INDIA: "The sense of home is within me and permeates the space I occupy"

. NEW DELHI / Tehelka Weekly / August 23, 2008 Personal Histories HINDU ASTROLOGY does not confine itself to foretelling the fate of only one person in a family. According to these predictions, the configuration of heavenly constellations under which I was born ensured a peripatetic life for both my father and me. I have moved houses 27 times, 11 before marriage and 16 after. My mother’s way of confronting my father’s career moves smoothed over any potential distress. Her quiet strength and matterof- fact acceptance did not encourage any soul searching about psychic damage or adjustment problems. A family of six — our parents, three daughters and a son — just packed up and moved, underwent new experiences, went to new schools, made new friends, and got used to new vistas from new windows. My mother would never move into a new house without a milkboiling ceremony. On an auspicious day, decided according to the Hindu almanac, she would sally forth, armed with a pot and some milk, to the new house. Then she would boil the milk on the

Memory's truth is changeable adding not only fairy gold, but reshaping, eliminating, amplifying and comparing

stove, making sure it boiled over. We would all sip a little of that milk solemnly, for we believed that Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity, came on the upsurge of the milk to bless the house. I have continued this ritual through all my travels as an adult; to me it is more a spiritual experience, encouraging our grounding and promoting empathy between the house and me, be it in Chennai or Bangalore, Jakarta or Singapore. Thus is prepared the ground for shared family experiences that invest our lives with comforting familiarity and warmth, so the house becomes a home. Many experiences that have meant home to me have involved both my mother and her religion. Often when I returned from boarding hostels to wherever my parents were at that time, I would wake up in a strange house. But when I smelt those smells associated with my mother’s early morning puja — that special fragrance of incense, sandalwood, and flowers — I knew where I was. My mother loved using flowers, and knew the ritual significance of each variety. She punctuated her chants with elegant flicks of her wrists so that the flowers flew in graceful arcs to land before the gods. Wherever she went, she planted bushes or creepers of white starred jasmine and scarlet hibiscus; it was probably her way of anchoring. And when I breathed in the scents that accompanied her worship, knowing that they meant she was sending up prayers for our well being through the wafting incense, I knew I was on hallowed ground. It is therefore a tribute to her that I do not remember the hassles that might have accompanied these transfers, but instead have a marvellous mosaic of memories of our various homes. Of course memory’s truth is changeable, adding not only fairy gold, but reshaping, eliminating, amplifying and comparing; creating its own interpretation of events, colourful and variegated, but lucid. It is nature’s way of coping with the past and present, so the memories behind our eyelids are only the enchanting ones, to be recalled at our will and pleasure. Some magical evenings I remember well, in colonial bungalows in the remote districts where my father was posted, when the electricity went off and the light of the kerosene lantern flickered golden red flames on our childish faces as my mother taught us to make chains out of broken glass bangles. She held the shimmering crescents of colour over the candle flame till they became pliable, then curved them gently till the ends touched, and looped the arcs together. Useless rainbow chains we’d hang over our mirrors, but they symbolised the linking of our experiences, gave us a sense of continuity and stability, and captured the essence of those nights, jasmine scented, with the atmosphere of an ancient timeless ritual. Memories are intangible links with the past, but man has always invested inanimate objects of earth, clay, wood and metal with significance. And so the various artifacts I possess are scattered wherever I live, disparate yet coherent, evoking fond recollections of the homes I’ve lived in and the places I’ve visited. There are the photographs of the children at various stages of their lives, the Indonesian landscape paintings, the brass lamps from my mother which I reverently place facing east and the books of my childhood, well thumbed — all these and more have dotted my homes wherever they have been. So, wherever I am, I am content, as my mother was, living in a present enhanced by memories of the past and hopes for the future. For the sense of home is within me and permeates the space I occupy. And for that I am grateful to her. • From Tehelka Magazine