“How are we ever going to pack all of this and move it
across continents?” I often lamented in the days that followed. All our
possessions, everything that we had to show for all the years spent in the
country, were strewn around like flotsam. Each time I ran my gaze over the
state of affairs of our apartment, my heart skipped a beat. There was a
colossal mound of books occupying an entire section of the living room. On most
days I would come back from work to find Arjun diligently sifting through this
heap, trying to sieve out the books that were really worthy of making the trip overseas.
Being book-lovers of gargantuan proportions, this was a mighty dreadful task. We
ended up donating quite a few books to the Farmington Hills city library, an
action that made us feel much better about abandoning some of our books. As for
the rest of our belongings, a huge part made for a sizeable handout to The
Salvation Army while some other things found their way on to resale websites
like Craigs’ List and MI Indians.
Selling stuff on these sites was like a lesson in human
psychology as it forced us to deal with a variety of personalities. There were
the stingy ones – those whose cheese paring methods made for hard bargains. One
such ‘Uncle Scrooge’ came looking for a book rack one evening. Scrutinizing our
hardly 2 month old cabinet like he was buying a million dollar race horse
instead of a generic piece of furniture, he pointed at imaginary cracks on its
glossy veneer so as to persuade us to shave off a couple of dollars. Tired of
his whining and wheedling, we gave in and sold it to him for 12 dollars versus
the 15 dollars that we had originally quoted. I would love to see the marble
castles he built with the measly 3 dollars he saved that day. Then there were
the excited ones like the lady who figured that a singular wooden chair that we
were selling looked exactly like the 5 chairs she already had and hence flawlessly
completed a set of 6. The sheer happiness that comes from unearthing something
that you have been long hunting for was written large on her face the day she
picked it up.
There was also the kid who took a fancy to my 8-cube
organizer with the pretty purple and beige cloth drawers. He explained to me in
great detail why I should wait for him instead of selling it off to someone
else as he was trying very hard to piece together the amount by pooling his
allowance money and doing additional chores for his Dad to earn the balance.
His earnestness was endearing and I had no qualms in reducing the asking price
to fit his budget even before he could ask. The Gujarati aunty, who brought us dhoklas and khandavis while picking up some of our kitchenware that she wanted
to buy, was thoughtful beyond words. She didn’t want a discount in return for
her kindness. She just assumed that we would be short on munchies as we had
emptied our kitchen and wanted to make sure we didn’t go hungry. All of this
makes me now believe with greater conviction that the world is a circle of
goodwill after all. You do end up being recipients of generosity at some point
if you keep the faith, avoid the cynicism and pump endless benevolence into the
universe.
Somewhere along the
way, during the 7 weeks that we had before moving, my friend C organized a cozy
little baby shower (at Crispelli’s, a pizzeria and bakery) which left me misty-eyed
and regretful about leaving such wonderful people behind. A friend even drove
all the way from Chicago to celebrate Abu’s imminent arrival into our lives.
There was so much love around that day! The baby shower was just a start to the
waterworks that were to follow as my day of departure neared, although I now
realize that I was nowhere close to being prepared for the degree of sorrow
that was going to envelope me. As C later described the situation very
eloquently in her quintessential American drawl – “It was a total shit show”.
13 pieces of luggage. That was all it took to finally wrap
up whatever was left of our worldly belongings. At 4am on Saturday, December
the 12th, when all of Farmington Hills was still doused in a deep
black inkiness, we loaded our rented car and headed off to the Metro Detroit
airport to catch a Chicago-bound plane. In a few hours we were to board our
next flight from Chicago’s O’Hare airport to New Delhi. If there was any
remorse regarding the fact that all our possessions had boiled down to just 13
bags, it quickly dissipated the moment we saw the long serpentine queue at the
check-in counter. It was going to take us forever to reach the counter, check
in all our bags, complete the security check and traverse the rather large
airport to reach the gate. As I waited nervously for Arjun to return the rental
car and meet me back at the airport, the mountainous stack of luggage next to
me suddenly started looking ominous.
A thoroughly scatter-brained lady awaited us at the check-in
counter and after just a couple of minutes of dealing with her I was convinced
that our flight was going to leave sans us. Snatching our boarding cards from
her talons after what seemed like an eternity of watching her punch buttons,
calculate excess baggage fee, recheck luggage weight and reconfirm airline
policies for additional baggage, we sprinted to the security check area, hoping
to finally encounter some good Samaritans who would let us cut ahead in line. We
were lucky this time. With a whole lot of cooperation from the kind people in
line and the airport staff we were able to complete the security check in no
time. To the perturbing sounds of the final boarding call for our flight, we
made a mad dash to the gate. Even with Abu presumably jangling in my tummy, my
backpack - which held both my personal as well as work laptops - feeling like a
block of iron dangling from my aching shoulders and roller-bags zigzagging
behind us like crazed pets, we managed to avoid missing our flight, although it
was merely by the skin of our teeth.
Digging into warm croissants and eggs never felt better and
it gave us the fortification needed to kill time at the O’Hare airport. After breakfast
I meandered casually through the cavernous terminals, picking some last minute
treats to take back. Garret’s famous caramel and cheese popcorn was one of them.
In retrospect, had I known that in a few weeks I was going to hanker terribly
for its sweet and salty taste, I would have bought a larger tin instead of the
minuscule one. It felt odd that we were taking a one-way flight out of the United
States, perhaps because it rang with a resounding finality, almost like the end
of an era. A deluge of good memories that America had given us, came flooding
back like an inundated river. The clean, green, crowd-free environs were no
longer going to be right in our backyard (I was in fact wrong about this) and
there was no saying if and when we would ever meet the friends we were leaving
behind. Then again, we were going back to our own country, a place bursting
with old friends and family which made it difficult to remain melancholic for
long. What I was feeling can be succinctly described in one simple word -
bittersweet....To be continued
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