Sunday 9 October 2011

Lost and Found


Amma has been telling me to clear the table for months, but when I say Nan padicitu irukan so aporam panran, she leaves me. Now Appa has started bugging me about it for a few days. It’s not that easy escaping him.
Cleaning or organising my study table or wardrobe is something I hate doing. What helps me survive is the unexpected things that I find in unexpected places.
I find my long lost pink sharpener which I remember searching for weeks together; answer sheets from school with humiliating marks; nail polish hard like rock... Okay you must be thinking what this girl is saying these things are unexpected. Even I have tons of answer sheets with a big red F (I meant fail) under my bed, and this girl is saying like it is a huge thing.
Well you want unexpected, here you go. Once my dad found a lizard egg in the wardrobe which I thought I could grow as a pet. I even came up with a name – Norbet or Norbeta (Yup, I’m a huge HP fan). So I put the egg in a fast track watch daba (for which Amma later scolded me for wasting such a pretty daba) and waited for it to hatch. After 5 seconds I got bored, so I put the lid back with a small gap and checked it for every 10 minutes. Half hour later I lost hope and decided to check it once every hour. This went on and eventually I completely forgot about it for weeks (even though I had kept it right next to my table clock which I check every 5 minutes to see whether half hour has passed since I kept the text book on my lap).


I discovered it only when I cleaned my table and to my surprise it had hatched! I decided to set him free into the wild because that is where he/she belongs (but my mother’s version of the story is different. What she says happened was that when I was looking at the baby lizard and awing at its cuteness, it suddenly made a leap out of the daba trying to escape and that I had dropped the daba and ran for my life. However you don’t listen to her that is just her imagination.). As a true animal lover I know that the lizard doesn’t belong to me or to anyone else for that matter but to the wilderness. Hence I released her into the wild (my backyard).
Coming back to finding things, every now and then I find a single earing. I would search for the lost one for hours and then throw the one I have thinking I had missed its pair outside the house (of course only after the Ultimate finding champion (Amma) fails in the mission). It is really frustrating when the one I had thought I had lost was there right next to the one I had thrown away.
And I often end up finding at least one Reynolds Grippy each time I organise the table. It is my policy since school days to have one ink pen and use that and that only but I lose one almost every month. Till 8th standard it was the famous Hero pen. And in 8th standard I fell in love with Reynolds grippy. Every time I lose it I buy a new one only to find the lost one while cleaning the table inside books or pouches or pencil boxes which I didn’t know existed. The longest I ever had a pen without losing it forever was for three and half years (from 9th standard till 12th half). An orange and brownish Reynolds grippy. I had guarded it with my life. And it was equally faithful, I must have dropped it million times but it always ended up writing better than before. But on the million plus 1th time it broke along with my heart. It was so full of memories in fact most of my ink pens are, well I would have to write a separate post to talk about them.
The best thing about cleaning my table is finding my black pouch. Well not exactly finding because I would never lose it. It is safe in the very back of my table cupboard. I only open it when I finish clearing up my table. I also call it my nostalgia pouch, for it contains bits and pieces of my school day memories. Some of them are the only tangible things through which I can remember my old friends whom I have lost contact with. Each piece has a story to tell, memories to be remembered. The oldest thing in the pouch is a pink ball shaped eraser and a green elephant shaped pencil cap cum eraser given to me by Buneet kaur (my bestest friend) in 2nd standard. She left to Dehradun in the beginning of 5th standard. I always hope I find her someday. I had imagined it a million times. The scene would be like a Ramesh Suresh 5 star advertisement.
I would be in a shop or somewhere looking at the eraser and suddenly it will slip out of my hand and roll and stop at a girl(with long hair)’s feet. She will pick it up, look at it and then me, then it and I would say ni ni Buneet?
She would say ni ni mi..? (Okay I don’t think she will remember Tamil but it is more dramatic in Tamil so bear with me).
Nan Meera.
MEERA!
BUNEET!
We would hug and I would scold her for not calling me from Dehradun (she had my number which is still the same). And I would call up everyone to tell the story.. Well you get the drift.
Now I have to go think of an excuse for skipping table cleaning (suggestions are welcome).
Dreading and looking forward to eventually clear it up.