Skip to main content

Treasure and Trash

This was a fun documentary to watch about a museum of things rescued from trash,  Would be interesting to learn the history of these pieces - particularly, the more offbeat ones. At what point did it lose value to the owner and get tossed, were they victims of family feuds, property division, inheritance, down-sizing and divorce. Items of great value to one person but none to the next. Maybe some original owners if they are still around could share the stories of the objects that ended up in trash. I once found a beaten metal painting of the Goddess Durga in dumped outside a trash can. It was a desi family I knew and was a bit surprised to see it there. 

 I asked the lady of the house if it was okay for me to take it and she was fine with it. Once I brought the spurned goddess home and cleaned her up, I was not quite sure what may be the best way to install her back in a way that would be fitting. It is not upto a mere human to rescue a goddess, so I decided that would be over-stepping my authority, So for a few days, I left her on a table in the living room unsure what would be best. She has a permanent place in my home for several years now. When I see her face, I always remember where I found her and much like Molina in the movie, very glad that I did. Unlike him she is my only treasure from trash. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...
25 comments
Read more