My first ‘elastic’ earnings

Today, while putting some jewellery back into the bank locker, I came across a thin gold chain that I had carefully tucked away in a tiny pouch. In monetary terms, it is not a very valuable chain as it is machine-made, and very short and light, but it is truly precious to me, as it was the first piece of jewellery ‘purchased out of my earnings’.

I was in the first year of college when a Trade Fair was held in Delhi. Thanks to my brother who was then working with a garment export house, I was given a chance to ‘man’ a stall at the Fair for a few hours a day for 8-10 days. For this assignment, I was paid the princely sum of Rs 1000/-. It was a happy day when I received the cheque, and I picked up sweets for the family on my way home. As the family was not small, the sweets created a dent in the 1000/-.  If my memory serves me right, there were tiny gifts for family members, which created a bigger dent in the balance. I also remember buying a gift for my friend, grateful that he waited patiently every evening outside the Fair grounds on all 10 days to ferry me back home on his scooter. All this was even before my cheque went into the bank. 

Defying all logic, like a stretching band of elastic, when the amount finally showed up in my bank passbook, my mother insisted I use the money to buy something solid, which obviously meant gold. We went to the jewellers, and she chose this chain, which cost around 900 rupees. These were days before ATMs and debit cards, so we must have paid cash, and I really can’t remember whether I ever withdrew the money from my account and paid her back. In spite of that, the chain was always referred to as the one I bought out of my earnings.

Every time I see the chain, I remember my parents with gratitude. We were not wealthy, and supporting all my ‘gift’ buying and then buying the gold chain would have not been easy, but I can still remember my mother talking to her friend about how generously I bought something for everyone at home, and also used my money sensibly. How proud I felt then!

Lockdown Day n + n --- Dos and donts

I have given up counting how long it has been since i went up to the junction where the main road meets the road to our home. I am sure it has been over 50 days and I am not missing it at all. Each day, I wake up feeling relieved that everyone is still healthy and then misplaced guilt remembering the migrant labourers who are still on their way to their homes. The ones who stayed behind at their workplaces are being offered crazy work hours, albeit with some additional remuneration, and very few people seem to find anything protest-worthy in the situation! Some dos and dont's that I have realised I need to follow to keep sane:

1. Do NOT discuss politics at home if you're sure the person you are discussing with does not share your same beliefs. - This is suggested not because you are right and the other is wrong, however tempting it is to live with that feeling, but because any discussion could result in a breakdown of communication, and believe me, when you are going to be living in the same house for an indefinite period of time, that is not desirable at all.

2. Speak to loved members of your family often - whatsapp messages are ok most of the time, but a voice call makes a difference. And a video call makes an even bigger difference - the warmth of one good happy call stays within you for a long while. And hopefully, the person(s) at the other end of the call are also a bit happier, less alone and feel loved for a while longer.

3. Read - catch up on all the books that were kept away for a rainy day. It does not get rainier than this surely. A good idea is to have some ebooks stocked up and also two or three hard-copy books strewn around so that there is something to be picked up to browse through, whichever room one walks into.

4. Dress up - do not stay in your night or exercise clothes all day - nothing is more 'laziness-inducing'. Even if the same 4 or 5 sets of clothes are in circulation, and all your saris, formal clothes and fancy accessories are in hibernation, there is some pleasure in getting into fresh clothes everyday.

5. Browse - there are wonderful concerts, talks, readings and podcasts available online. Listen to at least one a day - nothing can be more enervating.

6. Control :
6a. If you are hooked onto any one serial on Netflix or Amazon Prime of Hotstar, restrict yourself to only 1 or 2 episodes per day - binge-watching seems to bring these characters into one's dreams and that's not a happy feeling.

6b. If your hand is hovering over a forward, and you can't instantly think of who to forward it to, just desist. It probably doesn't need to be shared. Same goes for tweets - if you can't think of a suitable comment for a retweet, just don't do it. There are more than enough forwards and tweets already circulating - no one is going to remain uninformed or unaware just because of your not sending that one tweet or forward.

This list could go and on, but these points are only a reminder to myself so I can stop now.  Since I don't overdo the snacks, I fortunately don't have to remind myself to stop eating. And I am exercising adequately so no reminders there either. All in all, I am in a good place and can make the most of it, even while feeling completely useless as far as helping those in need in these troubled times.

Home....

'Should be somewhere at home' - Kanishk said this to me last week, when we were discussing the whereabouts of one his tshirts, and I was surprised on hearing that. 'He WAS home', was my first  thought. Thanks to the lockdown, he had been with us for over 2 months - the longest he had been with us continuously without any travel in between. Thanks to boarding school, and then college and post-graduation away from us, and then setting out on his career, he had not lived with us for a long time, though most of his belongings stayed with us.   The 'home' he was referring to was the flat he had rented just 4 months earlier with his friends. Slowly, over the next few weekends, some of his possessions had moved to his new residence, and now it was 'home'!

I thought of my life in contrast - even as a child, I had never had the luxury of a room of my own. I stayed home while completing my studies, and then while I worked. The possibility of moving away from my parents' home was not even an option. I got married a couple of years later and my husband and I moved into a rented flat. It took a long while for me to be able to call it 'home' - not because it was sparsely furnished or because most of my family was elsewhere, but because I didn't feel any attachment to it. I could only remember and miss the familiar furniture, furnishings, kitchenware that I had left behind. Maybe my mother was also startled the first time I spoke about 'home' referring to my marital home!  I cannot recall when it happened, or even whether she even noticed it. 

Kanishk talking about 'home' just felt like someone has snapped the umblical cord, all over again 24 years later. I am glad he is able to make himself at home so quickly, and I want him to be comfortable, happy and 'at home' wherever he is, but I can only fervently hope that he will always consider this place also as his home.