Cleaning Out My Closet

Every year my mom insists that we sort out our belongings and give away things that we don't need anymore or have grown out of. I have a habit of never throwing away gifts. Sometimes this even extends to gift wrapping paper. That might explain why there's a treasure trove of paper and cards piled up at the bottom of my cupboard and it shows no sign of getting any smaller!

A few days ago, I settled down in front of my old cupboard and tried to establish some order in the mess. Even though I might end up keeping everything, it doesn't necessarily mean that I've stored it all properly. I had tossed them into a box at leisure and then I ran out of leisure in the shambles of the usual clean-up mode, so they got caught up in the bale-it-up-and-stuff-it-in-the-box-and-we'll-straighten-it-out-next year syndrome.

I hauled out the box, spread out all the things across the bed, settled down with a glass of lime juice and a puzzled frame of mind. Just to help, I put a CD that had been compiled by an old friend in my portable CD player and cranked up the volume.

Here it all was. Candles and pine boughs, CDs and pictures, cards containing heavy messages about love, joy, peace and goodwill. If that wasn't enough, there were all those handwritten messages of affection from friends and family.

It was as if I was watching my life over the past 22 years like a slide show. Seldom have I felt so bad and so good at the same time. So wonderfully rotten, elegantly sad, melancholic and nostalgic.

What can I say? I guess wonder and awe and joy are always there in the attic of one's mind. It doesn't take a lot to set it off. Yet there is a terrible and wondrous truth working here. That all things live only if something else is cleared out of the path to make way. No death; no life. No exceptions. Things must come and go. People. Years. Ideas. The wheel turns and the old is cleared away as fodder for the new.

I picked up the letters and cards to stack them away; with respect if not enthusiasm. Wondering at what is going and coming. Quietly awed into silence by what I have now come to understand but cannot tell.

Random thoughts

It is the small things that bring home the fact that I am growing older. Like when a small kid looks up at you (after you've given him what seems like a gazzilion piggy-back rides) and asks you "Are you a kid or an adult?" It almost felt like I had a truck ramming against my head and my mind went completely blank for a few seconds. When I asked him what he thought I was..the answer was "I don't know..you tell me!" Kids, I tell you. Trust them to ask you just the right questions.

Anyhoo (I've always wanted to use that word :P)..I've had quite a lot of free time during the nights lately. And I chanced upon a couple of poems by Vikram Seth..I think I now have a new favourite author. Here are two which just seemed to make sense.

All Those who Sleep Tonight

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

- Vikram Seth

Time Zones

I willed my love to dream of me last night
That we might lie
At peace, if not beneath a single sheet,
Under one sky.

I dreamed of her but she could not alas
Humour my will;
It struck me suddenly that where she was
Was daylight still.

- Vikram Seth