The filing cabinet

4 days after my Dada’s passing, my younger sister and I were tasked with job of unpacking his dressing table. It was a varnished wooden construction, with the edges indented with years of wear and tear. The mirror was covered with newspapers and would only be unwrapped after the forty days. Some said the reason for this was so that you don't see your own reflection and the sadness in your face. Others said so that you could not see any of the spirits that might be visiting to help with the transition of this world and the next with the recently deceased. 

On the top of the mirror hung a few tasbeeghs that my grandfather had collated over the years from family and friends who had gone on Hajj. When I was about 12 my Naanie and Dada had gone for Hajj. What commotion. I remembered all the people and family coming to visit. My grandfather returned with his full crop of hair shaved off but his salt and pepper beard still in tact. He wore a scarf on his head, a turban for the Raja that he was. 
The drawers are filled with Kitaabs (holy books), and TDK audio cassettes of half recorded old indian songs he got off Lotus FM. There were scatterings of crystallised sugar cubes that he would randomly pull out of his suit pockets after attending a thikr on a thursday night. A half empty bootle of attar that still smelt like my grandfather and echoed through the room. 
At the bottom of the draw next to some stray unsharpened pencil crayons was a rather unassuming ordinary silver key. My sister discarded it without a notion of what it was. But I knew. This was the key to our childhood dreams. This was the key that opened the steel grey filing cabinet, that stood next to the safe that seemed impenetrable. 
The key opened the four draws in the rectangular cabinet. The first two draws didn't concern me too much. It was the third draw, that contained he special treats my grandfather would magically pull out of our ears out of nowhere. Those small blocks of Cote D Or chocolates which did not taste like Dairy Milk but of Belgian wonderfulness. Chocolate coins which still fascinates me. And then most importantly those novelty chocolate squares wrapped in foil and covered in paper printed with the costumes of people all over the world. I used to keep those wrappers in a book, imagining what its like for those people in different lands. 
Upon opening the draw, I was invited with the smell of Wicks bubble gum. Underneath was a chocolate heaven. Obviously, at that point my mother comes in, just before Ayesha and I are about to loot the draw. As she drags Ayesha away after gobbling her third Cote D Or, I stash the chocolate with costume prints in my cargo pants, and plant a big piece of sticky pink Wicks gum in my mouth. 
Every night I ate a chocolate block, and thought of my Dada. Until there were no more blocks to be eaten. But I still have the book, filled with wrappers.

So I might be...

A stationery addict, unable to resist pretty patterned paper, colorful pens that are like gel, and don't let me start on any cute card sets. These are just a few notebooks and washy tapes on my desk. Just a few.....

I've always wanted to draw believing that I have a tiny minuscule amount of talent. Well practice makes perfect they say. I find that drawing books really help and give such pointers. Everything in life is like a muscle that you need to grow. There is a general assumption that with article things, it just somehow happens without realizing that everything in life requires hard work. 

In the end all we have are things we like doing that can make us happy. I get a tad annoyed when people find things we enjoy as obsessive, and immediately start thinking hoarder tendencies. I've had a few raised eyebrows, but only a few. The people that know me, usually have some or the other quirky passion as well. 

You need to be passionate ( obsessive on the boarder of being called a lunatic) about what you love doing. 

That's my wish for everyone, to do what that love in whichever big or small way they can....