A Broken Watch, A Kajal Ki Dibbi And Some Memories!

 

One of the things that I find most challenging is decluttering. It’s not about how tedious or boring the job is, it is more about the fact that I do not know what to get rid of.

It is said that the clutter around you is a symbol of the clutter within you. My house is cluttered with relics and remnants of the past. Countless broken pencils, sharpeners, erasers – none of which are in use today because the kid now uses pens. There are those infinite toys that came with the package of Kinder Joy.  First birthday gifts, first rakhis, first test-papers in which the kid has written the alphabets in a handwriting so neat and so beautiful that it makes me want to cry. Today his handwriting has a large scope for improvement, to put it mildly.

There are earrings, just one of a pair. The other one probably got lost somewhere. People say ladies find it difficult to part from their earrings, even if it is just one from the pair. For me, these are reminders of the time when the enthusiasm was high to purchase matching accessories for dresses. A new dress immediately warranted a new pair of matching earrings, bangles, sometimes finger-rings and bindi too. When you are a working woman, there is ample reason and enthusiasm to look your best. Becoming a homemaker comes with its own pros and cons. While you no longer have to worry about office politics, you sort of lose the will to look your best when the most happening part of your day is a visit to the local supermarket.

There is that broken watch the dial of which has a beautiful picture of Chota Bheem. Once upon a time, this little superhero reigned in my home. Days were blissful when my kid, then just two years old would watch this serial and I would also watch with him, mesmerized by the simple beauty of life in a village called Dholakpur which saw its fair share of troubles but was always rescued by Chota Bheem. Happy endings. That’s the least we wish for, right? Not absence of troubles, not just a blissful life full of joy, but happy endings. Because they make it all worth it.

There is that kajal ki dibbi gifted in a Shringar-set during the traditional ceremony of haldi-kumkum. The dibbi is round in shape and nothing fancy like what we get today. But it is a reminder of those days when applying kajal was the ultimate make-up. You didn’t get fancy tubes then. There was just this round dibbi and you had to be very, very careful while applying kajal with your fingers. One wrong touch in any part of your face and you would have a difficult time getting rid of the kajal’s mark. It was totally another thing that at the end of the day, you would look like the feminine version of The Joker, with black streaks running on both of your cheeks. I have a fancier version of the kajal too. Both these versions – the dibbi and the applier – rest side-by-side, a testament to the spirit of the millennial whose biggest struggle is to balance both the aspects of her personality – the eighties-nineties person, and the person of today.

I can open a shop of my own for coloring pencils. The house abounds with these. But how do I throw them away when they represent a time of life when we found happiness in the simplest of things? When the kid knew ways other than the tv and the mobile to keep himself occupied? When leisure meant sitting beside a kid and watch him color, his tongue out, his grip on the pencil tight and his whole focus on the drawing…  today he can’t even wait for the OTT platform to get started on the tv and uses that time to either browse in the mobile or play a game.

They say that unless we declutter our external environment, we won’t be able to declutter our minds. But what if it is this clutter that keeps us going – both the external clutter that is a reminder of simple and warm days, and the internal clutter that keeps reminding us that the teen who is being rude to us today was actually the most lovable infant, a sweet kid and a curious child who just grew up and is now acting his age? What if it is this internal clutter that makes us who we are, and doesn’t let us forget our real selves? What if the present has no charm, and it was only the past that makes today worthwhile?

I go through all these relics, and I find a small corner of my home to keep them. The drawer sure looks neat now. And the remnants of the old days still have a small place of their own. Both in my house and in my mind.