We have a wedding in the family and its in the designated NRI month of the year so all can come and buy and complain of the dirt , dust and drugs and also give their two bits on the state of Punjab as they know more than us . Heaven forbid , I get a word in as the arm chair NRI’s who have made it in the golden shores are the new custodians of religions , and politics . The amount of tweeting I see from them amazes me as they are so worried about home but why did you leave and not fight the system here?
This is for another time and none of us would win the debate. So as a family wedding is on the cards , we are doing what evert one does, start building an extra room. Every self respecting Punjabi , starts construction even if its to make a nalka ! Happens in every household in rural Punjab , and another room is added to accommodate the new entry into the family , or it could be just another store to house all the stuff that is never needed but cant be thrown away for sentimental reasons . At a cusp of my life, I’m approaching my halfway century mark ; I’m feeling sentimental and more like Frodo Baggins (trust me I do not look like him ) . I feel close to so many things but I know they are of no value to anyone , books that I won as a prize in school , a pressed flower in a book , letters written by my boys from their boarding , hoarding some trolls form my childhood , a crocheted bag , cushions that have been embroidered by my grand mother , sheets out of her trousseau as a young girl in Lahore , a dress that my mother had kept for years of a chubby me as a one year old .
Where do these go? A lifetime of love, memories , moments inscribed and caught and frozen in time , my grandfathers cardigan that I wear every winter because i feel his embrace . The pure love that was once theirs , dwindling now . I have books and books and magazines, and embroidery books , an entire life’s collections of the W because my mother loves knitting and it had those knitting patterns in the end. The books for me remind me of Dot , and Hagar the Viking. I doubt anyone even knows what I am talking about . I am at crossroads and don’t know who to give these or whether they are worth any thing or would be sold by the kilo ?
They talk about recycling clothes , but no one wants my antiquated clothes, fine embroideries done when everything was slow fashion and quiet luxury . They coined the name now , to separate the nouveau riche and the old money . The world is more impressed with the flashy , the logo that for you equates you to money . Everyone wants to renovate and move with the times, I agree , we all want change but what does one do with the intangible box of memories? The silver that you had lovingly bought in the hills because you think you couldn’t survive without the loops , or the shawl that covered you when you were nursing your first born , or the collections of comics without which you couldn’t survive? Is everything all reduced to the shiny and bright ? Where do the vinyl records go ? The list goes on and on and with time and age catching up , I feel lost as one feels the fragility of life and how we are here for a short time but get so attached to materialistic objects that it hurts .
I know you’re going to say this , that I need to not be attached and detachment is the way ahead but what is it all reduced to ? Right now , I just know we are building a store room to house all the memories of a life time and I’m consciously reusing all my old stuff to live the moments again tweaking them a bit ! Till then , building the store and heralding the wedding the home makes my heart go warm and fonder . The pressing matter in hand is not the stuff that I need to sort out , its the thickening waist and the creaky bones!
