This is what I remember of my childhood: I used to live out of a backpack. My parents were divorced when I was eight, and I think they worked out an arrangement of some sort, according to which I would be shuttling between my father’s and my mother’s house every other month. My mother had moved back with her parents after the divorce. And my father still lived with his parents.

Every time I arrived in the other house, each set of my grandparents would fuss over me, mostly telling me I had been under-fed or hadn’t been well looked after. They would say it out loud enough to make sure my parent, whichever of the two I happened to be staying with at that time,heard the comments. It passed like ceremony—those first few moments of raining complaints soon after my arrival. And then it would come up now and then at dinner time or when someone was giving me a bath.

Anyway.

I learned to live out of a backpack very early. There was a way of packing and unpacking that became a part of my life. I always travelled with two bags. One for my text books, and the other for my clothes. My school bag had the regular arrangement of a large main compartment for text books and notebooks, then a smaller one in the front where I would slip my geometry box as well as my tiffin-box. Then there were two side pockets which came in handy for toffees and bubblegum.

The backpack, however, served a different function. It had one big compartment, where I had learned to fit my clothes in snugly. The trick was to fold each one into little rectangles, with the sleeves and the sashes tucked toward the inside of the garment so that they only appeared like cloths folded to look like rectangles. I always spent a lot of time making the perfect rectangle. I would stack them against each other and then slip them all at once into the bag. The white shirts I wore to school everyday were a little tricky to fold because the collar had to be spread out flat so that they didn’t look like humps. I preferred them spread out flat and smooth so the rectangle didn’t have to look like it had an uneven secret hidden within.

For my undergarments, I used a plastic bag that had once carried a watch Father got me from one of his trips abroad. The white plastic bag said HnM in black letters. They were always five pairs of underwear in five different colours to pack. Sometimes, I would have to slip wet underwear in the bag because it would already be time to go to the ‘other’ house and my knickers would still be hanging on the clothesline, waiting to dry. There were small disasters related to such an incident because the moisture always found a way to seep into the dry ones as well. If I was going to Mother’s house with the soaking paraphernalia, she would bring all of them out and put them in the terrace to dry. Father usually forgot to help me with such things because he was always busy talking to his business partners on the phone. And I guess that was how I figured that I had to take care of such things myself.

Going back to my backpack,there would always be a pair of Bata slippers to pack. They went into another plastic bag with the white Keds I wore on PT days. In winter, the bag would bloat with sweaters knitted by my two grandmothers. And if I happened to be wearing the one knitted by the other one in the presence of this one,this one always fussed about the pattern or the quality of the wool of the one knitted by the other one. I used to wonder what it was that my grandmothers were constantly fighting about in one another’s absence.

I became an expert at packing and unpacking over the years. Sometimes, Mother interfered because she thought I took too long to fold things. Father would just let me be.

When my period started, I was staying with Father, and it was the one time I wished they had been in the same house. It would have been less messy trying to fix myself something to keep from staining my underwear. And that was when the side pockets of the backpack came in handy. They could be stuffed with items such as packets of sanitary pads and trainer bras. Folding bras, by the way, were an entirely different story. They didn’t work the way the rest of the garments did. Even socks were easier than bras. The bras needed to have their halters tucked in first. It was the only way I could make them look maybe not exactly like a rectangle, but a pumped-up rhombus.

Eventually, I outgrew my backpack and graduated to a duffle bag, and then a suitcase, and then I just moved out to share a place with a classmate. Once I had a job, it made sense to stop being the go-between my parents. Besides, Father had a wife now. And Mother got busier and busier attending to my grandparents, who appeared paler by the day. There was resistance at first. Why would I do something like that? Mother wept. Father and his wife were outraged at the idea. But I stood quietly both times, listening to their respective monologues and then I moved out.

All my bags have been shoved into the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe now. Inside, under the shadow of suspended jackets and shirts,you will find little piles of folded garments. Some of them are skirts Mother bought me. And there is a pink face towel Father gave me. I sit down some days, just unfolding and folding them over and over again, thinking about Mother’s fast-graying hair and father’s failing eyesight.