Moving

The subtle art of constantly giving a fuck

It’s the change of season once again and the annual post monsoon cleaning drive is upon me. Khwaabghar has come undone in the veranda, its books sprawled in the sun, one shelf at a time checked for tiny white insects which read the wrong way. This work consumes me for now, as I shuffle through 39 shelves of paperback and hardcover, getting lost in book summaries until sunset, when I should really be getting all the books out into the sun. No bother, we will try again tomorrow. It is the change of season after all, and I am back at my desk, writing.

For those of you who don’t follow all of my Instagram stories for whatever great reason, I finally visited my sister in Canada in July this year. This is after 5+ years of her living there, building a life I watch everyday on video calls- seeing white cushions being added to blue sofas, warm white lights being installed while standing on sturdy wood stools. I spent almost 5 weeks with her this time, one for each year I wasn’t there perhaps. We met in these 5 years of course, we couldn’t have done without it. But that was in India for weddings including our own, where the world caught us in endless chatter, shopping, decorations, and things to do. As much as I look forward to her visits, we know that a wedding in Delhi is hardly the ideal setup for what we want to do the most- make up words, watch movies, and fall asleep talking about everything that keeps us awake. And so I went. Looking for lost time, uninterrupted and not derailed by any weddings, family dinners, small talk, and hehe haha, resting in things from our past, alive and well in our heads joined together.

We had our 5 weeks planned, giving us a good mix of travel, food, leisure, and home. My sister had pencilled in enough time to walk around Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston, and New York, still leaving us days and days of lounging around the house, responding to each others’ footsteps, making each other tea. I heard my sister close a deal, give feedback on a PPT, talk about all the chilli chickens made in her kitchen, learnt to operate the dishwasher, and heard her talk about Toronto’s Path and New York’s grids like the veins of her hand. I marvelled at how many cities she had memorised, how many downtowns she knew, how many plans she had managed to make. I wondered if I knew as much about “home” as she did about her city… how the water flows, where the river goes, why the garbage is separated, and why hot water must not be poured into the sink. Her movements in her house linked endlessly to the lines and pipes of Ottawa, each walking into the other like electricity. How was it possible to wrap up so much the world had to offer and unfold it in a kitchen during lunch break? 

It was this meticulous charting of roads by Guni and Sumit (her husband) that led us to places I had never seen on a travel guide. Little mounds of wonder, lakesides with a view of the city, discreet ways of seeing all of Thousand Islands, humble gnocchis on the side of Fairmount bagel, and the prettiest coffee shops in neighbourhoods far away from downtown. Their pleasure in spreading the maps of these cities in front of me made sure that we weren’t following the track of travel, just memory, jumping onto roads they had liked the best in the 5 years of walking them. We visited grocery stores with as much enthusiasm as the cathedrals, tasting cherries, picking avocados and sushi from CostCo. Guni and Sumit were not showing me a foreign city I had never encountered, they were taking me through parts of their home, where each room had a meaning, each street a history- their history in that land. I wondered at the thrill of learning something for the first time, when you had already grown up… memorising the bus routes, finding your food, building a life. I sat chin up on the marble dining table, watching her dispense information I never thought was possible to contain in one body. I was a little girl once again, getting her feedback on life before I left the house.

In no time at all, the bitterness of “just one month” clouded our minds, almost as soon as I landed. I didn’t want to leave, she didn't want to let me go. This feeling does not take us over suddenly, it flies with us. The day I touch down in Montreal to spend 5 weeks with her, is also the day I know I have to leave, and that my time with her is limited by a return ticket, bought well in advance and checked by the officer at Delhi airport, confused as to why I was travelling alone as a married woman. And so, even while in Ottawa at home with my sister, I continued to exist as if missing her. Take this- I am ready for my day out, out of the bathroom, down the stairs, almost out the door. I remember- I forgot to apply my perfume. In a hurried motion, I look around me, instinctively trusting my sister’s intelligence about everything, knowing I will find what I need, exactly where I need it. Sure enough, I find a small pink bottle on the shelf by the hall door. I apply my sister’s perfume and leave the house without giving it much thought. All day, I find myself turning back and looking over my shoulder, where is she? Is she here? I forget that I’m smelling her in Ottawa’s downtown, while she sits a few miles away in Kanata. I wear her slippers almost throughout the trip, and walk in and out of her closet like a suitcase packed at birth. Over the course of the month, I morph into her without trying, the order of sisterhood putting us in our places- together. 

For days after landing back in India, I woke up not knowing where I was. I dreamt of airplane cabins, toilets, Toronto Airbnbs, Montreal downtown… but most of all, I woke up looking for the blue and white paisley prints of my sister’s bedroom, the large window that threw us into the neighbourhood without a step, and her voice, expertly manoeuvring work calls with her calm as ever tone, and the sounds of her larger than a face teacup. “Baalti” I used to call it. After a month of landing back in India, I still woke up with a start, looking for my sister in the same house, a thing so obvious to the child in me, which is what I think we are for the first few seconds of waking up. But then I woke up for real, and found myself in Gurgaon, with no new cities and information to look forward to. (For the record, the parlour didi we went to in Ottawa had only heard of Gurgaon on Crime Patrol).

This has happened to me before. I have often woken up after travelling as if in London, Brighton, Bangalore, Mumbai, and panicked in my first waking minute, not recognising where I am, what I'm doing, and who is coming to save me. But this time, it went on for a while. After over a month back in Gurgaon, I still find myself looking for knives separated by a white compartment in the same drawer as the spoons in the kitchen, because that’s how my sister keeps them. I think of rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, only to remember we don’t have one. I look forward to 5 pm, thinking of the day ending in a walk around the neighbourhood, cooking spree with Sumit and Guni, and a drive to downtown Ottawa after we’ve exhausted all our energy in deciding what to eat. While our lives clock in different hours in opposite time zones, my sister and I manage to merge days and nights, one routine and drawer compartment at a time.

It makes me wonder- what happens to the parts of you that you only inhabit with your siblings, parents, childhood friends… do they move with them? Is there something that lies in between travel and moving- a state of being constantly in motion, parts of you resting with people you love, in the places they trust? A state of not quite here, not quite there, with permanent houses lodged in newer ones- yes I was travelling, no my sister lives there, I was at home, it was nice, yes it feels different being back, yes, hanji, nahi, mann kaise bharega? 

Parts of my body are stuck in different times, ages, and time zones, opened up like old jewellery for special occasions. Words which only my sister understands, riddles only she can solve, and sentences only she will know how to complete. And then there is something bigger, something deeper, a whole trunk full of landscapes and memories only we can see- the fruits, friends, dolls, dances, and terraces of our childhood. The way our grandparents made us feel, the expanse of our little neighbourhood, the taste of rasna with maggi, and Frontier chocolate biscuits whipped in chai. We lace it all up with the abundant, charted streets of South Delhi, Gurgaon, Ottawa, New York, Toronto, Montreal… making new worlds of memory which are ours for keeping, sitting mismatched and whole, all in the same trunk- ours. It makes one think- has it ever happened before in history to so many people at once? This vast and permanent fragmentation, this knowledge of having lost yourself forever in people and places which constantly move, fitting newer pieces of you to a memory which expands in its making. It must be true.

It must be true because I have been craving ice cream every day since I landed, clinging to Sumit’s insistence on trying gelatos everywhere we went. I don’t even like sugar that much. But come evening, and a long day of walking makes me think- waffle cone or scoop? In his defence, there were gelato flavours to try- lemon blueberry, orange zest dark chocolate, cardamom orange…So I pick up an ice cream sandwich and let the vanilla sink, walking home, never to be whole again.

What’s happening at Khwaabghar

Khwaabghar now has a monthly writing support group, which meets over the weekend to keep all members accountable for their writing projects. We keep track of word counts, experiment with new writing routines, and meet up for feedback sessions. The best part? This is our first online only offering, with participants from all over India, and one from the UK. If you’d like to know more about this group, please write to me at manmeetkaur0312@gmail.com.

Our monthly Gender Circle is also going strong. In the last one, we met up online to discuss Rocky and Rani ki Prem Kahani! If you’d like to stay updated about our upcoming events, please sign up here to our events list: https://forms.gle/idhHXGvistijhQBQA

For erratic and absolutely missable updates, follow us on Instagram @khwaabgharstories.