Weeknote #23 [W26.10] - Moving houses is a bittersweet experience

I finally moved out of Electronic City this week.

I spent the better part of the week packing and sorting through my things. I have to do the reverse now, and unpack and organize everything all over again. Which is usually a thing I’ve always liked in the past. But I am way too overwhelmed and sleep-deprived at the moment to enjoy this.

Moving out of a place you’ve lived in for a long time is always a bittersweet experience. It feels like permanently closing a chapter of your life that you’ll never return to again.

I had lived in that house for almost 3 years. Long enough to have a certain sense of self that got tied to it.

This was the first time I had lived completely independently, without having to follow anyone else’s rules or conditions. That is the kind of experience which changes how you think of yourself fundamentally.

I hosted quite a few lunches, dinners, and watch parties with friends there. Over time I became a person who hosts and cooks for others. Which is not something I had imagined for myself. Some of my fondest memories of the house are of the meals I cooked for others. (For shared meals are rarely ever only meals; they are all about the conversations that accompany them.)

It had started with a few Sunday lunches with a few friends, which later expanded into dinner parties with larger groups.

I also got to cook dinners semi-regularly for (and with) Lynette (who was my closest friend in Bangalore at the time), and later Liz (who was my partner for about a year). These were often simpler and less elaborate meals — sometimes salads, sometimes rice and dal, or sometimes just roti — but in many ways more satisfying than the parties.

If there is one thing I wish for at the new house, it is to be able to carry on the tradition of hosting and cooking for others.

Finally, living there also marked a period of relative sexual freedom for me.

Right before moving to Bangalore, I remember having a conversation with a date about how Kolkata was sexually liberating for her because she had her own place there with nobody to answer to. Bangalore, and this house in particular, was that for me.

Before this, I had always lived either in hostels inside conservative college campuses or with my parents. Having a place of my own granted a kind of privacy and autonomy that was new.

In retrospect, I did a lot of proper adulting for the first time in that house. These will be fond memories, and at the moment I feel sad leaving them behind.