Decade

It does not feel like that long ago when I moved into this house. I had had a major fallout with my then flatmate and wanted to end that relationship and strike out on my own. So we (the third flatmate came with me) decided to look for a new place to stay and we were not having much success with it. By a stroke of good luck we wound up finding out about this place while we were hanging out at a nearby place where a friend used to stay. They said it was a nice place, even if the landlady was a bit bonkers. Since we were running out of options a bit of craziness was something that I was willing to overlook. We walked in, checked out the house, met with the landlords. I did not find much wrong with the landlady. The place was on the smaller side, but it would suffice. We agreed on the rent, paid a bit of advance money and the deal was done.

It has been 9-years since that time, almost to the date.

Almost, because the lease agreement says the first of December 2001, but we had moved in before that. I just don't remember when. I could pile up the cliches, but it is hard believe it has been that long. Over the years this house has become my little hideout.

The second flatmate moved out a while later, bothered much by my proclivity for living in a state that was not untidy. I never kept a flatmate after that, in the strictest sense of the term. I am way too protective of my own personal space to do that. That, though, was turned upside down for a bit for about a year and maybe a bit more, when I started living in with my then girlfriend (we sort of ratified that arrangement after the living together had started) and I learnt a lot more.

In these 9-years this little shoebox has stood testament to many of my antics, the many women and the many loves that passed through my life; the only other short cohabitation stint where my friend who walked out of her house lived in this tiny space with me for a month before she could find a flat for herself. The time when I wanted to drink myself silly on new year's eve because I was rather upset with myself and sneaked out from a gathering of close friends under some other pretext, stood in a snaking queue to procure the booze (two full bottles of cheap vodka, no less) and guzzled down almost the whole of the first one in about half-an-hour, only for my friends to turn up unannounced, suspecting something fishy. I had more alcohol than blood in my veins by then. What followed could have been funny, only if it was not that tragic. I spent the next year mending burnt bridges and putting back together pieces of trust that lay shattered all over the place. Not mine, I should clarify.

Not many have been welcome here. It is, after all, my little hideout. But those who have been welcome, have always been welcomed with open arms and all the warmth this place could summon up. There have been exceptions too. Instance of absolute coldheartedness where I've not let a very old friend in because I was trying to prove a point and left her crying outside the gate. Instances where my parents were not welcome here for at least the first four years of my stay here. There are many flashes of memories. The advancing of age and persistence of time colours it in hues that are different from what it could probably have been like then. I don't feel so militant anymore about so many of those things I've felt militant about.

I have aged and grown weary. The spirit is not that willing much for fighting the good fight. Be it windmills or real battles, I leave most of them alone now. The instinct, though, does not die that easy. The fingers still twitch at the sight of many things, muscle memory does not die easy. That is where experience intervenes. Orders are handed out to stand down, step aside, listen, think, understand, and grasp the situation. After a lifetime of charging headlong into where the heart asked me to rush into, it is only natural that I am a bit confused these days when the mind jumps in and pulls stronger in the other direction. If all has not been either entirely right or entirely wrong, why is it that there is largely not much else but only almost ten-years of memories to live with?

That is not to say it has always been taken away from me. I guess rationality and an objective viewpoint would determine that when all is finally said and done, things measured, notes tallied and interpretations made, it would stand out that I've walked out more than I have stayed and let go of more than I've hung on to. I guess I could put in a bit of token resistance and protest feebly that it was not so. But I don't think it matters much anymore. Viewpoints are largely incidental to these things. It matters if you are keeping score. I stopped doing that a while ago. If the present needs to be underwritten by the past and overshadowed by the future as a rule, scores make sense. And I've always sucked at keeping scores, because I throw them away where it really matters.

Coming back to where we started from, I don't know for how much longer I'll stay on here. I've previously tried twice to move out of here. It is more a habit and familiar comfort for me. I knowingly do not know the answer to the question whether this is a place I identify with as home. Somewhere I do think all of this matters. I should pursue sense, sensibility and purpose, but it is the consistency that is lacking in that pursuit. Like dogs chasing cars, after the first few seconds of giving chase passionately, you can't even remember why on earth did you even set off at all in the first place?