"Clean your desk"
"How do you find the necessary things in this pile"
" You are an employee of this office and you need to keep your things organized"
The same advise has been given to me in different stages of my life by different people. I think only Albert Einstein, Sherlock Holmes understood the futility of cleaning one's desk or should I say the need to not clean one's desk.
No I don't intend to say that I would never clean my desk but the idea is to say, it has its natural course like anything else in the universe. There is a time when one feels like clearing one's desk, doing anything before that is just a useless exercise.
Well after much coaxing I did decide to clean my desk one day. Oh it was like a treasure trove. The things I found.
An old note book with some notes scribbled. The notes didn't make much sense to me now. As I flipped through the pages I found a half written poem
" (No) I'm not good with words
The intention is not write(beautifully)
It's just another exercise in the scheme of (several other) pointless things
The fables of following one's heart and soul have been sold for years and shall be for years to come
Probably they are the high points in some one's existence
For one star that shines, there are millions that disappear into oblivion
It is not about hopelessness and despair but it is not also about happily ever after.
It is all about name, names inscribed in the past and about inscribing names for the future...."
It was unfinished. Reading it aloud, it surprised me I surely had some writing skills. I wonder in what mood I must have written this, sounds quite profound if I may call it that or probably it sounds wannabe profound.
Then there was another picture diary of the life of a camel. The same one which Ankita had gifted me some years back. I really loved it and hence I didn't want to write some trivial things in it but seems I never found anything non-trivial and worthy enough to be written in it. Here it is buried under a pile of papers.
As I maneuvered through the pile of papers I started reading some old article on the newspaper which covered the table. It was about the glass sealing in corporate world and how the discrimination is very real and exists today. Nothing new, but some how I always manage to fall into the trap of reading uncanny things at odd places. After drifting off from glass sealing to some film technique to Nehruvian socialism in the editorial I finally returned to task at hand. To clean the desk.
Here I find another small folded piece of paper. Oh, I love opening these small papers. This time it turns out to be an entry ticket to the museum in Shantiniketan. Another piece of paper, this one is a bill of the taxi, as a turn I see. I seem to have made some notes there. Orientalism, Sanjay Subramaniam, Alternative modernity... some terms which I wanted to refer to.
And the cleaning continues. I now had the notebook, the journal I kept, the camel book, an old scarf, the pen drive which I had assume was lost, a key chain with my name inscribed, a small empty box which I had saved as I liked the color.
Well it was such a lovely afternoon spent. Why on earth do people ask me to clean my desk. This wonderful feeling, how would I get if I were to clean me desk regularly and not let the things pile up. How would one have this amazing roller coaster ride into the memory on an empty desk. A shabby desk is like time machine, it can transport one into the past.
