Packing chaos

Recently, my family and I shifted house. After three years spent in one place, it was hard to gather everything together — for so much more had been added to what we already had. Too many books, for example, were crammed into too many shelves. It would have been an impossible feat to have packed everything ourselves. Hence, we called a packer.
Professional packing, we hoped, would be just that. Efficient too, with stuff packed neatly into boxes and correctly labelled, so that they could be arranged accordingly in the new house. Books would go into a set of boxes and marked, utensils would go into a set of boxes and marked. Clothes would be packed separately so that one knew where they were. Calling the packers was an optimal solution to an impossibly complicated task. After all, these men were professionals. weren’t they?

When they actually turned up, packing turned into a nightmare. Young men, full of youthful exuberance and loud voices, charged into every room, turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to any instructions. Clothes were dumped into large boxes, and sealed shut. These were pushed out of the way. My books were tossed into more boxes. I’d asked for a few DVDs to be packed on top of the books so that they wouldn’t be crushed. The packer nodded solemnly, and I left it at that. Packing was a whirlwind of activity, at least it seemed to be a whirlwind of activity, and the old house was emptied.

In the new house, panic ensued. Most of the boxes had not been labelled, and those that were, were marked incorrectly. Clothes had been packed over kitchen utensils, pictures from the walls were in the box marked ‘puja items,’ my DVDs suffered under the heavy weight of books. Missing potatoes from the kitchen were found rotting in a box of papers. To top it all, I opened a box labelled ‘kitchen items,’ to find jackets, and a fruity scent. When the box was emptied, I saw why — lovely squished bananas at the very bottom which merrily rode the van to our new house.

Of all the times we’ve moved, this experience was the strangest. The worst we’ve had before was perhaps a picture frame broken. I’ve certainly never seen fruit being packed with clothes, and potatoes and onions being tossed into boxes and sealed. And yes, our dining table was broken during the moving. In retrospect, all this seems like sheer callousness, deliberate avoidance of common sense and lack of sincerity towards one’s job. Our reliance on ‘professionals’ was, obviously, misplaced.