"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.
