The Black Hole At Home

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Black holes have piqued the human imagination for quite a while now. However, when I was growing up, ‘black hole’ referred to something totally different. If a book disappeared, it went into the black hole. When Grandpa’s spectacles were not to be found on his nose, they most likely went into the black hole. Those green vegetables knew exactly where to slide down into from my plate… (oops, not meant for the ears of little children!)

In short, whenever anything went missing, we visualised it going into this pitch-black hole with its mouth wide open. It was a universal joke in the family.

The national lock-down proclaimed by the Prime Minister meant that we were all to stay at home, and not stick a toe out unless essential (which meant different things to different people, of course!) For twenty-one whole days, at that!

What could we do over twenty-one days? Speaking for myself, I vowed to read, write, cook, listen to music, do a one-mile Zumba session at home and speak to my two moms every day. However, there were still hours and hours left over and since my sisters and I have been brought up by a mother who saw red every time the word ‘bored’ was used, there was no question of letting it slip into my mind. As she used to say, “Normal is boring. So, do things out of the ordinary and create your own magic!”

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“Let’s clean the whole house!” I exclaimed to my better half who was doing multifarious things at the same time. His list consisted, apart from helping me in my household chores, of watching NDTV, rushing to his laptop to tweet about something he had watched, adding several tweets, ticking off people from politicians to film stars and everyone in between. In between he would send off WhatsApp messages to the three hundred and twenty-one groups that he is on.

“You start! I’ll join you soon!” came his reply.

And so, I did, starting with my wardrobe, sifting the clothes I wear from those I don’t. The third pile was those that I had clean forgotten about… brand new kurtas, crisp dupattas, smart tops and several filmy scarves which I had bought for travelling, and which never did travel with me. The last time I had cleaned out my wardrobe, I had friends accosting me all the time. “New pinch, huh?” The pinches hurt less than telling them that there was a bottomless black hole deep inside my clothes cupboard.

Apart from clothes, many other Eureka moments came when I located a couple of handbags, earrings in rainbow colours that had forgotten to glint in dark corners, two saris which I had bought for friends ages back (finders, keepers!) and a pack of playing cards which never materialised when my sisters and I were together.

When that was done, I moved onto my chest of drawers, which had four sections, all stuck together like an advertisement for Fevicol. After a relentless struggle, I managed to open each one, an exercise which reminded me of another old advertisement for Sona Masala where a person opens a cupboard in the kitchen unwittingly, only to be buried deep in an avalanche of masala packets. Talk about finding hidden sona (gold)!

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I remember being rather proud of the way I had decided to organise the entire chest of drawers – cosmetics and perfumes on top, accessories (hair dryer, straightener, trinkets in the next, important documents (bank, passport, fixed deposits) in the third. The fourth was termed medicines and miscellaneous and had a place under the sun for everything else that I owned.

A month later, all four sections could be termed miscellaneous, as mysteriously, things had travelled from one to another, like sneaky little eels, and ensconced themselves comfortably in slots which were not made for them.

It began when my better half put his hand into section two, where he had a tiny little corner to keep his after shave lotions and his accessories, and pulled it out with a jerk, with a safety pin hanging on to it for dear life. Obviously, he was livid, because he has this constant complaint that I own three full cupboards for my clothes, and he has one tiny cupboard for his. However, when visitors come to stay, it is his clothes that get shifted out into the study for want of space. He does have a point, I concede! After all, men do like their man caves.

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I peered down at the chest of drawers. This was not going to be easy. Rolling up my sleeves, I plunged into the task, determined to ‘kill’ all the extra stuff that lolled about, taking up space. Halfway through, I realised that murder does not come easy, especially since deodorants, sprays, lipsticks, bindis, nail polishes, combs, hairbrushes and kajal sticks tend to stick around forever.

The second section was even more sneaky. Buttons from dresses that I had disowned ten years ago vied with mini mirrors that I had picked up from various fairs, tiny wooden toys that were part of my granddaughter’s treasure trove jostled for space with picture postcards picked up when I had visited the UK in the early 2000s.  

And then, out of the blue, came a sight to warm the cockles of my heart. A week back, we had gone to pick up hand sanitisers to combat the Corona virus, and the shelves had been empty. “Sorry, Ma’am, people have been panic-buying. No sanitisers, no liquid soaps and no masks available,” the shopkeeper had said with a rueful expression that seemed pasted on to his face. He had just spent an entire day reeling out the same litany, and I remembered what Mom had told me when I was growing up grumpy.

“Change your expression. You never know when the wind turns, and you’ll be left with that expression.”

Maybe, the wind had turned for that poor shopkeeper!

Anyway, back to section two and there it lay – a whole bottle of sanitiser, blinking up at me in perfect innocence as if to say, “I have no idea how I got here!” Anyway, my whoop brought my better half rushing in, and we cheered the bewildered bottle of sanitiser till it blushed or would have blushed if it could.

The excavation continued, and the treasures kept appearing. Three cakes of foreign soap which had quite lost their fragrance, pens which I had picked up because I love picking them up, four pairs of spectacles that had vanished into thin air, a torch that my husband had bought with great love and lost immediately after and finally, five tiny boxes with one Geldhof chocolate each which I had picked up on our last visit to South Africa. I only mention the brand because it is among the best in the world and had cost a fortune. Sadly, I had clean forgotten about them. And there they lay in all their glory, the chocolate having melted into a mushy, most un-Geldhof mess.

The next two sections were easier to manage. How wrong can one go with documents and medicines, after all? Very wrong, it seemed. I allowed my husband, who had finished all his tweets, and come to see what I was up to. Apparently, it was a bit too quiet for his liking. However, the moment he saw the documents, he pounced on them.

“There it is… I’ve been looking for these all over the place.” Followed by a snort,

“Imagine, I assumed that we had lost these papers in the floods.” He didn’t specify which flood… we had been in three over the past five years. Anyway, that was of no importance at the moment. 
His tirade continued, “Do you even realise the sleepless nights I have had wondering where these are?” My reply, “At least you’ve found them now,” did not go down very well.

“Yippee, we have reached the last section. Medicines.” There were pills of all hues, little phials, bottles with coloured liquids, droppers, band aids with cartoon characters (courtesy our little granddaughter), crepe bandages, an elusive thermometer, and a general smell of Vicks VapoRub.

There was finally light at the end of the black hole.

And yet, after twenty-one days pass peacefully in lock-down mode, and life hopefully returns to normal, and the virus is laid to rest (whenever that happens) and we all get back to whatever we were doing before Corona, there will be one thing that will never change. For the next time I hunt frantically for a lost pen or a handkerchief, I will know the black hole still exists, biding its time for yet another mysterious version of hide-and-seek. 

PS: This was written nine months back, and the virus is still holding court out there!