Can I pack the fridge items now madam?” one of the packers asked and proceeded to wrap our pickle jars, sauce bottles and sundry other items from the fridge. He then took out a bowl with an open, half-used milk packet nestling delicately inside. As he lifted the wobbly plastic packet with one hand and picked up a sheaf of newspaper with the other, I realised his true intentions. “No, don’t pack that!” I shouted. He froze and considered the situation for a few seconds before conceding defeat.
Considering how often we’ve moved house, it should get easier, but it hasn’t yet. There is something very disturbing about inviting a dozen strangers into your house to go through your things. In the book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes about how someone’s house and possessions can tell you a lot about them. Studies show that when strangers are invited to look through your house, their assessment of you turn out to be pretty accurate, and close to what your friends know about you. This confirms my worst fears.
“You really want to pack this madam?” the packers ask, when they find my decade-old collection of seashells, pebbles and pigeon feathers. They open a drawer and discover that I still haven’t finished the cross-stitch panel that I started in ninth standard. With every cupboard they open, the fact that I could be clinically insane appears to them as a distinct possibility. Our poor housekeeping skills are also brought to everyone’s notice. You know those American crime shows where investigators are always flashing little torches around the house (despite the broad daylight)? At the crime scene, they always draw a chalk outline to show how the body was found. Our house looks a lot like that when the packers are done with the furniture, except that the outlines are made of dust. One can almost image a keen-eyed cop cocking his cap and saying, “The victim, a large study table, was found sprawling at a 20-degree angle to the wall. A few broken drawers but no sign of a struggle. Now, from the coffee-splatter pattern, it appears that the perp or unsub’s modus operandi was to leave the empty coffee cup around for days. Time of death? I put it around 1983.”
We finally found ourselves in the new house, with 100-odd cardboard boxes. I saw this magic show the other day on TV. In one particular trick, the magician hangs a series of giant playing cards and hides his scantily-clad assistant and a fluffy puppy behind the cards. He then mutters some mumbo-jumbo and moves the cards, only to find that both of them have vanished. The assistant is sitting in the audience with a cup of tea, and the puppy is now a carrot. The movers may pack the house in an organised manner but, somehow, by the time the truck arrives, some black magic has taken place. A box labelled “Kitchen Items” will now contain your electricity bills, a ghastly mask you bought on a holiday and several single socks with holes in them. If you want to find your kitchen items, you should look in the box labelled “Files”, or, better yet, “Toilet Items”. On the other hand, boxes labelled “Miscellaneous” always have the things you’re looking for rather urgently.
It’s now been two weeks since we moved and we are still going through the boxes. Today, when we went to get something from the car at 5 am, the alarm started beeping loudly. Neighbours peered out from all sides and stared at us standing there in our shabby T-shirts and pyjamas, covered in dust from all the work going on in the house. We didn’t look like we owned the house, much less the car. As the car happily blared away, I explained the situation to our nearest and friendliest neighbour, also adding that we hadn’t yet found the suitcase with our good clothes. “Don’t worry”, he said, “I moved last year and I’m still looking.”
Suchi Govindarajan works as a technical writer, and pretends to be a photographer. She blogs at www.suchiswriting.com
