ANCHORED BY MEMORIES

SUFIS SAY THAT WHAT ONE possesses cannot be lost in a shipwreck.

- NITIN CHAUDHARY

Soon, I will move my base from Sweden to the US. I have spent 16 years in Sweden, and over the years, I have collected things, built a home, and developed a few friendships. I think of myself as a traveller and dislike that travellers, like wandering Sufis, should collect anything physical. “What is concrete will one day become dust,” I had told myself.

However, I caved in. I bought a small apartment and carefully decorated it with mementos gathered over years of travel: the three small wooden rafts from Geiranger, Norway, that now sit on a bookshelf I bought from a woodcarver in Ethiopia. There's also a brass statue of Ganesha, picked up 25 years ago by my wife's parents on a trip to the Ellora Caves. It now greets visitors entering our apartment.