Some mysteries can never be solved. Well, I am not talking of murder or burglary mysteries but the mystery of things disappearing from their place in our own homes. We spend half of our lives searching for things and wondering how we lost them.
I am sure we all have experienced this situation. We are on the phone and the person at the other end gives us a very important number, address to be noted down.... and lo! the pen is not in the pen stand. We run around desperately hunting for it in every nook and corner and finally manage to get one, which, however, won't write. Where on earth did the ink go? We wonder where all the other pens in the house have suddenly disappeared. Till date, I have not been able to find out how this happens, but I have understood why in offices/banks pens are tied to strings.
The next in this list of missing items is a tiny thing. After arranging all important papers for nearly an hour, you reach out for the stapler only to discover that there isn't a single pin in it but the fact is you loaded it just a week ago. How and where did all the pins go? The answer that echoes in the house, “How do I know?”
I am sure most of us often misplace our most valuable possession — CELLPHONE in our own house, but thanks to the landline or another phone (mostly the neighbour's), we can call up the missing cellphone to track its location. I once found my lost mobile ringing in my wardrobe. Now just imagine if it had been in the silent mode! Most of us confidently declare the location where we kept it last, so now the million-dollar question is: how did the cellphone travel from one place to another?
It is understandable if needles, safety pins, toothpicks and other tiny objects go missing, but a dozen times in a week we have all hunted for the remote controls of TV sets, ACs and DVD players. When electricity resumes after power cut, TV automatically switches on with a blaring sound and all the family members run hither and thither looking for the remote control but in vain and finally locate the volume control in the TV set itself. What a chaos! When questioned about the missing remote control, the family members answer in unison, “I never saw it,”..... and the mystery continues.
We all have a key stand, but unfortunately keys are hardly hung on it. Cycle keys, motorcycle keys, car keys and house keys suddenly disappear when we are already late for work and we go berserk hunting for them and find them later, and resolve to hang them henceforth on the key stand but never do so. This happens frequently in almost all homes: just when the van driver, school bus driver honks, the parents and children are frantically searching for the name badges, compass boxes and many a time the matching pair of the socks to be worn. Who should be blamed for this, the mother, the maid or the child herself/himself?
I can never forget how once my father made us all run around turning the entire house topsy-turvy hunting for his spectacles and an hour later we all realised that the spectacles were safely resting on his forehead.
Whenever I open the refrigerator to drink water, I find only empty one-litre water bottles with only 10 ml water in it. The mystery is how the bottles I have filled never quench my thirst! Annoyed at my failure to solve this mystery, I decided one day to fill a stainless steel vessel with water exclusively for myself and hid it inside the refrigerator. Two hours later, feeling very proud of my idea, I opened the fridge only to find that not just the water but the vessel itself was missing!
Well, not only water, our favourite snacks also disappear from containers hidden in the innermost shelf of the kitchen and the culprit, I am sure, has not been found till date. When the family members are questioned the most common reply is, “I DON'T KNOW.”
Let us accept the fact that no ghost or animal is responsible for such situations. In fact, in most of the cases, it is our own carelessness, absent-mindedness, even laziness and sometimes that of the others that creates such circumstances.
I wish to conclude by quoting the famous lines, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Let us follow this principle and save not only our precious time but of the others too and not waste it in searching for things as a hundred constructive jobs can be done in the time lost in searching.
(deepusekhu@gmail.com)
Keywords: life disciplines, self-discipline
We cannot do certain things in School / Offices, other public places, where searching is more of an embarrassment than inconvenience. Thus, we tend to be more lazy, laid back and do not pay attention to little things such as keeping items in one place, develop this as a habit, with more things under disposal including mobile phone, traffic jams, and with lesser available time for relaxing at home, we hardly work on this important aspect and try to catch up only on Sunday or Holidays. Deepalakshmi's article highlights the need for some discipline and particularly when most of us are off for work, at 9 am and do not know at what time we can return, it is all the more necessary that we work on this, so that searching does not become as a wasteful burden, more often than not. But, do we get the HIGH feeling of getting back the thing or a successful search
This has reference to the article titled "Mystery of the missing things " by C Deepalakshmi. To save our precious time , in a family all members should take responsibility for keeping the things in its place and parents should inculcate this habits to their children. In my house I have affixed stickers like " Bath soaps , Tooth paste, Match boxes, Candles , Knife etc " in shelves . We are keeping the same in its allocated place, this will not only help to take the same from in its place but also helps to have a visual control. For TV remote we have a woven fabric pouch (hanging type) near TV and always keeping the remote once TV switched off. Keeping the things in its right place is not an additional work it is an art, definitely this will help us to save a lot of time and disappears our tension. Congrats to Ms Deepalakshmi for this article.
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