I feel saudade as I flip through the pages of my childhood album.
More saudade as I segregate digital images on my laptop.
Duarte Nunes Leao tries to explain saudade as the memory of something with a desire for it. The Portuguese dictionary explains it as 'a somewhat melancholic feeling of incompleteness; related to thinking back on desirable experiences once lived but no longer a part of one's life'.
I casually flip back my straight hair as turn pages of the album. The kid that once was me is grinning happily through the photo, holding a toy elephant above the crop of her curly hair. I barely recollect my hair being curly or the blue wall behind me. My mother tells me fondly of the little room in Ratnagiri that was my parents' first home together, 300 km away from the bustling city they both and I were born in. The short landlady cooed upon the infant me, oozing her dormant grandmother feelings. I vaguely remember the sea or roads but I remember waiting upon the doorstep each evening for my father's Vespa to scoot in. He would play with me, tell me stories and awe me with his guitar.
We had two homes back in Thane, where I grew up in a Hindu Undivided Family. We were a happy eight in a small apartment in the town center - that's where we spent the days. The other home, a stone's throw away. My parents and me would toggle between the two houses with respect to daylight. My grandfather worked in Pune and shuttled back to Thane on weekends - when me and my cousin brother would claim him. I would envy my cousin for living in the same house for day and night, and I hated toggling between homes every 12 hours.
The other home was older and one my grandparents first nestled into after eloping. My father and uncle grew up there, as did their countless aunts, uncles and cousins. It was a very old construction with its own faults and charms. It had a common toilet shared by a wing, something I detested for the awful smell and permanent lack of water. Electricity was always a problem and I was scared to pee in darkness with dogs howling around. The walls would always remain cooler during summers and I would stick around walls for the coolness. It had beautiful windows and the biggest yard to play and run around. This was the home I'd play teacher in and one that we played bhondla with an actual elephant, hosting over a hundred ladies. That home had memories and love and pain, and one could feel all of it.
My father won a construction contract in Nashik, and I moved there with my parents for a while. We rented a house with a yard and a balcony that I spent most of my time running around in. A set of neighboring triplets would dote on me in the yard and the park. An expecting mother living above the apartment practised her cooking skills on me and I adored her for she introduced me to this magic called nail polish. I was scared of the dogs that would bark all the time and was particularly annoyed by a cat who would steal my milk and biscuits each day.
The two houses were clearly not enough for the growing family and we moved into a third home, bigger and better than both of those. This home would change everything. Some of my friends who would politely make excuses to come home suddenly became friendlier. We had new neighbors to socialize with and the most enviable view of the town. We played room-cricket, room- badminton and skipped the rope a lot. Neither do many people live on 6th storey in a duplex in a joint family in Mumbai nor have a sibling a decade younger but I was blessed with both. My baby sister delighted us in that household, growing up from a baby to a kid to a teen. We all loved the house and it loved us back.
My cousin moved away for education for a few years and for the first time, I realized one might need to do that. I missed my trusted adviser and partner in crime but I had my hands full with studies and basketball. What I didn't realize then was, they were most likely the last years of my permanent residence in that house.
I moved to Nagpur for college, 850 km away from home. A Mumbaikar had moved from India to Bharat and boy was it difficult. There was a bed, a chair and a cupboard in half the room that I was entitled to, with deplorable mess food and alien people with alien habits. There was no air conditioning to shield from the harsh summer, no sofa to curl into, no washing machine to wash one's clothes and not much allowance to be distracted with. But that is exactly when life surprises and sends a package of beautiful humans that would then become one's family - figuring out life and improvising every single day, together holding the bull by its horns.
For the first time, I saw that the middle class had massive houses. For someone raised in the city, it was breath-taking and freeing, both at once. My friend's villa was a palace to me, with bathrooms larger than my living room back home. For the first time ever, I realized that my upbringing was an outlier and most people grow up very differently. I met and lived with ethnicities I was taught to not be fond of and I fell in love with most of them and they continue to be cherished friends till date. I realized that moving away from home was making me braver, wiser and stronger and carving myself an identity more than what my family gave me.
I returned to Thane for a year for my first job after graduating as a chemical engineer, but the home I moved back in was barely recognizable from the home I left. It had undergone multiple makeovers and my uncle's family had moved out. That year divided my time across Surat, Thane and Dewas. In Surat, I lived in a fluorine-distressed colony surrounded by 40 peacocks that were divine and annoying simultaneously. In Dewas, I would live in a guesthouse with a Nepali caretaker-cum-cook who would constantly try to feed me eggs. When I Thane, I drove 50 km a day to & from work, spent time with my then boyfriend and stay up late nights preparing for B-school.
I got into IIM Lucknow and the 200-acre sprawling campus, lovingly called HelL, became my new home. I had a room on the ground floor with a massive balcony. I made the room my own - my favorite artist's work, movie posters, fairy lights, bean bag, tea kettle and Diwali parties with my closest people. I was a regular at the grand library, the Olympic sized pool and the basketball court. I have lost count of the friends I have made with during long, late-night walks - singing, howling and dreams in our eyes! I fell in love with the people I met and everyone had a knack that nobody else did. My family was growing larger, with people from the length and breadth of India and well as my European exchange friends.
Managers are expected to be owners of their work and expected to react promptly and practically to unconducive situations. For the first time in my life, I checked into a 5 star hotel. Actually, 3 premium luxury hotels in 10 days across 2 cities. I wasn't used to wet towels, 100 item breakfast spreads or being in a golden cage without the opportunity to breathe non-conditioned air.
And then I found myself, quite unexpectedly, in the heartland of Chennai working 6 days a week with people that would refuse to accept me. I was given a dingy room with a no almirah, barely functional toilet and food that my body refused to internalize - something no fresh IIM graduate sees coming. My workmate and I called it a final straw after a month of adjusting there when a group of drunk hooligans indecently entered her private space. To assuage our wounds, we were then moved to a 3 star hotel - something that would then become our new home for almost a year.
I lived in that shiny hotel, in a room with 13 mirrors and processing the very limited cooking skills of the chef. I could breathe in the sea, barely a kilometer away and the sea accepted me even when the local people did not. I had room service with a very fancy bed but no family or friends and I soon realized that a closed room with 13 mirrors does not take long to transform into personal hell.
One day suddenly, a mail came announcing my transfer to Kolkata. I found myself packing my life into 3 bags and into a charming old guesthouse on Camac street within the next 72 hours. My plan to search for housing was smashed by a 4-day business tour which eventually ended after 28 days across 5 cities sliced by a dozen flights. This was but a trailer of my impending Up In the Air life - buying overpriced clothes & luggage from airports, inhaling circulated air, working from cabs and permanent lack of sleep. I became a regular at lounges and was friends on first-name basis with pilots & crews across multiple airlines on my regular routes.
Finding a home is more difficult when you're not available to check the place out and someone swoops in on the place while one is still collecting luggage from the carousel. But one always knows someone who knows someone looking for a roommate, and bam! I was living on 27th floor of one of the poshest areas in town. The township had rabbits and geese overlooking a lotus lake adjoining a fancy mall with all great brands and a movie theatre. I was living with warm flatmates and a hip social circle. I paid rent but lived a week per month when I wasn't in a different city in yet another fancy hotel. But that week was worth so much more than all the free upgrades and air miles because it was home!
I remember getting donuts for my flatmates when I broke the news to them that I would now move to Bangalore as work demanded. Another agonizing home-search and multiple flights later, I would move into a society right next to my office, cutting out the infamous Bangalore commute. This place is green with flowers, birds and butterflies but I may have to move again soon, closer to my new job.
Other than all the homes I have actually lived in, I have also considered some other homes as mine own. My naniyal or my mother's childhood home floods me with saudade. The yard and staircase that I played with my first ever friend, the mild smell of agarbattis and running around the peculiar construction, paused with my grandmother's impeccable cooking. The homes of my 3 local guardians and my friend in Nagpur that fed me with love, always had an extra bed for me. My uncle and aunt's homes after they moved out were all mine. My aunt's home in Pune where I am mercilessly bullied and lovingly spared has been mine too. My friends' homes where I go unannounced and take their couches for granted. My ex-boyfriend's home in Japan where he bought new blankets and mattresses for someone who would stay for just 2 nights - where we played, cooked, cleaned and laughed.
The local homes in Nagpur would have curtains of dried waala hay. Chennai homes very adorned with intricate rice rangolis. Ones in Bali had beautiful temples in their yard. I found Kolkata homes quite not up my alley, but as a stranger I met on a plane once put it "Badi is Badi" or 'home is home'.
My father works in construction and once took me to a 'home' in SoBo which was 9 storeys massive, with unimaginable luxury. An entire floor was a home theatre and the kitchen would easily shame a Michelin grade restaurant. He also once took me to a home where a room sprung out in the middle of nowhere suspended over a massive steel ball.
My mother took me to her naniyal - a century old gentle giant with a cowshed, pepper trees and a mango orchard. I was the seventh generation of the man that built it and the instant attachment one feels is inexplicable. My father took me to his naniyal near Belgaum - an even lovely, warm home with two wells inside the home!
The spaces I have been to and lived across have fascinated me and my captivation is evident, for I dream a lot about people and places. In my dreams, spaces often shape-shift and are often inter-connected. I believe that everyone's journey is different and it would be unfair to compare any two journeys. I have moved across cities and states, across cultures, languages and food. I have had so many homes and I have lived and learnt differently through every single one of them. While I have grown to admire well designed homes, it's not one for me unless it is filled with people and laughter. For all the places that have been home, there have been people who made it so. What once starts as a situationship slowly blends into a relationship.
I have continued to decorate the spaces I have habitated in since my days at Lucknow, making it a little bit my own. I like my home clean but slightly messy, with an abundance of food and a couch to curl into. I usually choose a corner where I drink copious amounts of tea and write or read. I need sunlight coming in, opaque curtains and a few plants around me. I am comfortable with solitude but I enjoy welcoming company into my home.
Humans do not have the luxury like snails, carrying their comfortable homes wherever they go. Each time I move or am required to, I am plagued with anxiety of losing all and starting over again. It is always a process of combing through spaces & people and settling down with ones farthest from major disruption to one's life. It requires a mental model of adjustment, kindness towards people's flaws and acceptance of change. I am aware that I have done it far more times upto my late twenties than most people would in their lifetimes. I occasionally feel like parts of me have been spread all over the spaces I have called my home - beautiful parts that are strewn and lost forever, which I will never have the chance to relive again.
It takes strength to accept to oneself that every home is transient, that every person one lives with today may not be a part of one's future. It takes courage to love and feel for these spaces and people despite understanding it would be ephemeral. One learns, truly, to live in the moment and capture the moment in one's memory.
And then one day, one comes back home tired from work and curls into their couch. One brews oneself a cup of tea and their decade-younger sibling sends them a snap from their childhood album.
And all of it comes back as saudade.
