I was reading another blog, by another author, where she put up pictures of her old empty house just before she finally handed over the keys to a new owner. She spoke of all the fond memories she had in that house; her first baby, times of worry and silence spent with her husband, their dog, funny sounds the heater made,etc. Being someone who has moved around a fair amount in my younger days (yes…I am a wrinkled 24 year old man now), I was able to completely relate to everything she described and got into one of my nostalgic moods and remembered all the moving days we had.
My dad wasn’t in the army or worked for the government, but we’ve moved around a fair amount. Kolkata to Mumbai, to Lagos (Nigeria), to Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania….3 houses in that place); to name a few, and every time we’ve moved, I can proudly say I’ve never been the annoying kid yelling, “I don’t wanna go….”. I’ve always been fairly gregarious and have always enjoyed meeting new people, but I hated moving for two reasons. One, I always have my memories associated with places, events, the food I ate that day, the beating I got from dad, etc….so moving from place to place meant a sort of breaking of that link from which I could remember all the great micro-events of my life. The second and the most important reason I hated moving was that my toys always seemed to find their way into the “excess baggage” category and were mercilessly given away. I never cried for actually moving, but I wept my little heart out when the parental unit gave away my toys.
In all fairness to them, they always bought me new ones in the new town, but still….those are MY TOYS! I am a terribly possessive person when it comes to all these little things which mean a lot to me. If I’m sharing with you, I probably trust you enough. I am possessive to a point where ever since we’ve sort of settled down in this house in Bangalore, which is our house, I’ve refused to part with any more toys.
I still keep all my GI Joe and He-Man intact and stored up in the attic. My cousin, who must have been around 8 at the time and I must have been almost 20 asked for my toys, so that he could take them to his house, and never return them, and probably not love them as much as I did, that he would abandon them on the road, to be run over by a truck, and the remnants of the poor GI Joe would get washed away into the sewers….. Well, I did the only responsible grown-up mature thing to do…. I REFUSED!
Toys apart, I really love this house where I am staying the best. It is what I call ‘home’. I’ve great memories in this place, my first guitar, parties with friends, my first job, my first crush, my coming home with trophies, my coming home drunk (happened only once), my first computer, my first graphics card, my first cycle, my first bike…well…Activa. Many firsts attached to this home. And tons of other great memories and not so great ones too, but this was the place I grew up in. This is the place my father toiled to pay the bills for and my mother sweat to keep squeaky clean. This was the home that they saw their son grow from an irresponsible kid to a …..well….somethings don’t change!!!
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