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September 26, 2014
wear and tear (n., v.)
It seems like an eternity since I was in India - the daily routine has eaten away at the once recent and raw memories of that colourful place. I visited only relatively a short while ago: Three months exactly.
I feel it was a lifetime ago, though, in space and in time. The summer was busy ever since I got back, speckled with weekend trips, parties, hikes, picnics, long summer nights and generally long days, both in and out of the office. I crammed a lot into every day, and I've come out a bit exhausted - even more so than after my 37-hour journey home from Delhi, smelly, feverish, achy, and under-slept, with a full head and an overflowing heart.
This got me thinking about "wear and tear;" the consequences of time and space on both tangibles and the intangibles.
Having done a lot over the last few months makes the trip feel far away. Thinking back on my travels there, the experience feels increasingly foreign, almost as though it was an out-of-body experience; like I wasn't ever really there. All the other happenings in my life seem to have muddled the clarity of India that I once had and thought I'd hold on to forever.
One thing that's served as a tool of remembrance, if you will, these past few months has been something quite banal, and increasingly ugly-looking (and definitely depreciated): A bunch of threads a Hindu priest tied around my wrist when he performed a puja for me in Varanasi. I didn't want to cut them away to avoid perverting their sacredness; another part of me kept it on because I wanted something I could see and touch - to act as proof that I had actually been there.
At times, when I'm driving my car through traffic I glance at my left-side mirror and catch a glimpse of the threads: I'm instantly reminded of the rickshaws that whirled me around Jaipur. Other times, as I shuffle around folders, staple briefs and printouts and curse "this damn paper cut!" I look down and I see the face of the woman who worked at the paper factory outside Jahnsi. And when I'm pissed at my pen running out of ink? That little hawker boy who sold me a dozen pens in Fatepur Sikri after he jumped on the back of our ride and redefined the word "perseverance."
Unlike the tenacious boy, however hard I try, this bracelet has no hope. It is slowly losing all its colour - having left red stains all over my bathrobe, and a number of left sleeves. Its threads get caught in zippers, earrings, and hairpins. In due time, it will fall off - I wonder if I'll even notice it.
Like these fading, thinning threads, my memories are also, fading, waning, tired.
I knew they would eventually wear away - both the bracelet and my memories. But, when the day comes and the bracelet does fall off my wrist, I won't let my memories go with it. Despite the business of the day-to-day, my "return" to the mundane motions of "regular" life, the memories will last. And without the crutch of this sentimentalized object on my hand.
It will be a tenacious effort on my part to hold on to those memories so they can breed mindful moments that move me so as I flutter and fluster through the everyday. I want lessons and insights and remarkable truths I discovered to inform me as I move forward, not remain as something in the past that loses value until it's forgotten, until it's nothing, worn and torn and thrown away.
So, I'll wear this bracelet proudly for now, but I won't get torn up about it when the time comes for it to come off. I'll take queues from the life I'm experiencing and apply what I have experienced so that my past doesn't depreciate. I'm holding on!
I feel it was a lifetime ago, though, in space and in time. The summer was busy ever since I got back, speckled with weekend trips, parties, hikes, picnics, long summer nights and generally long days, both in and out of the office. I crammed a lot into every day, and I've come out a bit exhausted - even more so than after my 37-hour journey home from Delhi, smelly, feverish, achy, and under-slept, with a full head and an overflowing heart.
This got me thinking about "wear and tear;" the consequences of time and space on both tangibles and the intangibles.
"Wear and tear is a form of depreciation which is assumed to occur even when an item is used competently and with care and proper maintenance."
Depreciation. What a horrid word.Having done a lot over the last few months makes the trip feel far away. Thinking back on my travels there, the experience feels increasingly foreign, almost as though it was an out-of-body experience; like I wasn't ever really there. All the other happenings in my life seem to have muddled the clarity of India that I once had and thought I'd hold on to forever.
At times, when I'm driving my car through traffic I glance at my left-side mirror and catch a glimpse of the threads: I'm instantly reminded of the rickshaws that whirled me around Jaipur. Other times, as I shuffle around folders, staple briefs and printouts and curse "this damn paper cut!" I look down and I see the face of the woman who worked at the paper factory outside Jahnsi. And when I'm pissed at my pen running out of ink? That little hawker boy who sold me a dozen pens in Fatepur Sikri after he jumped on the back of our ride and redefined the word "perseverance."
Unlike the tenacious boy, however hard I try, this bracelet has no hope. It is slowly losing all its colour - having left red stains all over my bathrobe, and a number of left sleeves. Its threads get caught in zippers, earrings, and hairpins. In due time, it will fall off - I wonder if I'll even notice it.
Like these fading, thinning threads, my memories are also, fading, waning, tired.
I knew they would eventually wear away - both the bracelet and my memories. But, when the day comes and the bracelet does fall off my wrist, I won't let my memories go with it. Despite the business of the day-to-day, my "return" to the mundane motions of "regular" life, the memories will last. And without the crutch of this sentimentalized object on my hand.
It will be a tenacious effort on my part to hold on to those memories so they can breed mindful moments that move me so as I flutter and fluster through the everyday. I want lessons and insights and remarkable truths I discovered to inform me as I move forward, not remain as something in the past that loses value until it's forgotten, until it's nothing, worn and torn and thrown away.
So, I'll wear this bracelet proudly for now, but I won't get torn up about it when the time comes for it to come off. I'll take queues from the life I'm experiencing and apply what I have experienced so that my past doesn't depreciate. I'm holding on!
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