A change of residence is a stressful affair
and the level of unease changes with the type of evacuation (or ‘move’ as it is
commonly referred to)
The first and the worst is the forced
variety where people are ‘perforce’ moved from one place to another – the
stress levels in this case normally are inversely proportional to the
preparation time given.
When the move is due to natural calamities,
which come and ram us without prior warning – people grab their children and
the most valuable but lightest items and run. The houses or ruins left behind would
contain if not every, most of the household items.
When the move is enforced by hostile
authorities – such as the ones during partitions or takeover of communist
regimes – people load the bare necessities atop available modes of transport
and move. They leave behind kitchen utensils and heavy items such as beds,
storage units etc. The more hostile the regime, more are the items left behind.
The other kind of move – referred to
sometimes as ‘shifting’ occurs when persons by their own free will move from
one place to another. These ‘moves’ are made pleasant by a hope of better life
at the other place, or something as pleasing as that. The only items left
behind in such cases are memories and useless items such as – kids’ toys, pots
that held our potted plants – painted on the exterior, but with muddy
interiors, broken stuff, very sharp stuff (such as very sharp knives which
could cut through packing material), gardening tools, useless gifts that people
pass on between families etc
I ask those who quote Pompeli as a perfect
example of how a move would look like if it was nature driven and use the
sudden escape of Jews from Germany and Hindus from Pakistan as examples of
politically mandated movements – “Considering the fact that the Indus Valley excavations
revealed only such stuff as one discards when one is moving to a place where one
feels one can buy better stuff than the discarded items, can we look at a possibility
where these people found a better land – either on earth or in a different
planet, packed their stuff carefully, boarded their advanced modes of transport
and departed happily?”
