The ‘packers and movers’ were to arrive soon and the store room had to be cleared of the overflowing junk, accumulated over the years by our three generations.Amid the chaos was an HMV wind-up gramophone record player with a large horn that we got as a wedding gift more than 50 years ago. Alongside it was a cassette player and some cassettes. The transistor radio in the corner reminded me of the popular Hindi film songs which were blared every Wednesday evening by Radio Ceylon under its ‘Binaca Geetmala’ programme and the crowd that used to collect in front of shops.
Then there was the Agfa Click-III camera. It was purchased with the money I received, `20 per story, from Shankar’s Weekly. The landline telephone box with a rotary dial brought to my mind the whirring sound one heard while dialing each digit with the forefinger and the long distance ‘trunk calls’, a virtual shouting match, that left one breathless at the end.
Then there were our son’s three-wheeled cycle, a bicycle rim that he used to set in motion by beating it with a stick and run after it, a couple of gillis from his gilli-danda days, and a top with a cotton string wound around it. The maximum space was taken by the teddy bears, dolls, toys and a thousand other items once used by my grandchildren.
My grandson, busy playing with his iPad, wondered how miserable our childhood might have been without mobile phones, internet, Google, WhatsApp and Facebook friends. As it was futile to tell him of the bond of friendship that existed among the neighbourhood children and the games we played that required no money, I simply told him that the day would come when his children, while playing with things that we can’t even dream of now, would make fun of the obsolete world of internet.
All members of the family were allowed to choose the items they wanted to take with them to the new house and leave the unwanted things behind in the store room. A little later I visited the place and was stunned to see that the room was almost empty.All of them, like me, had decided to take their past
with them.