The rooms are new. The wall paint
is a shade lighter of what I’m used to. My own room smells of fresh paint. The
newly varnished cabinets subtly reflect the cold harsh white light. A sense of
uncomfortable newness all around.
And it’s New Year’s Eve.
I play ‘Auld Lang Syne , Dougie
Maclean version, and Jayanta Hazarika songs, alternatively. Auld Lang Syne as a
reminder to old acquaintances and new.
Jayanta Hazarika,well, because in times of confusion, he manages to calm
me down supernaturally, from beyond the grave.
All set to live alone for the first
time, in a house with a lease signed by me, I resign myself to the feeling of
growing old. But when I woke up today, peeking from under the double warmth of
my Naga shawl and my Noddy quilt, and Deta kisses me good morning with the
customary brushing of his moustache, all resolve of acting matured crumble
down.
And tomorrow, all I’ve to look
forward to is a new year and a good bye to Ma-Deta. And come back to a cold
unfamiliar house. A house, not yet a home.
Love is not an unfamiliar emotion
in the room. Ma is incessantly teasing everyone just because she’s in a good
mood, Deta is hell-bent on making sure that this time he outsmarts his phone
list and sends them New Year wishes before it is officially the new year and
what exactly my siblings are upto is not easily discernible except that
everyone is talking at the same time. The typical family evening. Sans the typical drama, though. New Year’s
Eve does have some corollary benefits.
Of course, that also means I’m
robbed of the very lazed out evening I had in mind. A pot of tea and my
Murakami. Kafka on the Shore awaits
me patiently, more patiently than a lover, lesser than an adoring father.
He peers concernedly at me, then at
the screen of the laptop. Not knowing how to deal with grown up tragedies of
his grown up daughter. In his little world, Pandora’s box never opened and I’m
still five years old. Trappings of reality, I tell you.
Dinner was a subdued affair. A mix-up
in the order resulted in a quarter of a Kali Mirch chicken, to be divided
amongst six people. The two pieces of gravy-ied chicken bore searing looks of
hatred. Which eventually spilled out onto the phone, as a flustered manager
tried to soothe my seething sister.
And as the Noida skyline lighted up
with aerial expressions of joy, Ma and my brother started debating if the clock
had actually struck twelve. Deta woke up from his cat-nap while my sister
pranced about with her phone. And then the ringer on my phone went off. It was
officially 2013!
Ma started singing in a markedly
off key tone, I tried, quite unsuccessfully, to talk on the phone, while
someone tried to hug me, and then kiss me, and someone else tried to pull me in
another direction. But Ma continued with her bad singing and all I saw in that
moment was clean white smiles, the smell of Deta’s Jacolivol around me and the
feeling of happiness no longer as a string of solitary moments but as an
intrinsic part of my DNA. A living breathing part of me.
My first house became a home today.
My walls are no longer a cold white but a warm shade of ivory. And there is an
overpowering smell of familiarity.
