I never felt settled while I lived in Pune. Unsettled-like one feels when one lives in a girls’ hostel that closes at 9 but one is out for a party, so one doesn’t know where to go after 12 am, so she floats around looking for 24 hours CCDs, being extra patient with her coffees, taking a walk but finally settling on a footpath waiting for dawn to crack.
I paid rent, bought furniture, prettied up places, and put up posters and colorful letters, but did not feel at home in those rooms. There was no bed I missed, no bedside with a stray earring, a book with a pencil stuck in it, where I will start reading tonight. I started staying at my then partner’s, later with P without ever living in their houses. I started carrying a toothbrush in my purse. I stayed at my favorite café till they had to close on days I felt guilty about staying over at theirs’.
I couldn’t tell what was wrong, couldn’t place it, were the roommates mean? was the house owner causing trouble? was the house haunted, plumbing off? I could not tell. I would talk to my therapist about this feeling of not belonging. She would tell me to hang out in the living area. Put a water bottle there, leave a book on the sofa, and a pen on the table. It felt like such an alien idea. Would I leave my belongings scattered in a restaurant? I couldn’t do it.
Many years later, now we know that the missing part was me and the family-shaped hole in me that was empty no matter how many posters, lamps, and living rooms. The earthing in my circuit was missing.
I love looking back at this journey, especially on days like today. Today we were all sitting in the living room. The living room was cozied, and curtains were drawn, it gives me the feeling of sleeping in a shade during summer, AC was on, making subtler sounds than the coolers of my childhood summer vacations. We were surrounded by paintings I have collected and postcards from our travels. R and babyr were drawing on the small blackboard I bought for the living room. It said ‘healing is slow, be patient’ when Goldie was struggling with his leg and hip. Now babyr was writing a story in whatever she considers script. I hummed “haal kaisa hai janab ka?”
From the kitchen mumma “kya khayal
hai aapka”
“hum toh machal gaye” was punctuated by kaka “hohoho”
I am whole now.
In the past and future, we will read splayed on the floor of this living room, sit in it wrapped in the arms of my loves, on their laps, sometimes in heaps laughing breathlessly.
