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...Three Men in a Boat
By evening there were a dozen huge gunny bags full of bottles, clothes, razors, tooth brushes by the dozen and nameless knickknacks. All those bags were whisked away by our smiling sweeper. And the home now looks somewhat navigable.
I taught my son the first principle of throwing away:
"Don't look...just throw!"
This is just one side of the story.
My friend NP was teaching an industrial engineering subject called 'Inventory Control' when I was teaching 'Electrodynamics' in our youth. And he said it was a terribly important subject for lalas if they want to keep themselves afloat:
Yes, yes...ok ok...
But NP also told me this other face of the IC-Janus:
"If you keep 6 screw drivers of all sizes and shapes in a box and leave it in a household for a couple of years and then look for a screw driver, you will find that all of them have vanished like snow flakes in the sun...each eating up a smaller one and the biggest eating itself"
Just you ask me!
I like to always keep a pen in my pocket, I don't know why...I don't use it much nowadays...just force of habit. And I feel naked when it is not there.
So I buy 4 and store 3 new Cello Benz ball pens in a 'safe place'.
Suddenly one morning when I dress up I find the pen in my pocket missing like a thief that sneaked away. And I start shouting:
"What happened to my ball pen?"
And my son wakes up and replies:
"I took it yesterday"
"Return it to me"
"Tomorrow...I left it in my office"
And then I look for a spare pen that I hid in a 'safe place'
And I find none there.
"What happened to my 3 new ball pens?"
And my son says he doesn't know. And he shouts at Ishani.
And Ishani is lolling in her bath and eventually emerges.
And says:
"I took two a few days back"
"Give me!"
"Oh, I am too busy, can't you see? I have to finish my homework now. Later on..."
And after she is done with her so-called homework, I quiz her again. And she gets irritated:
"They must be somewhere in my toys room. Go and look for them if you want them that urgently"
"Where is the third one?"
"Oh, it is here under my table"
And she hands it to me with a flourish and a naughty smile...the damn thing is as broke as a pitcher dropped from our seventh floor...all parts are dissembled and re-assembled in a hurry...the spring is missing and the cap chewed up.
And I run to the stationery shop, buy 4 more Cello Benz pens, one for my pocket and 3 for storing in a 'safer place'
Haa!
...Posted by Ishani
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"You know we are on the wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without."
...Three Men in a Boat
Well said, Jerome K. But it never works that way for most folks.
On the 1st of May 1965, I arrived at IIT KGP with a portable suitcase (made of duro-ply and covered with khakhi cloth) as my sole worldly possession. Apart from a tooth brush and paste, it had a couple of pants and 6 shirts and 4 banians and 2 lungis and my 'original' documents.
I was 21 with no marriage sighted on the event horizon.
40 years later, on 28th October 2005, my wife and I vacated the spacious 3-bedroom apartment B-140 at KGP with a dozen amused onlookers.
A huge truck was waiting for our luggage to be loaded and shifted a thousand miles away to my home town. Pretty soon it was filled by big and small packed items from #1 to #53 penned on them.
And that was after we gave away a couple of refrigerators, a color TV, half a dozen chairs, four folding cots, a couple of wooden cots, four center tables, two pushbikes, a Bajaj Chetak scooter, a water heater (geyser), hundred odd books and many kitchen utensils and a Sumeet Mixer (the list is incomplete...just highlights).
And after reaching my home town, half of the contents of the boxes were simply thrown away since our place was too tiny to hold them.
I was happy that we at last got rid of all that junk and were left with the bare minimum: 'the things we can't do without'.
9 years have passed since then and we are now in a 3 BHK flat of our own with dozens of shelves and almirahs floor to ceiling, and a modular kitchen that hides more than it exposes like the good old sari.
All of them are now full to overflowing and there is simply no space for even a single coffee mug that my son got as a gift from his Company.
So this Sunday my son and his wife threw me and Ishani out and spent the whole day getting rid of 'things we could do with'.
I taught my son the first principle of throwing away:
"Don't look...just throw!"
This is just one side of the story.
My friend NP was teaching an industrial engineering subject called 'Inventory Control' when I was teaching 'Electrodynamics' in our youth. And he said it was a terribly important subject for lalas if they want to keep themselves afloat:
Inventory Control is the supervision of supply, storage and accessibility of items in order to ensure an adequate supply without excessive oversupply.
It can also be referred as internal control - an accounting procedure or system designed to promote efficiency or assure the implementation of a policy or safeguard assets or avoid fraud and error etc.
But NP also told me this other face of the IC-Janus:
"If you keep 6 screw drivers of all sizes and shapes in a box and leave it in a household for a couple of years and then look for a screw driver, you will find that all of them have vanished like snow flakes in the sun...each eating up a smaller one and the biggest eating itself"
Just you ask me!
I like to always keep a pen in my pocket, I don't know why...I don't use it much nowadays...just force of habit. And I feel naked when it is not there.
So I buy 4 and store 3 new Cello Benz ball pens in a 'safe place'.
Suddenly one morning when I dress up I find the pen in my pocket missing like a thief that sneaked away. And I start shouting:
"What happened to my ball pen?"
And my son wakes up and replies:
"I took it yesterday"
"Return it to me"
"Tomorrow...I left it in my office"
And then I look for a spare pen that I hid in a 'safe place'
And I find none there.
"What happened to my 3 new ball pens?"
And my son says he doesn't know. And he shouts at Ishani.
And Ishani is lolling in her bath and eventually emerges.
And says:
"I took two a few days back"
"Give me!"
"Oh, I am too busy, can't you see? I have to finish my homework now. Later on..."
And after she is done with her so-called homework, I quiz her again. And she gets irritated:
"They must be somewhere in my toys room. Go and look for them if you want them that urgently"
"Where is the third one?"
"Oh, it is here under my table"
And she hands it to me with a flourish and a naughty smile...the damn thing is as broke as a pitcher dropped from our seventh floor...all parts are dissembled and re-assembled in a hurry...the spring is missing and the cap chewed up.
And I run to the stationery shop, buy 4 more Cello Benz pens, one for my pocket and 3 for storing in a 'safer place'
Haa!
...Posted by Ishani
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