The Business of Shifting

When we had just moved to Gzb in 1985, we began to build a house. We spent the next twenty years trying to shift into it. In 2009, we gave it up and got another -- a ready-made one -- to make things simpler. In 2011 we are still trying to shift into it. If anyone asks us why, it's one of those rather impossible-to-answer questions.

Because it is never a clear no-we-don't-want-to-shift scenario. Neither is it ever a yes-we-are-shifting-right-now scene. It has always been a hanging-in-mid-air, waiting-to-happen-someday kind of wonder activity -- happening in bits, pieces, and spurts -- an activity that gives the impression that there is constantly something happening in life.

First the flooring required work. Then it was plumbing. Then it was electricity. And then it was painting. Then the carpentry ... and, of course, masonry couldn't lag too far behind, could it?

So we have a whole new house to move into. 

Yes, it-will-happen; yes-it-is-happening by and by; yes-we'll-be-there-eventually ... but of course we're yet to find out when the eventual will happen. It might take a couple of lifetimes, that's all. It's almost as if once the mission has been accomplished, there will be nothing left in our lives to work towards.   

Call it golden manacles, habitual procrastination, sheer indifference, or a willful illusion. 

And it has become one of the greatest embarrassments of my life. For I had to refuse a lecture at an institute two years ago because we were 'shifting' ('We really are, sir!'). And again about a month back because we were still 'shifting' ('Honest to god we are, sir!').

Had we owned half the palaces in Rajasthan, it wouldn't have taken so long.

There are friends who've been waiting to see us, and relatives who've been waiting to welcome us at the new house -- just for a little over seven hundred and thirty days now.

And there is more.

But we're still waiting for Godot. Sigh.