"The Folder"

Yesterday, my Mom made an innocuous request that I hear every other year: get rid of all that old junk lying around, I need space for my work files.

So, she brought over some ancient files and folders that had somehow survived similar purgings over the years. I still hang to them for sentimental reasons. Some of the things that she dug up:

- History assignments that I'd put a lot of effort into. Looking at them now, I actually wonder if I am less hard working than I was before!
- Stuff I'd done in art and craft class. I was really awful at those, why the heck did I keep them?
- A bunch of stuff I'd written in English class: prose analysis, essays, creative writing, etc.
- A sheet of paper in which each of my classmates had written a sentence on what they thought about me! Great fun reading that after all these years!
- The original drafts of some of my poems that now live on in my poetry blog.
- The Folder.

Let me tell you a little about The Folder. It belonged to a girl I had a crush on, back in high school. Essentially, I stole it and kept it as a keepsake because she changed schools after only one year in my class :). I did find out where she was a couple of years ago, and gave her a call, reminiscing about the good ol' days. I even told her about my crush, and The Folder, and we had a good laugh about it!

But as my Mom picked up the empty folder, I told her I'd kept it for sentimental reasons but she could throw it out now. Unfortunately, she opened it, and saw the bold red letters announcing "This folder is the property of R_____." So I told her - about the girl I "liked" at that time and that she is doing her Ph.D at so-and-so university now. And promptly my Mom asked, "Is she a Brahmin?" Moms will be Moms! This was nearly as bad as when I went to visit our friend Alraqs and when I came back, my Mom asked me if she was Hindu or Muslim, and what her mother tongue was. Why do parents need to know the background of every girl a guy names "friend"? So little trust these days :D !

Still, I wonder, why I am okay with throwing away stuff that I'd been saving for so long because of sentimental reasons. I told my Mom to throw away everything, but she saved the poems and a few essays, as well as my classmates' comments. I guess I'm in bury-the-past mode now. Somehow, throwing away The Folder is symbolic to me of moving on and thinking about the future rather than the past. It is clear to me that old hurts are long healed, leaving only pleasant memories in their stead. That gives me hope that the same can happen with more recent hurts... and that is good enough for now. It means there is something to look forward to.

Cheers!
Prashanth.