Losing life’s keepsakes

All my life’s meaningful physical possessions – including my high school diploma — were contained in a shoebox when I was a young adult. Yet, I threw them all away in my early 20s in a feeling of anger and worthlessness.

Growing up I had lived in the attic of my parents’ house. It was a threadbare room with just a mattress, an unusable desk and some steel shelves. I stored my clothes in a few cardboard boxes. I had little in the way of physical possessions. The few that I owned, I had accumulated in a shoebox. They included old gifts and cards from my first girlfriend, a signature from Doug Gilmour (the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs from the 1990s), my high school diploma, and other keepsakes.

I moved out to live on my own in my first year of university as a result of my parents’ house having been foreclosed. My family would eventually regain possession of our home. But as I was no longer living there, I had given permission to them to rent out my room to help with expenses.

Several years later I moved back in with my family and took over a repurposed kitchenette as my living quarter. Shortly thereafter the tenant that lived in my previous room vacated and I went in to clean it up. To my dismay, the shoebox was still in the same place that I had left it three years ago. In that time there was a handful of tenants that lived in the room. Most were young recent immigrants eking out a basic life. I felt humiliated and full of shame that my most intimate of belongings had been in full display to strangers. I felt so worthless that I threw the shoebox in the garbage.

Seven years later as I was preparing to leave Princeton to start my career in Singapore, given the history of my shoebox, I gave several banker boxes of my life’s newly acquired keepsakes (and winter clothes) to a trusted friend who owned a house not too far from Princeton. Some other less important belongings I left behind at the university with someone I met only in my last year at school while he happened to be just starting the PhD programme. Nevertheless, Som was gracious enough to allow me to store my boxes by his desk at the graduate student office.

Two-and-a-half years later I had moved to New York City and contacted my friend with the boxes of keepsakes and winter clothes as I wanted them back. However, I learned that they had been “donated” in the meantime without my knowledge. They had seemed like “insignificant” possessions and were deemed a nuisance to store. I felt devastated. My life’s most precious mementos were gone again.

On the other hand, the boxes left at the university were intact. In fact, Som went to great lengths to store and move them as needed through various office reorganisations. He also diligently, and without hesitation, helped me with all the logistics of printing and binding my thesis at Princeton after I had left campus. He even helped me find an alternative member for my PhD committee when one of my readers had left the university.

Losing things in life makes you appreciate more of what you have.

Happy belated birthday Sombuddho Ghosh. I owe you big time!