The past week has not been an easy one. The mother of a very dear friend of mine passed away in my home town, Pune, after a month long battle with multiple ailments. While we all have to accept that our parents are ageing, what makes this triply hard to bear is the fact that my friend lost her husband to brain tumour more than nine years ago. Since then, her mother has been her bed rock, helping to care for her then toddler, now pre teen daughter. And when the time came, my friend stood strong, like a rock too, by her mother's side in the Intensive Care Unit, firmly pushing away the terrible memories that hospitals evoke from her husband's battle for life, of more than a decade ago.. When I messaged her yesterday, she was keeping herself busy, 'taking stock of things', she said. This brought home the point that while our bodies leave this earth, we leave behind a vast array of our 'things'...
This grim reality was spelled out to me when I came to view the house we are currently living in. I have been wanting to write about this for a long while but somehow, the time never seemed right, and it just kept brewing in my mind for the last nearly ten months...So here's the rather strong brew for you. Ingest it, if you can, then act upon it, if you will...
I contacted the house agent after seeing the advert for the bungalow for rent in our bi weekly on line school reporter. We were interested because the house was a minute's walk from my son's school and we had been saying for a long while that once our nose-to-the-academic-grindstone daughter graduated from high school and moved on to college, we would definitely move closer to the school because, besides academics, our son has a finger in every pie: Music, Sports, Drama and this entailed in him reaching home rather late most days of the week, something that makes me very uncomfortable in Nairobi. And so there I was, with an appointment to view the house, having rushed across town in between taking classes on line, because good houses, that close to school, don't remain empty for long...
The first thing that greeted me were two permanent geranium beds on either side of the front door steps, filled with scarlet geraniums, interspersed with pristine white ones. I have loved these flowers since I was a child and it looked like the owner did too...
As we marched up the terracotta coloured steps, I saw two decorated, brightly coloured cloth birds hanging from either side of the door, very ethnic, very Indian.. I turned to the agent and asked if the owner was a person of Indian origin. She affirmed that that was indeed the case!
We stepped into the foyer and I took in the mellow wood floors and the chocolate brown built-in cupboards, shelves and cabinets. Carefully selected (or so it seemed to me) paintings hung at well chalked out intervals along the long, broad passageway, leading up to the living room or hall, as we call it in India. Long curtains, both sheer and printed ones, fluttered in the gentle breeze coming in from the French windows, which led to a spacious porch, where I could just imagine the owner and his wife sitting down for numerous cups of tea over the last few decades, since they built this house.
The house agent explained to me that the old man had passed away six months ago, while his wife had preceded him a few years earlier. Both the sons, had left Kenya for greener pastures many moons ago and that's how the house was now available for rent. Numerous vases of various types lined the mantelpiece, over the huge fireplace that dominated the room, each one chock full of artificial flowers. I guess, as the couple aged, they gave up getting in fresh flowers from the garden and settled for fake ones instead...Other knick knacks too vied for space there and I could see souvenirs from various countries around the world, much like I have back home in India. Compact disks spilled out of their allotted niche in the television cabinet. Rugs and comfortable sofas were scattered around the room.
A beautifully carved, black-brown glass fronted crockery cupboard adorned the dining room with it's large dining table and fancy overhanging lamps. That cupboard and another built in crockery cabinet were both crammed with delicate tea sets, dinner plates, quarter plates, exquisite bowls, cut glass serving bowls, expensive glasses and pudding sets. Specially bought and cut to size laminated faux-wood paper lined the shelves which were literally groaning under the weight of this collection, out of which some of the items were at least half a century old, if not more..
A quick walk through the master bedroom revealed a huge ornately carved bed and two of the walls were lined with floor to ceiling wooden cupboards. I dared to open one just to check the shelf size but hurriedly closed it again when I saw that bedding, pillows, quilts, towels and curtains were threatening to spill out of that vast space!
The remaining three bedrooms were no better off in terms of the sheer quantity of items in cupboards, old mementos, books, long forgotten clothes and more pillows, but the agent assured me that the things would be 'disposed of' the minute someone agreed to rent the house. The master bathroom cabinet had packets of disposable gloves and medicines, a poignant reminder that an ill old man had lived and breathed his last here. And then, I came to the kitchen.
The heart of any Indian home is it's kitchen. Our spicy, tasty food, with an infinite variety of dishes aims to please the palate. But that comes at a cost! We need a large number of utensils to whip up those delicious meals. This kitchen, with its cosy breakfast nook and 'cooking' themed grey tiles was no different. Though the lady of the house had died a few years ago, her things remained untouched. Shelves upon shelves of steel vessels in all shapes and sizes, iron woks, serving spoons, knives, peelers, pressure cookers in myriad sizes, rolling pins, a built in oven, electric stove top, you name it, it was there..A tiny glass cupboard was still full of her spices dating back from heaven knows when. All the little touches that make a home were present. Only the owners were conspicuous by their absence...
The most heart wrenching sight, for me, that day, was a little wooden temple lying empty in one of the bedrooms. All the idols of our Gods were missing and someone had carelessly thrown a back supporting orthopaedic belt across it, one that had probably been used by the old man. The house, being a very tangible and lucrative asset, would be cleaned and rented out for a princely sum but no one was bothered about that one lone belt that had been the old man's constant companion in his last days, perhaps his only comfort.
By the time we moved in, the house had been 'decluttered' and, the agent told me, all the furniture and most of the things had been distributed to friends and distant family members. The rest of the things were either being taken away by the live in house keeper or had been consigned to the dust bin. And so that was how a full house was reduced to a mere shell and a lifetime of memories were simple swept away or given away, because frankly nobody had the time or the energy or the inclination to care..
On my first morning in the new kitchen, the house keeper who was vacating the detached servants' quarter that day, knocked at the window. When I opened it, she told me to look in between two shelves in one of the kitchen cupboards and to pull out the three things kept there. I did as instructed and out came three cast iron griddles...Any Indian woman will tell you how particular we are about our griddles because they influence the quality and texture of our chapattis, parathas, dosas, to a very large extent! The house keeper wanted to take away those for her own use but had overlooked them earlier, as had my house help, when she had cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, before we moved in... I handed them to her through the window and, as I closed it, sadly thought to myself that I had now truly obliterated the last trace of the actual owner of this kitchen, I had just donated one of the cornerstones of her kitchen, her 'tavas' (griddles).
After this interesting and novel experience of moving, I was doubly glad that I started my own declutter process in my own home in India nearly a decade ago! Instead of hoarding and buying more and more, I simply keep donating what I have, be it clothes, toys, crockery, furniture, NOT books! Holidays are restricted to buying just a couple of affordable souvenirs, if at all even those..Literally and metaphorically, at the end of the day, I would rather throw my own junk out of the trunk than have strangers do it for me...because really who gives a bone about your knick knacks?
Some of my knick knacks from back home in India!
Well, to be honest, I have a whole cupboard of them! But no additions now...Who gives a bone!
This grim reality was spelled out to me when I came to view the house we are currently living in. I have been wanting to write about this for a long while but somehow, the time never seemed right, and it just kept brewing in my mind for the last nearly ten months...So here's the rather strong brew for you. Ingest it, if you can, then act upon it, if you will...
I contacted the house agent after seeing the advert for the bungalow for rent in our bi weekly on line school reporter. We were interested because the house was a minute's walk from my son's school and we had been saying for a long while that once our nose-to-the-academic-grindstone daughter graduated from high school and moved on to college, we would definitely move closer to the school because, besides academics, our son has a finger in every pie: Music, Sports, Drama and this entailed in him reaching home rather late most days of the week, something that makes me very uncomfortable in Nairobi. And so there I was, with an appointment to view the house, having rushed across town in between taking classes on line, because good houses, that close to school, don't remain empty for long...
The first thing that greeted me were two permanent geranium beds on either side of the front door steps, filled with scarlet geraniums, interspersed with pristine white ones. I have loved these flowers since I was a child and it looked like the owner did too...
As we marched up the terracotta coloured steps, I saw two decorated, brightly coloured cloth birds hanging from either side of the door, very ethnic, very Indian.. I turned to the agent and asked if the owner was a person of Indian origin. She affirmed that that was indeed the case!
We stepped into the foyer and I took in the mellow wood floors and the chocolate brown built-in cupboards, shelves and cabinets. Carefully selected (or so it seemed to me) paintings hung at well chalked out intervals along the long, broad passageway, leading up to the living room or hall, as we call it in India. Long curtains, both sheer and printed ones, fluttered in the gentle breeze coming in from the French windows, which led to a spacious porch, where I could just imagine the owner and his wife sitting down for numerous cups of tea over the last few decades, since they built this house.
The house agent explained to me that the old man had passed away six months ago, while his wife had preceded him a few years earlier. Both the sons, had left Kenya for greener pastures many moons ago and that's how the house was now available for rent. Numerous vases of various types lined the mantelpiece, over the huge fireplace that dominated the room, each one chock full of artificial flowers. I guess, as the couple aged, they gave up getting in fresh flowers from the garden and settled for fake ones instead...Other knick knacks too vied for space there and I could see souvenirs from various countries around the world, much like I have back home in India. Compact disks spilled out of their allotted niche in the television cabinet. Rugs and comfortable sofas were scattered around the room.
A beautifully carved, black-brown glass fronted crockery cupboard adorned the dining room with it's large dining table and fancy overhanging lamps. That cupboard and another built in crockery cabinet were both crammed with delicate tea sets, dinner plates, quarter plates, exquisite bowls, cut glass serving bowls, expensive glasses and pudding sets. Specially bought and cut to size laminated faux-wood paper lined the shelves which were literally groaning under the weight of this collection, out of which some of the items were at least half a century old, if not more..
A quick walk through the master bedroom revealed a huge ornately carved bed and two of the walls were lined with floor to ceiling wooden cupboards. I dared to open one just to check the shelf size but hurriedly closed it again when I saw that bedding, pillows, quilts, towels and curtains were threatening to spill out of that vast space!
The remaining three bedrooms were no better off in terms of the sheer quantity of items in cupboards, old mementos, books, long forgotten clothes and more pillows, but the agent assured me that the things would be 'disposed of' the minute someone agreed to rent the house. The master bathroom cabinet had packets of disposable gloves and medicines, a poignant reminder that an ill old man had lived and breathed his last here. And then, I came to the kitchen.
The heart of any Indian home is it's kitchen. Our spicy, tasty food, with an infinite variety of dishes aims to please the palate. But that comes at a cost! We need a large number of utensils to whip up those delicious meals. This kitchen, with its cosy breakfast nook and 'cooking' themed grey tiles was no different. Though the lady of the house had died a few years ago, her things remained untouched. Shelves upon shelves of steel vessels in all shapes and sizes, iron woks, serving spoons, knives, peelers, pressure cookers in myriad sizes, rolling pins, a built in oven, electric stove top, you name it, it was there..A tiny glass cupboard was still full of her spices dating back from heaven knows when. All the little touches that make a home were present. Only the owners were conspicuous by their absence...
The most heart wrenching sight, for me, that day, was a little wooden temple lying empty in one of the bedrooms. All the idols of our Gods were missing and someone had carelessly thrown a back supporting orthopaedic belt across it, one that had probably been used by the old man. The house, being a very tangible and lucrative asset, would be cleaned and rented out for a princely sum but no one was bothered about that one lone belt that had been the old man's constant companion in his last days, perhaps his only comfort.
By the time we moved in, the house had been 'decluttered' and, the agent told me, all the furniture and most of the things had been distributed to friends and distant family members. The rest of the things were either being taken away by the live in house keeper or had been consigned to the dust bin. And so that was how a full house was reduced to a mere shell and a lifetime of memories were simple swept away or given away, because frankly nobody had the time or the energy or the inclination to care..
On my first morning in the new kitchen, the house keeper who was vacating the detached servants' quarter that day, knocked at the window. When I opened it, she told me to look in between two shelves in one of the kitchen cupboards and to pull out the three things kept there. I did as instructed and out came three cast iron griddles...Any Indian woman will tell you how particular we are about our griddles because they influence the quality and texture of our chapattis, parathas, dosas, to a very large extent! The house keeper wanted to take away those for her own use but had overlooked them earlier, as had my house help, when she had cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom, before we moved in... I handed them to her through the window and, as I closed it, sadly thought to myself that I had now truly obliterated the last trace of the actual owner of this kitchen, I had just donated one of the cornerstones of her kitchen, her 'tavas' (griddles).
After this interesting and novel experience of moving, I was doubly glad that I started my own declutter process in my own home in India nearly a decade ago! Instead of hoarding and buying more and more, I simply keep donating what I have, be it clothes, toys, crockery, furniture, NOT books! Holidays are restricted to buying just a couple of affordable souvenirs, if at all even those..Literally and metaphorically, at the end of the day, I would rather throw my own junk out of the trunk than have strangers do it for me...because really who gives a bone about your knick knacks?
