Of cats, roots and Anand Bakshi...

At what point do you realise that you've set roots somewhere?

That you've discovered the cat in you and don't want to be disturbed?

A particular sofa, contoured by nights spent watching reruns of your favourite soap. Or a special corner of the study, where the sunlight slants in just so in the mornings.

Or a home that announces the arrival of winter with the smell of alistonia flowers wafting through the bedroom window ?

Or a neighbourhood, where you know which loose pavement slab can suddenly tilt underfoot on the way to the market. Or a city, whose seasons and appearances are etched in the retina of your subconscious. Or a country, whose life breath you've lived in a thousand ways, big and small...

And, if in your own mind, you're the kind who's always traded the comfort of the familiar for the excitement of the new, when do you acknowledge the sudden expression of the feline gene?

When your comfortable corner of the universe is taken away, it can leave an after-image in your brain, like a phantom limb. The spaced out feeling is quite literal, your space no longer yours. It takes you by surprise, and you feel a bit like a refugee, cast out by force.

Your mind rejects the change - the new piece of furniture, or room alignment or venue - as a transit camp, a rag-tag arrangement that's unlikely to last. Stubbornly, it waits for the dull ache to end, believes things can go back to being just so.

Sometimes, you can fix it, move the sofa back to where it originally was. But sometimes, you can't; you're not going to get back the house that the good Punjabi landlord has decided you've 'company leased' for long enough and will now usurp, unless thrown out.

Then, you look closely and realise that what is being missed by the mind is not quite the limb itself, but what it thought the limb was, the role it had assigned to the piece, in the larger scheme of your life.

At this point, if you never intended for a physical space to anchor you, for familiarity to have a hold on you, the truth is inescapable and uncomfortable. Something has changed within you. You could even be getting old.

Human beings are designed to adapt, to move on. Other things will demand your attention and this seemingly irreplaceable construct will soon be substituted by something else. There's nothing wrong with that.

Only, as with all of life, if you're conscious through this process of loss and reconciliation, it can give you unexpected perspective; like moving a potted bonsai banyan from its spot after years, to accidentally discover its hungry roots have burrowed into the parapet wall under it. You should have known better.

That's the end of the deep stuff. The fish screensaver wisdom on this topic comes from Anand Bakshi. Click. Enjoy. Zindagi Ke Safar mein Guzar Jate Hain Jo Maqaam

p.s: Those who wish to give voice to their own experience of being cast out of a nice rented house may replace the last word in the mukda with 'makaan'.