The chair

Aachi's Spot

When I first walked into this house at 16, I had nothing to call my own. Everything in this house belonged either to my betrothed (now husband)'s parents or him. The copper bottom vessels with inscriptions of my nuptial dates were my father's dowry to my in-laws. I had no books, nor toys or keepsakes. His almiraah barely had space for the wooden trunk I'd lugged from the 'teshan', which was filled with two silk sarees packed neatly between a layer of the worn out, dozen cotton sarees, some bangles, and earrings - all heirlooms (or hand me downs) of my Amma. The only "thing" (if you could call it that) which was mine was my morning routine -  waking up at the crack of dawn, pulling out one of the softened loose cotton sarees and replacing that space with one that had just been washed, dried, ironed and folded, prepping breakfast and chai for my parents in law before they woke up, readying the pooja samagri for morning aarti, and when my accha (FIL) was up, oil massaging his legs as he sat in his spot, the sturdy wooden rocking chair, by the living room window, having his tea and reading me parts of the newspaper, between sips. The morning sun spilled into the living room, and lightly onto me from behind his silhouette, as the smell of warm mustard oil filled my lungs.

Years passed, our lives changed, but my morning sessions with accha stayed the same. That is until he passed away peacefully at the age of 87. The morning after we lay him to his final resting place, I found myself mindlessly performing my morning routine like muscle memory and found myself at the heels of the chair, with my little bowl of mustard oil and no leg to massage...! 

Now at 70, I look around and wonder how much has changed. The hall is now adorned with pictures of my children and their families, their awards and accolades. Our home is now filled with gadgets working on 'all talking to each other through that intrrnet thing.

"Acchi's in her spot", yells Neha (my 12 yr old granddaughter) outloud to her mom as she brings me my cup, setting it in front of the chair on the windowsill and readies my oil for my morning massage.

Hours before the Open House

I'm running tremendously behind schedule today and it feels like every idiot who has never worked in renovations and interior decoration has tapko-fied directly into my lap. It's me, hi I'm the proverbial khajoor. 

"Rakesh bhai, showing 3 baje hai and abhi tak  hall ka painting khatam nahi hua!", I sigh, walking past the living room and entering the bedroom, with my phone screen on the checklist app. The electrician hastily fixes the ceiling fan and drops a dust bunny onto the newly laid out beddings on our staged four-poster bed. "Maqsood bhai, thoda dhyan se, yeh bhade ka hai" I shake my head as I walk out, checking some items off the bedroom and attached bathroom's lists, and adding four more items to each. 

"Kab khatam ho ga ye kaam yaar!", I groan, pointing at a new wet spot on the ceiling of the balconette with my bald and slightly bleeding index finger.

As I emerge into the living room, Shera and his badhai tolli are gathered around the grandfather chair, wondering how to carry it out into storage. "Yeh yahi rahega", I bark, "antique hai".  As they step away to finish other errands, I sit down on the chair for a second, to catch my breath. These old havelis are to my clientele like lights to a moth. They're all about the "heritage feels", "correct lighting for their instagram reels", "vaastu", and what not, and I'm not about to let Shera take my honey trap away. 

As I absently adjust my hips, the chair creaks, jerking me back to the checklist. It's 2 hrs until showtime!

My hideout

They always do this. They think I will just oblige and do whatever they demand of me. Even bruno gets to choose where he sleeps and he's a dog!

"No playing outside until you eat all of your broccoli"

"No cartoons until dinner" 

"Be more like didi" 

"Be home by 6pm" 

"Be in bed by 8pm!" 

And on and on they go, nagging me. I don't have any say in what I eat, who I meet, when I sleep, how I dress up...down to the flipping haircut. I look like a mushroom from super Mario bros! And now they're insisting I come say hi to chachi's family, looking like this gobhi?! No way in hel...i mean heck! 

Let them look! I'm going to stay put in my secret spot. You see I've found the perfect place to hide. I got them; made them think I left the house angrily. So they're all out in the society looking for me. Hehehe! This spot too, is so well concealed. You can't see anything hidden or stashed behind this chair, the way it's positioned beside the windowsill and sofa. That's why I always hide my vegetables, especially bhindi, here during dinner. I can make a beeline to the kitchen to trash it once everyone is done with dinner and washing the dishes. 

Mumma is back and is pacing around the room calling the security guard! Good, next time she'll think twice before making me look like a bush! Thank god, I stashed my coloring book here, I'll scribble until the coast is clear!

Just another mug

"And this is the last gift", she said, handing over the last of the set of twenty-seven hand-picked, neatly wrapped presents she'd scavenged 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.