Sharon Puthur's Blog, page 3

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The Handkerchief

‘Isn’t it a wonder what you find in a museum?’

The speaker was a girl I had been admiring since our wait in the queue to enter The Prince of Wales museum or now The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya.

‘You see those items? Those are the most intimate belongings of a human. An earthen pot, a wooden doll, a necklace of shells; these were used by somebody, regular basic things, maybe cherished, maybe not, but valued and prided over by people now. Don’t you think it strange?’

I nodded happily. We walked together discussing at length, pausing respectfully to appreciate the beauty of an artifact or two.

At closing time I asked her out to coffee but she refused.

‘I have a flight to catch to Bangalore. It is my last day in Mumbai and where better to spend it than here? I marry next week.’

When she left with the taxi I was filled with a strange incompleteness. A piece of fabric on the ground caught my attention. The handkerchief was a simple square of cotton adorned with a pink embroidered ‘A’. A regular item, maybe cherished, maybe not. I smiled as I glanced at the museum behind.

I would treasure it.

 

This short story was selected as a winning entry for an international writing competition organised by Sampad in partnership with British Council India. The competition was called Inspired By My Museum. Entries could be in the form of a poem, short story or reportage. I chose to write a short story. Check http://www.sampad.org.uk  for details.

Hope…

My Dad always said to me that hope made an awesome breakfast but a lousy dinner. I don’t know whether he copied it from someplace or made it up, but it always made me wonder about hope. Was it a good or a bad thing to keep? Is it good to keep hope indefinitely or give in to despair once in a while?

I am generally a hopeful person. In my world everybody is good and God is always benevolent. And this is not because I believe in destiny. I’m not sure if everything is already written before hand by a scheming God. But I do believe that everything that happens in life has a reason and is part of a huge jigsaw puzzle that reveals the picture in its time.

So why should this make me a hopeful person?

When I face a disappointment in life, my first thought is : ‘Why did this happen to me?’ ‘Why did it have to happen this way?’ ‘What is to become of me now?’ At this point I am angry with God and everybody around me.

Then I start to mull things over. Why did this particular incident happen in my life? What is its significance? What does it teach me? Do I understand its lessons now or do I understand it later? Is it to teach me or somebody else around me? Will someone else change because of what happened to me? Now when these thoughts enter my head, hope enters my heart. Life has meaning once more and I carry on joyful.

But how long does this hopeful feeling last? What if the answers to your questions take a long time to come? Maybe years… How long can you keep the hope alive?

That is why I guess my Dad quoted the line about hope to me. After sometime the very hope that you nurtured, because it doesn’t find its fulfillment as you expected (hoped) to, becomes a poison in your heart. It is then very easy to sink into despair and lose faith, because now fate has cheated you twice.

What do you do now? Do you become practical and lose hope or unrealistic and keep hope? It is no doubt a very difficult question to answer and a very difficult decision to make. It makes me think of the countless Jews in concentration camps who might’ve kept hopes on experiencing liberation only to find themselves marching hopelessly to gas chambers. What would they be thinking then? I hoped for freedom and this is what I get? Anybody would think that. But what after that? Lament about how miserable my life was and that God is dead or say life was an adventure and I have no control over what happens to me now but maybe death will also be an adventure.

That is the difference between hope and despair. Hope makes you look ahead in life and death. It is the small feeble light in a cave of darkness and only you can choose it to remain or be put out.

So to continue what my Dad quoted earlier. If my day begins with hope and ends with despair let me have enough strength to hope anew for the next day. Because the disappointment I experienced now has a reason in my life and is part of the puzzle that I don’t understand now but I hope to in future…

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