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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Letter from… a purge
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Letter from… a purge

Clean the house, clean the mind

Photo: iStockPremium
Photo: iStock

“Nau din, roz gaadi dhoya hoon, aur roya hoon (for nine days, I washed my car every day and cried every day)." 

This is how a black-and-yellow cab driver turned Uber driver described his last days with his former car, a Premier Padmini, which he had to scrap as it was over 20 years old. The B/Y gave him a livelihood, educated his children, allowed him to earn enough to buy a new car for the new service, he said, which is the reason he shed those tears over pieces of metal. 

Now, he has recovered from the loss and three months into the new service, he is still amazed by how his app was able to track my phone and reach my location the other day. He gets philosophical while talking about his old ride and his new gig: You have to move with the times, get rid of the old and make way for the new, he said. 

His last words reminded me of a resolve I had made recently to purge—spurred by two unrelated events that coincided in timing. 

First, just some weeks ago, I stumbled to avoid an orange on the floor of the bedroom. It had rolled off the bed, which is no place for a fruit. As I chewed on it, I oddly wondered: How many things did we have in this family home that did not belong? 

Then, a day or two before or after, two friends shared the link of the same site, White House Black Shutters. Titled “40 Bags in 40 Days Decluttering Challenge", it encourages people to remove unwanted possessions from one’s home. 

Our friends used this philosophy to give up something during Lent, not as a religious practice but a practical one. In other words, they adapted it to (a more practical and achievable) remove-one-thing-a-day over the 40 days of Lent. We decided to join in. 

Since I have never believed in fasting or religious rituals, this challenge equated to cleaning, which sounded doable but deathly boring. But why not combine a necessary chore—decluttering—with a timed purpose so it becomes a story: “You know, during Lent, I got rid of 40 things from my life, including that three-year-old cabbage which I found under the gas cylinder." 

When you have moved houses more than 25 times across eight cities in a lifetime, one good habit you develop is not to collect too much. But that does not mean there aren’t things that slip under the radar and into the cupboard where they stay, weakening, rusting and wasted. 

So it began, and though I have probably only managed to go through 30% of our livable area, and been unable to collect 40 bags (lost count at some point), the practice has been cathartic and full of discoveries. For example, the day after I found the toolkit (last seen in 2010), a broken light fixture needed that exact screwdriver which was in the tool kit. 

I found sunglasses, keys (to what I don’t know), a transistor radio, broken umbrellas, a copy of The Illustrated Weekly of India from May 1965 with a cover illustration of Jawaharlal Nehru and John F. Kennedy, corduroy bell bottoms that end at the ankles, mix tapes (audio cassettes), video cassettes, one expired driving licence, photo negatives, letters from grandparents long gone, many chargers of unknown gadgets—some of which can be reused, some thrown and some donated. There was also a letter written from the office of Indira Gandhi in 1966—addressed to a much more accomplished family member, of course. 

My favourite? A piece of paper with a list of Indian cricketers who toured the West Indies in 1962—led by N.J. Contractor and vice-captain Nawab of Pataudi—with autographs of all 16 players. Some of the signatures have unfortunately faded with time, though the clearest ones belong to V.L Manjrekar, R.G. Nadkarni and B.K. Kunderan. 

Among several other things we found, many hadn’t been seen or used in ages, many I didn’t know existed. So does that mean I am a hoarder? 

The website of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America calls hoarding the “compulsive purchasing, acquiring, searching and saving of items that have little or no value". It distinguishes hoarders and collectors in that the former are embarrassed about their possessions while the latter are proud of them. 

It led me to the TLC programme Hoarding: Buried Alive, which goes into people’s homes and showcases their intense habit to hoard that has, at least in one case, forced a person to sleep outside his home because there is no space left in his house. 

Having established that I was not a hoarder (since we have enough space still at home to sit and sleep) but just irregular with domestic cleanliness, I managed to throw out a bunch of stuff, pack away a few to be donated and reconfigure the rest into storage in the hope that I would remember where I had put them and use them. 

After a particularly strenuous and dusty afternoon of intense scavenging, as we looked at some filled bags of giveaways, I felt lighter, as if all those things had come out of the pocket of my pants. The spouse and I felt virtuous, generous, cleaner and, for some reason, healthier, like those possessions were somehow sucking a little bit of life out of us. 

This combined with a pledge not to accumulate any possessions other than what’s necessary—unfortunately, a cell phone qualifies as a necessary possession, though I would happily exist without one—will mean a leaner living style. It’s like going on a diet combined with exercise. 

Whenever I was confused over keeping or discarding something, I tried to think about the last time I used it—the answer lies within. It is tempting to keep some old gadgets in the assumption that maybe they will fetch a hefty price at some auction and pave way for an early retirement. This is not an unreasonable thought—I saw a model of the 2004-05 first generation iPod Nano that I own and use in a museum in Washington some years ago. 

Even though it’s often hard to give up, you have to look at it not just as clearing a home but also a mind. 

Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend. 

Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com

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Published: 22 Apr 2017, 11:21 PM IST
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