making room

Illustrations by Harshita Borah

I moved out of my hometown 12 years ago. Brokers who drank my blood, housing society interviews, updating my address on amazon, finding the closest Nature’s Basket – sum up my annual rituals in Bombay. This taught me not to ‘unpack’ and I’ve pretty much lived out of cardboard boxes ever since.

Thanks to the virus, it’s been six months since I moved out of Bombay and back to my hometown. Now, I wake up to the morning sun hitting my face from the wrong direction. To a different doorbell at 7am. And to an extremely unfamiliar AC temperature. I never considered how it’s actually the tiny details that tie us to a place, that makes it familiar. And I guess that’s what makes it home?

Oh, how carefully I had planned my move, with lists and logistics to make sure I didn’t leave a single thing, that I thought was important, behind. Everything I needed had to be shipped back here. But what about the things I can’t carry back with me? Things that are ‘replaceable’ like my old pair of slippers, or my favourite non-stick pan that did not fit in the boxes. Or feelings and habits that make a home, but don’t make it with us when we move out?

I guess moving to a new house (or an old one) is just about making room for new habits and episodes that will turn it into a home, till they can be replaced again.

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editor's note

Volume 09

clay | chlorophyll | crimson

Grass is green where you water it. LC’s words float along over Misch’s guitar. It’s a phrase that feels so obvious, and I’m sure those who tend to gardens know this more than most, but it seems to land more than before. The impact noticeable, memorable, echoing through my being. Perhaps we’re ingrained to think it’s greener elsewhere. This patch is the problem and not whether we’re watering it. The key is in the watering. How we go about this practice is what defines our patch of grass. No matter where we go, our patch is, perhaps, the same. Some attributes and characteristics have been changed but the essence is the same: Us.

Stepping into Volume 09 of imprint, marks our third year. I am learning that this patch of green that we have been tending to for the last several years will mould, shift, and sculpt. This depends on how we water it and allow it to take its own shape. It has already happened in wonderfully unexpected ways. There is only so much structure or shape we can predetermine. Beyond that, it will absorb what it needs and reject all that is unnecessary. And perhaps, in this practice, we are changed. Our grass is watered as we water that of our writing, our image making, our practice, our magazine.

From light to dark, rigid to supple, new to old, there is so much in between that is bright and vibrant and unexpected. The practice of our magazine has focused on being open to what we receive; being open to deeply listening to what is shared; being open to work taking us to new journeys. This volume, and this year, will be no different. We will continue tending to it as we have done, learning along the way, from past seasons and present ones.

And yet, I know it will be entirely different.
But still.
It will be watered.