Store Wars

As with most people, we too had a room full of stuff in our ancestral home that everyone had forgotten about. Till the day I ventured in determined to empty the room. Yes, it’s called a store room and it is obviously meant for storing.

I was ready to get rid of almost everything, sparing a few huge brass pots and wooden chests which I thought had antique value and could be placed as artefacts. But the number of reasons I was given by everyone around for retaining things were mind blowing! That ‘favourite pair of jeans’, that ‘extremely comfortable shirt that I (hope) will eventually fit into’, ‘the lamp my best friend gifted me on my nth birthday’, my grandmother’s ladles, my mother’s (broken) chair, my baby’s clothes (who is now 21 years old!)… Sentiments, memories, attachment, greed… Ah! Well! Call it what you like. The list certainly went on. And on.

An elderly, paan chewing woman draped in a nine yard sari came in to help us clean up. She appeared to be someone who could have certainly done with having all the things we had stored. I offered her the saris, unused towels and bed sheets I had unearthed.  Her response left me stunned. A simple, ‘No, bai’. Eh? No? I was confused.  

I opened up the sheets and towels and showed her that they were new and unused. Like a salesperson I tried convincing her that they would come in handy at home. No. She wasn’t interested. This continued with everything that I offered her.  Whaat??! She was psyching me! How can someone who has almost nothing say no to anything?

All that she ultimately requested for was an old switchboard explaining that she needed one for her home. Finally, a dab of balm for my badly bruised ego.

The woman had the power of no. It’s no big deal having it when you have everything going for you. But to have it when you have very little? That I believe is the power of fulfilment. I don’t know if it has rubbed off on me, but she’s certainly got me infected with this crazy impulse to de-clutter our home, much to everyone’s chagrin!

Come to think of it, how much is to be stored and for how long? If you haven’t felt the need for it since the time you put it away, does the need for it even exist anymore? Does the reason for storing it remain valid? Once when interacting with a sadhu from the Himalayas, I was told, ‘If you haven’t used something for six months then you have lost the right to own it. Give it away.’ As simple as that!

(This article first appeared in the international youth magazine Chinmaya Udghosh, under the series Mindful Whispers.)

The Smell of Good Times

Ah! The whiff of freshly brewed coffee while lazing in bed.

Hmm..…the aroma of oven fresh cake.

Oof! The stink of garbage as you cross the garbage dump.

Oh no! The odour of leaking gas!

The olfactory sense is not one that gets much attention. It may not even be considered an important one, in comparison to the rest. Yet, think about it… lack of the smelling sense could take the fragrance out of our lives, literally!

We can learn a lot by the smell of things, probably more than by the visual or textural experience. Smells allow us an experience before it becomes concrete and tangible. It could mean a safer or more pleasing or rather it can help avoid an unpleasant experience. Red powder could be anything. But a single sniff will warn you that it’s chilli powder without having to suffer its sting on your tongue. Colourless toxic gases that have a smell can be sniffed out by a lay person, in the absence of scientific tools. It’s not uncommon to have people smell something burning, long before they find the source.

Often, we are led by our nose to sniff out danger long before we see or feel it. What a catastrophe it would be if we couldn’t smell the gas leaking in our kitchen! Or the bread burning in the oven! Or… (eeew) the queer smell of food gone bad before you took a bite! Recent research studies are showing that fear reactions can occur at the sensory level, even before the brain has had the opportunity to interpret that the odour could mean trouble. No wonder that the English language has an idiom, ‘to smell out danger’.

Think of your childhood. Most of our memories are accompanied by a particular smell. Think of childhood and my thoughts are full of the light floral fragrance of my mum’s talcum as I rested my head on her shoulder, the Old Spice cologne when I snuggled up with my Dad, the peculiar comforting smell of my nanny, the smell of earth as we entered my mother’s village… Sigh… the sweet scent of memories. On the flip side, smells can bring back painful, fearful memories too! For instance the smell of diesel fumes for a soldier or the smell of smoke for a burns victim. Would memories be as intense in the absence of smells?

I know a cook who knows just by the aroma whether the coffee has enough sugar! Unbelievable but true! Skilled cooks rattle out ingredients in a dish with just a sniff. Knowing whether a dish is ready by the aroma is one thing, but to guess all the ingredients? Mind-blowing! Observe shoppers in the marketplace. Many will sniff a fruit to know whether it is ready for consumption. My Dad knows the variety of a mango and its ripeness with a whiff. Now that’s one skill I have kind of developed by sniffing around with him! Does that mean this is a skill we can refine with practice? Certainly. In the movie ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’ it is interesting to watch how the protagonist’s mother trains him to cook, with much focus on the olfactory sense, more than any other.

How much do you enjoy your meals when you suffer a blocked nose during a bout of the common cold? No smell means no taste. No matter how tasty the food, for the one with a blocked nose, all the dishes taste one and the same – bland. And of course, that means there is no joy in the eating.

A sense less talked about no doubt, but one that we can’t turn up our nose at.

Where are we headed?

The colourful world of yesteryears is no more

It’s survived by a bleak world of hate and killing and pain….

A life riddled with sorrow.

When love gets thin, faults get thick

There’s nobody to blame but our thinking

You, me, he and she; Us, they, never we.

Is this what life was meant to be?

Did HE mean for us to fight and kill?

It’s about time we stopped to think.

This path leads to hell

Of destruction and pain

Of loneliness and fatigue

There is no gain.

Where are we headed?

At this rate there’s no tomorrow

Just one big graveyard called the world.

~ Rukma

Queue-r Quirks

Is it a genetic malfunction? Or an allergy? Or an inherent deficiency? Or a cultural inheritance? Or OSD? Or Indiscipline? Or just plain stupidity? What is it that makes us not follow a queue and compulsorily break it?

No matter where, when or what the age group, waiting in queue seems a difficult task indeed. The few sensible ones who do respect a queue and follow it stringently, are left looking like fools as every other person jostles ahead or pushes his/her way in between or gives a saccharine sweet smile along with a ridiculous ‘reason’ for the ‘need’ to go ahead.

One would think the ‘fear of losing out on an opportunity’ is what prompts a person to break a queue. But then how do you explain the desperate breaking of a queue when waiting to board a flight? Is it possible to miss a flight only because one is last in line when boarding the aircraft? Or are they worried about having to travel standing, if they board last?

You may be chuckling as you read this, wondering what has caused this angst. Picture this – I’m standing in line to enter the theatre at the Marathi Film Festival. A ‘gentleman’ excuses himself and throws his ‘need to meet the organiser’ reason at us and gets ahead. My face is a pretty shade of pink. Before I can admire my new skin tone in the reflection on the window pane, I find my nose in hair drenched in pure Goan coconut oil. Turning around I manage to get a glimpse of the ‘lady’, who’s bulldozed through the queue like she’s making her way through a field of sugarcane. After many such encounters, the queue finally starts moving, only to melt into a crowd. Next thing I know, I’m crushed against the door. Fortunately, before I can pass out, I find myself inside the theatre, aka Mumbai local train ishtyle. I’m thrown in by a wave of people, with not an iota of effort from my side. Drat! I can’t admire the pink tone of my skin now. It’s changed to a flaming red.