GROWING UP AND MOVING ON IN LONDON

                               

wow okay, let me start this blog by telling you exactly how good I am at procrastinating. This blog was supposed to be up a month ago. Oh well, better late than never right!

So here's the thing all my life before getting married and moving to London, I have only moved one time from our old apartment to the independent house my father built and the move happened when I was in school around 2008-2009 I think I am not completely sure but I'm confident my father will comment down below and correct me if I am wrong. As far as I can remember I was extremely happy about it because the apartment was a 1 bedroom situation and we didn't have enough room. A new home with your own private room? are you kidding me? that was the dream of every young person who grew up sharing space with their siblings. Although because that apartment is where I spent most of my childhood,  it is my favorite home and I have warned my parents to never sell it. 

 I mentioned my first move to tell you that move never emotionally affected me as such. Mostly because I was too young to understand what was happening around me. I do get nostalgic every once in a while when I visit that apartment but nothing more than that. Now let's fast-forward to the present real quick. I am in London with my husband and our dog Wrin. We both started our married life in our city Nagpur. so the transition to a new house for me after getting married was done within the same city limits. Moving to London and starting fresh as equals (by equals I mean after getting married girls to have to leave their home, move to their husband's home but moving to London meant we both leave our homes and comfort zones) The first home we lived in was this beautiful apartment in northeast London where we were a few minutes away from the river and the dog park was so close. If you have a dog you know how important it is to have a dog park close by. But we had to move out in 15 days due to some technical difficulties. 

Moving to a new home comes with a very tricky emotion, for instance, if you're upgrading you won't feel jack shit about your last place but god forbid if you end up downgrading you will feel every nerve in your body rejecting the current place. Finding flaws in the place, trying to justify finding a new house immediately would be a great idea instead of living in the downgraded place. And for us, the situation, in the beginning, felt like an upgrade on the website but in reality, it was an upgrade in real estate but really a downgrade in the housemate section. Trust me this situation is just as bad as being in a downgrade house. But we still managed because we knew we had to move closer to kaustubh's university in some time so we just had to get by some months.

The house was an independent house, after a month the landlord bumped us to the first floor, again that happened due to some technical difficulties. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzLMLKUkhRk&t=219s

The housemates upstairs were so great we even started hanging out together every Monday. Someone would cook and the others would bring something to drink. It was a fun tradition we had started together in the lockdown. The locality that seemed shady and very questionable at first started looking friendly. We explored new parks, went out window shopping. Everything was shut and the UK was still in the process of opening up. So the only place we really could go to was the supermarket and parks. Kaustubh and I started our own little tradition of having bubble tea every Sunday at T4 at Ealing broadway and of eating chocolate brioche rolls every time we went to Morrison's for shopping. The locality really grew on us. It's the place where wrin really started changing and making new friends. The idea of wrin making friends and playing with them was so alien to us. But things changed, slowly but surely we fell in love with this new environment. Mind you we still hated the house and the landlord and to be fair everyone hated that landlord. 

It took two months for us to come to a point where we were okay with the place and mentally at peace. When on one most random day while Kaustubh and I were coming back from our daily evening walk we got a call from our previous landlord ( who we both love and adore), he asked us how we're doing and if we're still looking for a place in canary wharf. Hold on wait a sec let me paint the picture for you imagine kaustubh on a call and me jumping like a mad person on the street because I knew where the conversation was headed and I was dying to say YES! WE WOULD LOVE TO COME BACK TO YOUR PLACE. At that very moment, kaustubh and I looked at each other and we knew things are going to be fine because we're going back to the place that we love. And everything else will fall in the right place. Now if you ever followed me on Instagram you would know how obsessed I was with the entire place and more so with the kitchen in that apartment. If not then go ahead and follow me on Instagram @rasikagadkari because I still keep obsessing over the place. 

Long story short we said yes to going back and we still had two weeks until we moved in and I am not kidding you when I say that the two weeks period flew by! and in no time we were supposed to start packing everything and the three months worth of stuff we bought and go back the same route to our old place. Now here is where the very strange part comes in, the part that this entire blog is dedicated to, one week to move out date and I start feeling this pit in my stomach. I brush it away thinking oh it must be the fear of the massive amount of packing work that I have in front of me and it will go away once I start packing. I keep pushing the packing chores because I really do not have the energy to pack all our life in boxes once again. And the pit in my stomach keeps growing deeper and deeper and keeps making me feel like vomiting. But I hold it in and not let it get the best of me. I finally decide to start packing 3 days before the move-out day. But as it turns out packing wasn't the thing that was making me feel weird it was moving out. Although I hated the place at first I somehow got used to living there, I got accustomed to meeting other dog parents, of the little traditions that kaustubh and I had started, and the friends that we found in form of our housemates. We wanted to move back to our old apartment so badly but I still found myself soaking in every bit of our final moments in that place.  

Turns out I am a very sentimental person. Not for the place but the memories it holds for me. It's never about the actual place, is it?  

I never really thought about why I love my childhood home beyond the point that I love it because I spent my childhood there but as it turns out writing this blog forced me to revisit those times and I do love it because I spent my childhood there but also because of the people I spent it around. The neighbors, the fact that my relatives lived closed by, I was a freaking badass and the kids would play cricket with me because I never feared catching a ball coming at me at full speed, all the young adults would play hide and seek with the younglings, celebrated so many birthdays together. Everyone I know grew up and moved on from that apartment. 

I guess that is what growing up is all about. Moving on.

Here are a few photos of our time in our last house in Ealing.