Here are 400 words trying with all their might to communicate some stray feelings that have housed themselves in me recently. I have been cozying in them, slyly so I don’t shake them into the realization of being shipped to the wrong address. They mostly make themselves felt when mummy cooks something special for me or when I am able to tell people where to find the best momos in the city.
I have tried to dust off this joy, for I realized it is a result of deprivation. But when I sat down to look closely at things, I realized that my family comes from a place of deprivation. Each member suffers from a lack of a unique kind, either incurred unfairly or assumed unknowingly. My mother comes from a lack of people. And like is in the nature of deprivation, it causes overcompensation. She goes to the end of her energy, money, will to please people. Papa comes from the lack of a childhood. Comes with rules, a need for physical closeness, and 253 types of confrontation issues. Eldest in the family, we come from a lack of reference, trying to mimic all the wrong, mostly Bollywood families. A government job: lack of permanent space to call home, same friends to grow alongside, a town to discover favorite food in.
And recently, as if let loose after being choked, I was given a family, a home, in which we will complete 9 years. In which we chose colors to paint walls with, got curtains to match, and even neglected our commitment issues enough to make pieces of furniture attached to walls. In it, mum and I find time to bicker about jobs, education, and boys.
My happiness must be coming from the utter normalcy of these mundane disappointments and angers, deprivation of which I suffered as a child. The threat of her health’s deterioration, of a transfer to another city, only intensifies the joy. I find myself over-joyed, not just joyed, at these times, till they last – this good health, the perfect sunlight, blooming gardens, and newly built nests. I want to celebrate every bit of it till it is nauseating. I want to talk of home things this whole month-long till the deprivation wears off, starts to become thinner, and dissolves like an over-used cloth. Bear with me.