The Secret Archive

There used to be a time in Dehradun, when anything short of a bungalow surrounded by acres of mango and litchi orchards would be considered as lowly and undignified (showing guests around one's house used to be or rather still is a favourite pastime of our city's people). That trend did of course change with the dawn of independence, the eviction of the British noblesse and the massive population explosion but not to a large extent. Even now most homes are designed on generous proportions with a room for anything and everything. One might consider this fortunate considering the matchboxes that most people in the metros live in but then having a large house can also have its drawbacks.

Countless have been the times when as a child I would get late for school because the entire family even with its combined efforts took hours to locate a missing maths notebook or a geography map. Of course as a family we have never placed any faith in the maxim, 'A place for everything, and everything in its place'. Our family motto runs more like, ' Just chuck it somewhere, and worry about it later'. Combine that with the other family tradition of never throwing away any stuff, no matter how useless it might be and you have a disaster. Over the years our house has slowly started resembling a massive garage with 'kooda kabad' stuffed in every nook and cranny.

One of our favourite spots for hiding away unwanted stuff has been the dressing table and its drawers. This old piece of furniture (gifted I guess during my parent's marriage) has displayed such an enormous capacity to store rubbish that it has never been completely cleaned out according to my memory. Though there are just three tiny drawers, they within themselves contain a fascinating collection of perfumes, jewelery, combs, cosmetics and other bric and brac.

It was therefore quite a delightful experience when I finally decided to clean up the place at my mother’s insistence. The first step to be taken while cleaning out such a place is to open all the drawers and throw everything out into one big pile. Then you can examine each article at your leisure and decide whether it should go back or be chucked away as garbage. Adopting this approach, I warily opened the drawers (because of the cockroaches you see) and collected everything in a pile. What I gathered in this jumble heap is listed below:

1. Six bottles of perfumes collected over the years and never put to any use: ‘ The year was my class 6^th I guess, when didi brought her first bottle of fake perfume from Indira market (Doon’s China bazaar of smuggled/pirated/stolen stuff). The brands were always fascinating and so were the bottles in which they came, especially to me. Escada, Swiss Army, Hugo Boss and several others. While Didi might have bought them out of some nascent fascination for branded stuff (a full blown disease by now), they served a far greater purpose in entertaining me on boring Saturdays (spent all alone at home). The Harry Potter fever had just recently bitten me and the perfumes served as my ingredients for cooking up all kinds of crazy potions. Their equally crazy shapes added to the charm. “A few drops of Escada mixed with a liberal dose of Brandy (Yeah, I have been handling alchohol since I was a kid!!). Add a spoonful of cooking oil and a little candle wax. Now just set it aflame!!”

2. A painted bottle of tiny black flower seeds: ‘An empty bottle of Chelpark ink was all that was required to kickstart one of our oldest and craziest collections. The year must have been my class 1^st or 2^nd I guess, when Didi and I first decided to collect the shiny black seeds of the ruby red flowers that my mother would grow every winter. February as it is can be quite a dull time with most parents shutting up their kids for the upcoming final exams in March. Hence every year we made a tradition out of painstakingly collecting the tiny black seeds of the flowers. First we would shake each flower over a large plate. Then we would sift them with the common kitchen sieve. This process would be repeated for some 5-10 days before we would have a bottle full of shiny black seeds, ready for planting next year. I do not remember when the tradition stopped but the bottle replete with our last collection was stored away in the drawers of the old table.

3. Nine different brands of lipsticks and nail polishes from around the world (India, Japan, Germany and the US): My mom has always had a repulsion for cosmetics. Though I have never seen her buy any herself, thoughtful (or rather thoughtless) relatives have piled all kinds of colours and brands on her as part of the ages old Indian ceremony, ‘Dekho hum aapke liye Videsh se kya lae!!’. No wonders then that my rubbish pile contained a hell lot of lipsticks and nail polishes. Though they never served their true purpose, they did serve as an interesting piece of entertainment to us. ‘The year was my class 3^rd, when on another boring Saturday Didi and I decided to attack my Mom’s collection of lipsticks. There was quite a large collection gathering dust on the dressing table. All hues and shades were present from shocking pink to deep maroon, brown and even something that resembled orange. Excited we cooked up our own little game of painting each others’ faces with them. Didi started first by drawing red moustaches on my faces. I promptly followed with a pink tika and dark red fake teeth on the chin. By the time we were finished, both of us resembled two Rakshasas straight out of Om Namah Shivay. The colours were later scrubbed off with a great deal of difficulty. By the way mom never noticed any difference.

4. Branded pen sets gifted by crazy lunatics on my birthdays: Honestly why gift a pen when it doesn’t work!! Of all the pen sets that I have ever been gifted half have never worked. The others are too expensive to be used for general writing. Of course by the time an important occasion arises, their ink always dries up.

5. Watches: All the broken dysfunctional watches that my family has worn emerged as a big part of my heap. Each one belonging to a distinct era and holding its own small part of family history. ‘The year was my class 7^th when Didi returned from Indira market jumping with joy that she might just have bought a real stolen swiss watch at throwaway prices. The watch did say ‘Made in Swizterland’ and had all the branded markings, unlike the others that had been on display in the shop. Her exuberance disappeared quite rapidly however when her surmise was proven false and the watch stopped working after just some three months in service. The watch was soon relegated to the drawers of the dressing table as another bitter memory of Didi’s eccentric shopping experiences in Chor Bazaars.’

A pair of magnets that I loved playing with as kids, a old spool of silk thread, our first scientific calculator (another fake),…..

The list just goes on and on, with each item holding its own distinct set of memories. I have never maintained a diary but honestly do I need one with each nook and cranny of our house stuffed with these memories from childhood. A large and messy house may have its disadvantages but nothing can beat its quality of collecting secret archives in all its different corners.