‘Grrrr,’ ‘thud,’ ‘boom,’ ‘thak!’ Nowadays I’m surrounded by crazy sounds all day long. Sometimes, it’s the drilling machine making holes in the adjoining wall, sometimes the carpenter driving nails into the unfinished cupboard, and at other times, it’s just the mayhem on the road outside.
Our hospital is under renovation while the city is preparing to welcome the Metro rail. So we are surrounded by noise and dust and chaos almost always, manoeuvring through traffic, and wood panels and paint cans, awaiting the transformation this chaos promises.
Getting a renovation done in a working hospital means that there are numerous boxes, full of stuff assorted, being shifted from one room to the other. Yesterday, our maid asked me to take a closer look at one such box. I reluctantly agreed, bracing myself for another round of cleaning and decision making.
But this box had something unexpected in store for me. The moment I opened it, I was equally surprised and ecstatic. As I lay my hands on the dusty old contents, my heart was filled with the joy of a new-found treasure. “Where have you been all this while?” I wondered. It led me on a trip down memory lane, a trip I was happy to take.
It was a box full of old books. And what an eclectic collection it was! From ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ to ‘Mills and Boons’ (although I really don’t remember reading them. 😉) There was ‘Sense and Sensibility’ reminding me of my Jane Austen phase when I had diligently devoured every available book of hers. There was no Amazon or Kindle back then. Books were not easy to come by, be it hard copy or e book. So this paperback was precious to me.
From a corner of the box peeped ‘The Inscrutable Americans,’ the first and wittiest recommendation from my husband. I could still hear myself burst into giggles while reading this book. There was a whole stack of Frederick Forsyth and Irving Wallace novels, which, I must’ve borrowed from my dad’s enormous collection. Oh, and how could I forget ‘Linda Goodman’s Star Signs’, which had lured me into believing in star signs (for a short time) and love (forever)? I also came across quite a few books which were gifts (mostly to my husband), with lovely handwritten notes, from friends, sisters and …. but those are his stories to tell!
So there, I had the daunting task of segregating them into ‘Donate’ and ‘Keep.’ As you might’ve guessed, the ‘Donate’ box is practically empty. And now I’m wondering how to fit this boxful of books onto my already overflowing bookshelf. Till I figure that out, they can rest in the box, as I savour them one by one by one!
It’s astonishing how we bury some things, some memories, some stories in boxes and forget about them. Every once in a while we need to open one of those boxes, revisit the stories, refresh the memories, and maybe we will have a pleasant surprise in store for us.
Go, unbox some treasures.
