Relocation

Moving to a new place, setting up house at a new place - is not only bone - tiring but mind-blowing too! I can easily imagine a sigh of relief from those of you who needn't lift even the little finger at the moment. For about 4 to 5 months,  events were leading to the inevitable (I think so) shift not even within the same city but a move to another place. It was a peaceful life with a sharper awareness of self (How will it be otherwise living at the feet of Arunachala!)  and a closer communication with all lives around for about three years and now it is back to busy schedules of professional work and busier evenings filled with music in the December music season.
I was mentally planning the shift - what to discard, things to give away and those I would take along with me. However, when the packers came, things in all shapes and sizes kept appearing from every corner of the house. I didn't even recognise some of them - "When did I get it and for what purpose?" - that is what I thought with guilt. I waited for my daughter to give her disapproving look or the usual refrain: "Amma! You have such a lot of 'saaman' that clutters your thinking." Perhaps she is tired of repeating her opinion or she hopes that her Amma would now unclutter her things!
At some point, I wanted to drop everything and shout "Enough!". Finally, after four and a half hours of packing, we could take leave of the mountain and the people.
Here I am, after four days of moving in - finished one training class, boarded a city bus after a few months to go to Mylapore, walked around the 'Maada streets' and bought some vegetables and spent a blissful fifteen minutes in Kapaleeswara temple and even attended two historic lectures about architecture and iconography in temples of Cambodia and Tamil Nadu. My daughter and I wanted to move to South Chennai (the 'happening place'). Most of the streets hold fond memories and there is this sense of coming home in this locality that I cannot deny. All around me, friends, cousins and colleagues went into one happy nostalgic trip on hearing the name, 'Mandaveli'. They started reeling out names of streets, temples and shops.
Excitement apart, this unloading and setting up the place is a daunting and time-consuming task I feel, especially for me.  Can you imagine, I have about 12 to 13 cartons of books - spiritual, religious, fiction and non-fiction and different kinds of school textbooks?  Quite a lot of them would have come down from my grandfather and granduncle. Kitchen items run a close race - again there are utensils which are older than me and some come with their unique stories. Now, tell me, how do I discard or throw away these things? A strange dilemma, I would say.
Now to an important matter:
I was giving some excuse or the other for not writing every day and wanted to start once again. Here is to a new beginning in a new house with all good energy flowing around me.