Cleaning up the house can be a surprisingly thrilling experience. Now especially since everything is being unearthed and not just boxes packed and moved occasionally.
You see, The Shrine is a landed single storey terrace house with four rooms. Although a terrace house, it is a long one, so long I daresay one could jog in the house! Of the four rooms, one is Gdaran's and mine, the other is the abode of the The High Priest and Priestess. The third room is the actual shrine of the house (the altar) and the fourth WAS, much too dishearteningly, the store room. A store room which calls for the crew of
Clean House to come storming in! However, with the massive
renovations now done, that room has been cleaned out for The Empress Dowager (
Madam R).
Oh dear God, that uproots another story digressing from this one. Oh well, you see Madam R has been living with her son's family for well over two decades when, just a few months ago, my aunt-in-law dubbed The Devil in Disguise a.k.a Madam R's daughter-in-law threw a tantrum of biblical proportions sending The High Priestess into a rage resulting in Madam R's departure from her son's family. To add further melodrama, this happened on Mother's Day! The Devil in Disguise has been verbally abusing The Empress Dowager for over two decades now, occasionally throwing a fit, forcing involvement of The High Priestess and her sisters; all because of her unspoken (oh wait, very much verbalised) hatred towards The Empress Dowager. Tamil soaps have no match for these bouts of theatrics. So now, The Empress Dowager has fittingly taken to living in her own quarter in The Shrine; the former store room. How we managed to clean that room out, I have no idea!
And we're back!
Cleaning out the store-room really disclosed things that I would have otherwise never knew still existed. Like my FUGLY batik shirt from freshman year in university; or a hideous ultramarine vest a la a wrongly up-styled Crocodile Dundee. I wore that vest over and over again during tuition classes when I thought they were in style or when my friends commented on it (owh the horror!!!). And then there was a bag full of hidden stash of my so-called 'memories', sweet wrappers from my friend's dedications in school (the ones where someone delivers it to your class and only the most popular people get them =P ); or memorabilia in the form of photo frames (too many of them), mugs, key-chains etc. And then there was a blanket belonging to Mr. P which I put away in a box together with some other things I brought back from campus three years ago. I swear it still smelled like him (dirty dirty me, eiiiiyeerrrrrrrrrr). Pictures from my childhood, pictures from my parents' childhood (Madam R looked particularly fetching and fleshy and my mom's visible buck-teeth was so obvious when she was slender which is now very conveniently hidden under her padded cheeks).
I share this particular trait with The High Priestess and The Empress Dowager; the inability to let go of material things because they bear some sort of significance. Tattered, torn and beyond use or aesthetic value, we tend to desperately cling on to them, crippled by the fear of loss. But then, The High Priestess and I started mingling with spirituality and then we grew to realise the nature of maya (the creative objects of the Creator) and it's hold on mankind. Both of us finally began to see a clearer picture and through that we braced ourselves and started parting with these material things one by one...
All the clothes that I could no more wear or would no more wear are now stored in a box awaiting donation; including Mr. P's blanket.
All those memorabilia are waiting to be discarded, once I have a picture of each of them (still holding on in a way but isn't it the memory that counts?).
It was massive, but it was necessary.
Every time mom would decide on throwing something away, I could see a heavy heart. Yet once the actual decision was done I would see, the very next moment, a lighter spirit. One that is rid of another weight she seems to carry around.
The Shrine is now newer than ever, there isn't any reason why we shouldn't be.
My dad's memorabilia, however, found places in our spanking new shelves. The shelves were indeed designed to hold them because they fetch great stories of his extraordinary visits to many lands afar.
Miniature sculptures of the Great Wall of China and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
His prized Matryoshka dolls and hand-painted boxes from Russia.
Dolls in dance poses from Thailand.
Miniature gondolas from Venice.
Boomerangs from Australia.
Mirror embossed Rajasthan elephant dolls.
His picture feeding a tiger cub in Sri Lanka.
Kimono clad pen dolls from Japan.
A miniature version of the original Little Mermaid on a stone; the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen from Denmark.
Miniature elephants wood sculpture from Nepal.
Wall plate sculptures of scenery from Florence.
A blown glass art in the shape of a fish from Italy (which still has a chipped off tail due to a mishap in the airport).
A key holder and an ash-tray from Mauritius.
Wood plates from the Philippines.
And I've just named a few from ONE shelf...
I used to envy Cookies and Cakes for his collection of antiques from his maternal predecessors; I always told him that his house is like a museum which hold so many wonderful artefacts.
Then I looked again at all those little trinkets my dad bought from so many countries and how they would, in fact, qualify The Shrine as a museum of sorts.
I stood back, very much proud!
