you in everything I open. 

There's our script for some teacher's day play, not too shabby for a bunch of 12 yr olds. There's our imaginary school with house colors, black, white, grey and gold, and us both taking stabs at creating unconventional uniforms. The usual FLAMES and other cringe stuff. There are stories or essays and both of us competiting at "who can write more BS, faster?", an imaginary game we played but never admitted to, with only two dumbass contestants.

There's our rendition of what we wanted our imaginary boyfriends to look and dress like, all three of them with the same spiked hair because of limited drawing abilities. Guidelines for emcee-ing random language days, pretty confident the teachers were inventing these just to see us embarrass ourselves.

There are your corrections to my spelling and horrid handwriting. Then your quintessential J in signature, the one with the smile face, in a sign. You beeming with joy at creating a signature and thinking it looks so fly, and us looking at you with incredulous expressions.

There's an assortment of sheets that looks like a child hand bound it, immediately recognize it as our scrap book. It still smells of some horrible glue, not joker gum or fevicol, but some really horrible glue. It has these categories and our attempt at scrap booking for those categories. There's also a sayings book, one quote a day type.

Ah, I finally find those slam books. Three. We each had three slams books, talk about extra. And every book has you and vidu, either on the front or back cover. You both have also taken over any blank sheets available to write essays about us and wild declarations, this sheet is reserved by Nirali/ Vidula. I know you'll find the same on yours. Our never ending pride for NirViKsha shining through. 

Reading through all those, it feels like it was just yesterday all this happened. It feels like just yesterday we sat down during recess, swapped tiffins per the deal we made, your sandwich dhokla to vidu, vidu's methi paratha to me, my biskoot roti to you. Our moms will be happy today, clean plate club. As we eat, we work on some incredibly stupid idea - another hypothetical school where there would be dance period and no white shorts because who wants a blood stained skirt. Or we'll think of starting another imaginary club like scrap booking that we'll give up midway on. The quiting doesn't bother us, we're too invested in trying as many things as possible. We feel strong. We feel invincible. Even the gibberish physics lectures or torturous algebra periods can't stop this feeling. Because we have each other. And that's enough. 

For now, that's where I want to be. 

The alarm rings and I'm mad, mad at being jolted into the rude reality. I run my fingers angrily through my hair and today, they smell of the scrap book glue.