Clean up

“You don’t know how much your surroundings impact your well-being, why don’t you keep it a little clean?” my friend told me with an irritation that sounded like my mother’s when I did not put my things properly back home during my childhood. I was sure that just like my mother became seasoned to my unkempt ways my friend too will eventually write me off and stop trying to reform me into an organized, clean and neat individual.

Dust had almost married to books lying on the sides of bed and became inseparable with their covers.  Our maid, apparently, never thought it proper to disturb their love affair and left them to their own devices. And like all couples – when left alone, they seemed to have procreated over time and grew their empire.

The corner where my huge backpack lay, gave me an impression of a corner of an open playground where a big banyan tree is situated. My backpack was just like that banyan tree, teeming with lot of small creatures, worn out by the load of sand, wind and thousand external things that pile up due to lack of attention for a long time. It had been complaining since long, but I could not hear perhaps due to my elitist taste for music.

Cupboards didn’t fare any better, a few months back when my mother had visited me they were arranged – for the first time. They appeared so orderly, neat and compact then. I wonder what had happened to them in a span of six months!  The contrast it created now made me realize what my mother told me throughout my childhood, I was not putting things back from where I had taken them in first place. Lower cases of cupboards were hugely discriminated against, and upper ones were being overloaded. There was no sense to the way things were put; they seemed completely random otherwise, how on earth a white formal shirt of Ralph Lauren lay next to a semi used door mat?  This was a bit too much; I thought to myself and set on a mission to put the house in order.

 It was time to be ruthless, ruthless to things that were causing chaos, ugliness and mess in the room.  It called for a careful assessment to identify things that needed to be exiled, packed out and sent to dustbin.  After dusting, sorting, cleaning, mopping for a couple of hours floor now looked clean as a white marble, books looked more attractive, clothes compiled properly and other sundry things now had their places. All the material waste had been packed in the polythene which I would later dump in garbage yard of our apartment. I cast one last look at that black polythene, and just when I was about to take it up and throw it away, I realized I had missed to pack something.

Just like dust, there were a few more useless things that had been forming a layer, one that grew in its weight and mass and dragged me down.  I could see that just like the dust gathered on books, meaningless negative memories can also have a crippling effect on an individual.

It can be anything, crumpled love letters, mushy photographs, dedicated diary, rejection letter from an interview at a coveted job, an unfavourably opinionated email which you printed, letters written in anger, an account of a hard fought but lost struggle etc. All of it has to go, for light, promise and inspiration to enter. I packed some of it that had been gathering and gave it neither loathing nor loving final look.

Then I lit lamp for this Diwali. !! J

May no meaningless thing ever drags you.