The cook surveyed the en suite apartment and declared it too small for his liking and might have gone on strike had the driver not volunteered to move in instead. It was a portent of things to come. Having conceded to the children's demand that our home, while it had served us well, wasn't large enough for a family with an obsessive need for space, we had found another to serve as an interim pit stop, but it had led to an increase in turf wars.
As the one funding the venture, I thought I'd have some say in the deployment of rooms, but couldn't have been more mistaken. The siblings fought over everything from choice of bedrooms to favourite spots on the balcony. They squabbled over furniture, wall colours, blinds and electrical fittings. They shocked the landlady by suggesting changes that would have required the services of an architect and taken the best part of a year. They wondered why I wasn't mobilising more effort in getting things done.
I interviewed painters, hired an electrician, found an AC-wallah, haggled with contractors and mistris, drew designs for cabinets and bookshelves for the carpenter, balanced precariously on a chair while measuring doors and windows for drapes. I scouted for a mali, spoke to potential chowkidars, engaged part-timer staff, sent out letters regarding our change of address to banks, insurance companies, mobile phone service providers and Delhi's social set. "I need a ceiling ring for my punching bag," my son would message in between. He also wanted a proper bar - could I not kit out the extra bedroom as a bedroom? "A home theatre lounge might be nice," he'd text; was I "at least" considering a jacuzzi in his bath?
"I think," my daughter would call from her office, "you might want to replace the computer desk in my room with a shoe cupboard." She wanted the wardrobe doors changed, then suggested they were fine, then decided against a cupboard in her bedroom at all - I was to find a way to fit in a dressing room walk-in wardrobe instead.
I might have consulted my wife but she'd chosen to make herself unavailable, preferring to travel till things on the home front had been organised to some level of semblance. She did drop in occasionally for a first-hand account of how things were progressing, and to tell her friends, "It's all done, really, I don't know what my husband is fretting over." She encouraged the children's increasing rancour about the "tardy" pace of the work's progress.
Moving a quarter-century's worth of memories isn't a job for the faint-hearted. What furniture would go, what wouldn't; should the carpets be drycleaned before the shift, or after; would the packers take charge of the clothes to be packed or leave it to the discretion of the family to sort through before placing in the cartons; surely we were considering throwing away some things? "We moved every two years," my mother reminded me of my father's peripatetic existence, "without stressing," neglecting to recall the help the army provided its officers, who, when they weren't attending welcome parties, seemed to make a career of dining off farewells.
It's days before the move now. "Did you get the lights I wanted for my bedroom?" my son has called in between client meetings to ask. My daughter has complained to her mother that I've been "unhelpful". When it's finally over, I'm hoping I can opt to stay behind - the old apartment still needs a tenant, after all.
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