Usually, I wind up my conversations and withdraw into myself, during December. That is when I think of the year that is winding down, do the housekeeping backlog that inevitably creeps up on one over the months and plan for the next year. In 2014, I began that process in November itself; which also meant less time on social media. I did sneak a look every now and then on Facebook, but resisted the temptation to comment on everything and get drawn into arguments and instead, ruefully withdrew with a few likes. The time away from social media has been profitably spent in arranging my papers, books and documents. They were in an absolute mess. I have a pretty well stocked library of books, papers and reports on my areas of focus - democratic decentralisation, anti-corruption and heritage preservation. However, these had suffered during several relocation moves. The last (and hopefully the final one) was pretty bad, as my boxes of papers were stored in a little used office area, where they were enthusiastically utilised by several families of rats, as a maternity home. That led to an owl occupying my office. In gratitude for my generosity in providing boarding and lodging, the owl paid back effusively in litres of owl shit, which decorated my office table. Before the cataloguing could start, the room had to be readied, which meant a lot of DIY work on the wooden walls, (that resulted in recall and generous usage of cuss words in Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and English - very cathartic and useful, I must say). That was followed by the acquisition of those accursed, but inevitable embellishments of any respectable Indian office or home, namely, Godrej almirahs. I assuaged my guilt somewhat by painting their bomb-grey exterior with a colour well named as raw silk. Since then, I have been cataloging and arranging papers in their cavernous, rat proof innards, a box at a time. Actually, arranging ones stuff is a wonderful thing to do. One discovers long lost papers and documents and often, the cataloguing comes to a halt as one sits down in the dusty mess and chuckles to oneself, recalling memories of the past. I uncovered a faded long notebook, containing notes made by my father in 1944, followed by my own notes dating back to 1983. Other gems were an autobiography of a soldier who fought in the 1857 Mutiny (or war of Independence, depending on how you look at it), obsolete comics cut out of newspapers long since wound up (Mutt and Jeff, from the Mail, published from Madras) and a copy of the Mysore and Coorg Directory, dating back to 1888. Shall share snippets, by and by.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 01:40:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015