Objects Of AFFECTION

Akshaya Pillai reflects on the entwined nature of material and memory as it applies to her own life

- Akshaya Pillai

Not long after my father's death, my mother packed up all the basic necessities and moved to a different city to be with my sister and start anew. And I was left with boxes-eleven of them. They were everywhere, leaning against tables, crouching under sofas as if the furniture in my house had grown its own luggage and planned to walk out on me the minute I turned away.

I ignored them until one dreary afternoon, I was down with a nasty cold. I decided to put some water on the stove, stir in jaggery, pepper, dry ginger, and tulsi leaves, and while it simmered, assembled the many boxes from across the rooms to try and piece together a life. Unless you try to sort through a person's lifelong belongings, you have no idea how we depend on material things to make sense of the world and our place in it.

Starting first with the box I was looking forward to opening the most was my way of not putting this whole project off any longer. Out came elephants, ducks, rabbits, and all sorts of animals, small, sturdy, and stout. These were export rejects with minor flaws that came from my father's long stint at the export-import company in Ballard Estate (Mumbai). By the time I was halfway through this box, obsessing over the cyclical nature of life and belongings, the peppery aroma of the chukku kaapi slowly wafted in.