Matters of Home and Heart

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.