A Box of Memories

Sometimes people find miracles while being in dirt, and today I found a box. A small tin box, comfortably decades old with rust already began to invade territory of white coating of tin. At once, I remembered the box – last I saw it four years ago, that was the time when Taniya and I stayed together and she was pregnant with our first daughter. It was her box – I remembered what she said then, that it was a nest of her memories.

My daughters are coming. Finally. Right from the moment of couple of years back, when I took this apartment on rent, not a single day had been passed when it didn’t occur to me that this place was inhospitable for them. My balcony was full of cartons filled with old stuffs - so was another spare room, where one wall was invisible by heap of cartons of different sizes filled with varied unnecessary goods. I primarily lived in my bedroom and kitchen, occasionally in sitting room and dining place. And in Delhi, dust is omnipresent – and in my apartment it was the only visible thing. No matter what I did, dust was everywhere.

So, this was my third consecutive weekend, which I spent solely cleaning rooms, rearranging things and furniture, washing long used bed linens and pillow covers, disinfecting whole house and throwing away shits. And then in a carton, which was hidden into another big carton, I noticed this faded white box of wrist-watch – so familiar, but so lost. I kept it aside and when I transferred majority of cartons to my garage and the rest in two sturdy dustbin bags to be collected by garbage-van tomorrow, I took a bath and sat on dining table, keeping the box in front of me.

The edge was rusty and the box looked old and tired – like an aged man, who held secrets for years. I knew, it contained letters and pictures, but I forgot the details. Though it was an absolute private property of Taniya, and perhaps she would thrash me for my needless indulgence, I couldn’t brush away the idea of opening the lid. Yes, there were letters. Handwritten letters on yellowish pages torn carefully from cheap diary or notebook but still edges were coarse. Picture of a small girl with a stubborn neck and boyish hair. A drawing of two lovers, immersed in themselves like two amassed rivers. Another tiny drawing of nature on a glossy paper, and lyrics of a popular Bengali song.

I started reading those letters. Gosh! How beautiful they were. And my god! How many boyfriends Taniya did have? And kill me please! How qualified they were. The letters were adorned with mellow words, which flew from one line to another flawlessly declaring their undying and unconditional love to one girl. These guys seemed to be crazy about her, begging her attention and sometimes rationality, through only means available to them – words. I fell in love with a particular handwriting – like a crystal, emanating lights of faraway stars. And the owner of that handwriting beautifully choose his words and described Taniya in a way I mostly was familiar with. Except the part where he sought sanity from her and he wanted her to grow-up and do mature things. Poor guy. I read letter of another hapless lover, who in simplest term, wrote cheesy words of love, but somehow was able to table his case neatly. I stumbled on two Hindi letters, which I knew who wrote but wasn’t surprised in their lack of brevity and usage of amateurish sayarris, as I knew he was in love. And I looked at the blurred picture of a girl, whose eyes were riveting and promising, as the letters in the box praised about. If it wasn’t in the box, I would never believe that it was actually her.

When I closed the box and stood up for kitchen, half an hour passed. Beads of sweats already formed over my head and started flowing down. I remembered that she mentioned this box occasionally, and I read these letters for the first time along-with her on a small balcony in Haldia, while distant glow from Mitsubishi Plant fell on us like an undying curse and she like a mysterious enchantress rose from her ground and serenaded me. Then I was captivated and entranced in a relationship, which as well as was toxic and elixir. However, I didn’t know that the guys before me felt the same too.

Suddenly, I didn’t want to cook anything. I ordered food from an app and lied down on bed. The air conditioner was on and so was the ceiling fan. No sooner the room and my body would be chilled, but then what about the bubble I was having in my stomach? I knew that it would surface and then at the end I had to face it. What’d be the answer, when there was no answer at all?

Who knew? Maybe, she threw away my letters, for those concise scribbles were unworthy to be in that box of moments. Or, maybe she had another nest of memories and my words were kept safe in best possible way. Or, maybe she became captivated and entranced in this relationship too, and she learned to preserve memories not in a box anymore, but in somewhere more permanent – like I did. Or, maybe…

Shit. I better wait for food.

(Representational picture)