Packing Boxes and Boarding Flights

Call me old fashioned....boring...or unambitious. But I like stability. No, I love stability.

I wish I was part of an older generation...when people seldom changed jobs, cities, partners, cars, houses or friends. Our generation, on the other hand, seems to enjoy the adrenaline rush that comes with visa stamps on passports, flight tickets, removalists, mail redirection, house hunting and friend finding. In short, we love hassle. In fact, we love it so much that we happily give up everything that was truly ours (friends and family) to run after an elusive “something”. Some call it opportunity...others, quality of life.

I have changed jobs (innumerable times), cities (twice, with a strong possibility of a third time, which we talked ourselves out of), countries (once) and suburbs in the new cities (four times, twice in the same year). There is a general lack of loyalty to a place or phase of life. And this constant moving around has left me root-less, to say the least....and yearning for that feeling of belonging.

My dad retired from the company he joined straight after university. And I, his worthy daughter (NOT), changed four jobs in one year. F-O-U-R.  Yes, I have made more money. Yes, my learning curve also looks healthy. No regrets there. But the reason for changing from my third job to the fourth, is not that obvious to me. Let’s say, it happened...and I did not resist.

Only the other day I was telling a friend how my in-laws (who are in their late sixties, early seventies) are still in touch with friends who they have known since their college days. The same set of friends who came to my husband’s rice ceremony, came to our wedding...and will come to our kid’s rice ceremony (if we have any). And remember, they did not have Facebook to be in touch. No “poking a friend” or “sending a smiley” or relying on birthday alerts to wish your friends. It was all plain love...and a lot of sincere effort to keep the relationships going.

That’s the kind of shared history I miss. We make new friends every year. And by the end of the year, most relocate to other cities or countries, fading into the “virtual” world. I doubt if any of my current friends will be attending my kids’ marriage (note I don’t have any yet), who can teasingly pinch their cheeks and say “Getting married, dude? Remember how you peed in our bed once and covered it with auntie’s scarf?”

I have often heard my dad-in-law say “Your mom (in law) got this ABBA record as a gift for me, with her first salary. The sound quality is still superb.” That’s another thing I miss. I don’t really have any thing that goes back years. The books and CDs that I really thought were “mine” are "back home" still, in the room that used to be mine. The luggage allowance wasn’t enough to let us carry all our “emotional assets”. We carried the "essentials". Wish I can sit on a day bed someday, with wrinkled cheeks and toothless gums, and exclaim “Got this day bed on our sixth anniversary. Bloody good quality the mattress is.”

Remember “Central Perk” from the TV Series, “Friends”? It’s not a real place. It is based on Cholmondeley's, a coffee shop and lounge in Usen Castle at Brandeis University, the alma mater of the show's creators. But it was a coffee house that the “regulars” visited often throughout the series. In fact, they didn’t really have to call one another saying “meet me at the usual place”. They kind of stopped there after work, almost as a ritual. Wish I had something like that. Somewhere to stop...everyday...every-single-day, amidst the whirlwind of daily chores and responsibilities. Some place where my favorite people would turn up, every evening, by default. That regularity... that routine...is what I’d love. But alas! We have to send 571 emails to plan a dinner...and 689 mails to plan a picnic. And we go out of our way to make sure that we try a different place every time. What’s this obsession with “trying out new things?” Why not just find a place you like, and stick to it?

Until a few years back, there used to be a crack in the balcony of our home in Kolkata. Every time I asked my mom why she didn’t get it fixed, she’d say “Oh that! It’s when you hit the wall with your tricycle.” Now, how a toddler on a tricycle can cause such a crack on a brick wall is beyond me.  But what stands out is that fact that we lived in the same house for 30 years. By the time our kid (again, the one that’s not born yet) goes to high school, we may have changed more houses than his age.

 So, while we're packing boxes and boarding flights, are we really getting anywhere? Or are we only running as fast as we can in our own hamster wheels?