Donate Pile

I've a habit of hanging onto things way past their useful life. 

Sometimes, when I'm restocking laundry in an over flowing cabinet or laser-gazing into one to find something/anything to wear, I come across things that I should do away with. 

Like an old jumper, with visible signs of wear and tear; rips at the side seams where the obnoxious multi paged booklet of a label used to be located. 

White shirts with copper oxidation stains, i.e., sitting folded in the same spot for too long because I chickened out of wearing it due to fear of getting stains on it. Oh, the irony! 

Pants that I absolutely keep gaslighting myself into believing that one day I'd fit into like a dream, that day never arriving. 

Skirts and dresses that sit at the intersection of the venn diagram with the trifecta categories -

A. outfits for warm summer days

B. outfits that require shaving/waxing, 

C. outfits that require girly dress-me-up events. 

Jackets and beanies I pick up, every year, during black Friday sales, because I convinced myself that living anywhere in the northern hemisphere requires weather preparedness, even if that location is the sunny pacific coast that never dips below 16 degrees, even at its worst. 

Every year, around Diwali, the Marie Kondo in me comes out of hibernation, determined to do away with things that don't "spark" joy anymore. I walk up to my closet, pick out that one jacket, sweater, pant, hat/whatever item I know I've not worn in forever. And right as I'm about to make my first deposit into the freshly created "Donate" pile, I convince myself that I can upcycle it. That one day, motivation will hit and I'll Diy the shit out of it. Like convert a trench coat to a crop jacket, or make a dress out of my scarfs. Even if this hypothetical project runway sitch requires me to miraculously master sewing skills out of thin air. 

Similar to my 10 inch x 10 inch, wannabe Carrie Bradshaw closet's miniaturized drawer situation is my situation with art supplies. In the event of a sudden art-ocalypse, I'm the first one you should pick to join your team. Stationery such as crayons and paints of all kinds from the beginning of my coloring journey (yeah, three decades old, go figure!), all types of needles, yarns, threads, glues, tapes, fabrics, and paper. Because tomorrow may require me to turn into a crochet expert; it may! You can't ever be too prepared. 

At this point, you may think, oh that's a classic hoarder. But I disagree. I have used these for at least one project and I've a trail of completed and abandoned ones lying around the house. With all the upcycled furniture and gadgets picked up from the recycling room of the apartment complex or from Facebook marketplace's Free finds groups. 

I wish this behavior extended to clothes or hobbies only, but it's ambivalent. Apparently I've always been like this. My parents narrate instances of me, squirreling away my favorite foods for days/weeks because I was afraid it'd be over. So they'd get me a pastry and I would prolong my consumption over the entire week, one spoon a day. I have wept like a mourning widow when we had to immerse an Idol that I'd grown up with - hugging it while bursting into sobs as it was taken and sent offshore.

Perhaps one might even say these tendencies are hereditary, if you knew of my grandma's caching tendencies. After she passed, my dad and his siblings found her emergency fund, neatly stashed across her 12x12 room - between notebooks, inside photo frames, below the cover/ lining of drawers and bedding,... You get the gist.

My caches, today, are slightly harder to find.

There's the hometown weather still saved on my phone, years after I have stopped living there. 

Restaurants bookmarked in cities I don't know when I'll visit again. 

Instruments - ghungroos, keyboard, guitar - that I haven't touched in years but refuse to admit I've quit. 

Landline numbers I haven't dialled since the advent of smart phones sitting in my contacts, attached to birthdays I don't need reminding of. 

Conversations I haven't opened in months but won't delete. 

People whose patterns I can predict with greater accuracy than SoCal weather;  their seams ripping in the same place more times than I care to count, and whom I still somehow return to the shelf, thinking All good. 

All this is not to say, I never do away with things. The pile of Goodwill tax receipts, sitting atop my desk organized by year, tells a different story. 

Every Diwali, I get a little better at filling the Donate pile.

The pants, though.

Might fit next year.

Until then

Our words come out, 

Unfiltered, rushed, harsh

Like chowder from a soup kitchen slobbered onto a hungry man's tray

Who hastily stuffs a spoonful into his mouth

The morsel that was supposed to soothe 

Must first burn the roof of the mouth

Must leave the tongue paralyzed for a minute 

Before the sigh of relief 

finally arrives.

Our words come out

Provocative, rebuking, heated

Like walking barefoot on sun-baked pavement 

There is pain

One winces with every step

Yet you walk...

until the first patch of shade.

Our words come out, they don't

Reticent, furtive, esoteric

Like a clandestine heirloom 

locked away in a secret treasure chest 

untouched for so long

no one remembers

who hid it there

Or why..

Our conversations, at a sudden halt

Dialogue, to monologue,

Diatribe to soliloquy 

Like a power cut, on a thunderstorm night 

Abrupt, startling 

Making one ebb for the switches instinctively, 

Look for candles, torches,

Any flame to ease

sitting in the dark

 

And just like that, 

We're back where we began 

Debating scruples, negotiating modicum needs

Adding

Erasing

Carrying 

Borrowing 

Hoping, one day

love stops feeling

like a sum

we must keep proving.

And until we earn our words,

we exist in silences.

PS: New poem style, who this? Hehe. Judge, Read, Grade. Just don't like, subscribe, share. 

The chair

Aachi's Spot

When I first walked into this house at 16, I had nothing to call my own. Everything in this house belonged either to my betrothed (now husband)'s parents or him. The copper bottom vessels with inscriptions of my nuptial dates were my father's dowry to my in-laws. I had no books, nor toys or keepsakes. His almiraah barely had space for the wooden trunk I'd lugged from the 'teshan', which was filled with two silk sarees packed neatly between a layer of the worn out, dozen cotton sarees, some bangles, and earrings - all heirlooms (or hand me downs) of my Amma. The only "thing" (if you could call it that) which was mine was my morning routine -  waking up at the crack of dawn, pulling out one of the softened loose cotton sarees and replacing that space with one that had just been washed, dried, ironed and folded, prepping breakfast and chai for my parents in law before they woke up, readying the pooja samagri for morning aarti, and when my accha (FIL) was up, oil massaging his legs as he sat in his spot, the sturdy wooden rocking chair, by the living room window, having his tea and reading me parts of the newspaper, between sips. The morning sun spilled into the living room, and lightly onto me from behind his silhouette, as the smell of warm mustard oil filled my lungs.

Years passed, our lives changed, but my morning sessions with accha stayed the same. That is until he passed away peacefully at the age of 87. The morning after we lay him to his final resting place, I found myself mindlessly performing my morning routine like muscle memory and found myself at the heels of the chair, with my little bowl of mustard oil and no leg to massage...! 

Now at 70, I look around and wonder how much has changed. The hall is now adorned with pictures of my children and their families, their awards and accolades. Our home is now filled with gadgets working on 'all talking to each other through that intrrnet thing.

"Acchi's in her spot", yells Neha (my 12 yr old granddaughter) outloud to her mom as she brings me my cup, setting it in front of the chair on the windowsill and readies my oil for my morning massage.

Hours before the Open House

I'm running tremendously behind schedule today and it feels like every idiot who has never worked in renovations and interior decoration has tapko-fied directly into my lap. It's me, hi I'm the proverbial khajoor. 

"Rakesh bhai, showing 3 baje hai and abhi tak  hall ka painting khatam nahi hua!", I sigh, walking past the living room and entering the bedroom, with my phone screen on the checklist app. The electrician hastily fixes the ceiling fan and drops a dust bunny onto the newly laid out beddings on our staged four-poster bed. "Maqsood bhai, thoda dhyan se, yeh bhade ka hai" I shake my head as I walk out, checking some items off the bedroom and attached bathroom's lists, and adding four more items to each. 

"Kab khatam ho ga ye kaam yaar!", I groan, pointing at a new wet spot on the ceiling of the balconette with my bald and slightly bleeding index finger.

As I emerge into the living room, Shera and his badhai tolli are gathered around the grandfather chair, wondering how to carry it out into storage. "Yeh yahi rahega", I bark, "antique hai".  As they step away to finish other errands, I sit down on the chair for a second, to catch my breath. These old havelis are to my clientele like lights to a moth. They're all about the "heritage feels", "correct lighting for their instagram reels", "vaastu", and what not, and I'm not about to let Shera take my honey trap away. 

As I absently adjust my hips, the chair creaks, jerking me back to the checklist. It's 2 hrs until showtime!

My hideout

They always do this. They think I will just oblige and do whatever they demand of me. Even bruno gets to choose where he sleeps and he's a dog!

"No playing outside until you eat all of your broccoli"

"No cartoons until dinner" 

"Be more like didi" 

"Be home by 6pm" 

"Be in bed by 8pm!" 

And on and on they go, nagging me. I don't have any say in what I eat, who I meet, when I sleep, how I dress up...down to the flipping haircut. I look like a mushroom from super Mario bros! And now they're insisting I come say hi to chachi's family, looking like this gobhi?! No way in hel...i mean heck! 

Let them look! I'm going to stay put in my secret spot. You see I've found the perfect place to hide. I got them; made them think I left the house angrily. So they're all out in the society looking for me. Hehehe! This spot too, is so well concealed. You can't see anything hidden or stashed behind this chair, the way it's positioned beside the windowsill and sofa. That's why I always hide my vegetables, especially bhindi, here during dinner. I can make a beeline to the kitchen to trash it once everyone is done with dinner and washing the dishes. 

Mumma is back and is pacing around the room calling the security guard! Good, next time she'll think twice before making me look like a bush! Thank god, I stashed my coloring book here, I'll scribble until the coast is clear!

Just another mug

"And this is the last gift", she said, handing over the last of the set of twenty-seven hand-picked, neatly wrapped presents she'd scavenged for my 27th birthday. 

"And it's a ..... mug?", I said, a tad disappointedly, after painstakingly unraveling the tape off the golden gift wrapping paper and folding it up neatly so we could reuse the paper again.

"I started to run out of ideas after I hit 24", she said a bit dimly.

"Amma, you could have simply packed the pens individually or even stopped at #10." 

She had bought me a bunch of pens because I'd told her that pens, like all basic stationary, were expensive in the States; each costing a dollar at minimum ("That's sixty-eight rupees, bubba!" my dad had shrieked.) That was then, in 2015, when I was pursuing my master's at USC. It had been 5 years to this discovery and this woman was gifting me a set of pens now for my 27th birthday, pens I'd managed to pilfer from my office pantry, because they were...well, free (and the dollar now in mid-80s on the INR conversion).

"But then, it wouldn't have been 27 gifts now, would it?" 

There was no winning with this woman.

"Thank you!", I said smiling and hugging her, then glancing at the mug. It was the GO-TO Archie's standard, when you ran out of gifting ideas for people or occasions. An archetypal Rakshabandan return-gift, a "mother's/father's day" momento bought using pocket money, a first Valentine's day gift (well, if you started dating in high school), or your daughter's 27th birthday's 27th gift. Archie's had a mug for all occasions and when they didn't, they'd oblige by digitally printing on to their plain mugs, whatever your heart desired and your creativity lacked. 

'Happy Birthday, 

dearest Daughter', 

it read; the D and G working overtime in cursive to hide the lack of artistic influence in the rest of the mug. The body cylindrical, the handle plain, and the text unevenly distributed such that the last bits of the second words almost overlapped with the first letter in both sentences. 

I gave her a tired, dejected smile. Not because I hated the mug, I hated the idea of her having spent so much time and effort on things I did not need or might not use. Her toiling in the harsh Mumbai afternoon sun, finding knickknacks I was too old for and did not have the luxury to carry with the stringent TSA luggage weight restrictions. 

She saw right through my smile and said, "You hate it all, don't you?" 

"No ma, I don't hate it. I just... I just think you could have bought something for yourself instead of these things I may not be able to carry back". 

That was then, the beginning of what we did not know back then, was going to the world-changing global pandemic of COVID-19. Forget luggage, I wasn't even able to get a flight confirmation to sit still in my inbox, without a subsequent cancellation coming in right at its heals. The wait turned days to months and I fell into step, with my perfectly choreographed hybrid India-US working schedule, done entirely remotely from my childhood home, with my parents over me watching dotingly; cooked meals with fresh cut fruits, laundered tees and bermudas, old movie re-runs, et al.

Those months gave me clarity over a thought I'd held close to my chest. Ever since I had left home at 23 yrs of age, I felt like a person who didn't fit, didn't recognize herself anywhere. 

Too foreign to "belong" in the States; a professional Vaulter jumping rental houses or cities every time a lease ended or a contract tenure neared its expiration. Too absent to catch up with things back home in India; as though my parents and friends have moved onto the next best thing and I was stuck on the same verse since 2015. I was always catching up, feeling like I was falling behind or missing out. Like I'd let life happen to me, while people out here were busy living it. 

As the years went by, my "Amma, where did you move the sugar jar?" turned into her or dad's, "Baby, you're a guest, you need not wash the dishes!"

Each trip home felt less and less like homecoming and more like..... a vacation. It haunted me that what was once home was now a reprieve, a PTO transacted temporary escape before life took over again.

However, the lockdown months, staying at home, being with my family, I saw that this was the case with everyone. A sort of FOMO about missing one's own life as a consequence of one's choices. My parents had FOMO about missing seeing their only child grow from a hyper dependent, emotional bag of anxiety and tears to a somewhat self reliant woman sustaining herself and doing fairly ok at it, albeit consistently anxious. My friends had FOMO over the events of my life they'd missed, like I'd over theirs. They all had the same tiny pockets of grief I recognized in myself, yet there they were, living & present. And seeing that spirit in them co-exist with the familiar grief was .... weirdly soothing.

It took me embarrassingly long to realize Amma wasn't just buying pens or mugs. She was buying proof that she'd been thinking about me while I wasn't here.

In November, the restrictions lifted and borders reopened. My United flight had not been cancelled for 20-ish days which was a telling sign, a sign that I had to pack my bags. Holiday's over! 

Six months ago, on my 27th birthday, I was already mentally mapping excuses to leave the mug behind. Luggage limitations, fragility of porcelain articles, usage, yada yada. 

Six months later, as I packed my bags, after having had my morning hot water in it throughout the course of lockdown, I grabbed the cup and carefully bubble wrapped it, stuffing it between my sweaters, without a second thought. 

Here at home, what I've now begun calling my rental caves, I've a small cabinet filled with mugs. 

Some aesthetic, that I have found over the course of this decade, at Target, Ross, Goodwill, and Home goods; every time I go in to pick up "just that one furniture item" that would complete the living room wall or the Skinny Mixes' Flavored Syrups for my morning coffee and walk out with yet another mug I did not need but "spoke" to me.

Some nostalgic, like the ones I've hand-painted at Color Me Mine with caricatures of my favorite characters from shows like The Office or Parks & Rec, the ones from the Wamart home basics' set I'd inherited from my maasi before she relocated to India, the souvenir ones I've picked up from tasting Glü wines and hot chocolates at Christmas markets.

Some gifted by friends who couldn't bear to see me use yet another cracked, deformed, or stained mug. Mugs with lids so my hot water could stay true to its name and not need a third spin in the microwave. Mugs that they (friends) stake their claims at when they're camping in my living room over the holidays. 

At the very back of the cabinet, sits this one. The one I wasn't going to write about when I started thinking of mugs. The one most people write off as just another mug. Little do they know, that a mug picked up so mindlessly at a run down Archie's with its kitschy little calligraphy, is bringing me home wherever I go.