Difficulty of parting with objects of affection

OVER the last few months, the word ‘downsize’ has appeared in all sorts of places. This seems to pop up in every other article that one reads, or in the conversations that one has. Waiting for a moment to strike, it hides in cupboards, behind sheaves of paper and across stacks of books. The moment the abstraction of the word moves to actual tasks and action, it means changing life’s routines as one knows them. More simply put, it means, ‘Get rid of things’.

For some, with their children elsewhere, this has meant moving to a smaller residence — fewer things to clean, dust and care for. Others have monetised cumbersome assets — the fear of someone encroaching on their land or muscling into a house when they are not there, is all too real. For others, especially for that vast multitude of daily-wagers and labourers, it is entering the vacuum of not knowing how to survive when the physical strength of youth has gone and one can no longer perform heavy work. All around us, there is the all too visible end of the joint family that may have been constricting, but could also provide a cushion for seniors — or a cradle for infants. The insecurity that can come with old age is one of the most unfair parts of human existence.

There is a lady that I know of who is terrified of what will happen to the decoration pieces that have been lovingly picked up over the years, and where practically every object has a memory attached to it. She has locked them all in a steel cupboard. Another did not remove the personal objects of a spouse who had passed away — the toothbrush in the bathroom, the slippers by the bed and even the night-suit hanging on the door. All could be seen years later. These everyday objects would be cleaned and put right back. The person seemed to have never left.

It is all too easy to pass judgment or move into another’s head when one is not involved. When my parents died, I simply could not — and perhaps still haven’t — accepted this finality. One keeps telling oneself that death, like birth, is not an event — it is a process. Yet, the heart refuses to accept what the brain says. Years of reading, learning and conditioning seem to vanish in the twinkling of an eye or in the unfathomable depth of a teardrop. With their deaths, one after another, when the shock and sense of loss had still not sunk in, I gave away many of their things, especially clothes. We took them to a charity near a hospital and whoever wanted whatever, took it. The anonymity of doing this was what one wished for. It was a place where the takers did not know who we were, and we did not know who they were. Nor did we, the next two generations, want to be acknowledged, far less thanked for this act of passing. Expectedly, one made mistakes; it is not every day that someone you love dies and your heart is wrenched out of its body. One was removing things without thinking and in another part of the undertaking, if one can call it that, was keeping items that should have gone. Now, well over a decade after their deaths, almost like a ritual performed annually, one goes into the store and opens the trunks where some of their things still remain — a bound volume of my mother’s PhD thesis; she was, perhaps, Himachal’s first woman teacher with a doctorate. There is an unfinished glove that was being knitted for my son and still has the knitting needles on it. There is my father’s dinner jacket that came all the way from New York more than half a century ago, and his achkan that was tailored before Partition. There are so many small things that were once so big in our lives. I think of removing or sorting those things. Then the moment becomes overwhelming and the way one has repeated the same action for years, one closes the trunks and leaves the store.

Now, to turn the mirror around — in my little world, ‘downsizing’ would mean getting rid of my books. Or, at least, some of them. The stacks that have steadily gathered strength since childhood; the cut-out books of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and the ‘Little Red Hen’ and so many others that my parents bought when I still could not read, but looked at the pictures and at some point, began mouthing the words; a simplified version of the ‘Panchatantra’, or the story of the bravery of Prithviraj Chauhan. Others go back to the time when one happily vanished into a world of goblins and pixies and then, moved on to swashbucklers and dashing riders — and to heroes and villains that were larger than life.

These are shelves and boxes filled with books, ‘things’ collected by me and perhaps that matter only to me. Of the many things that are not fair in our lives or in our world, one is leaving the objects of one’s own life and all its clutter for someone else to clear.