The ‘lost things’ invariably hold a special place in our lives. We don’t even remember certain important dates and valuable things, but the lost things will remain fresh in our memory regardless of the lapse of time. This could be because of the pain the loss might have caused. The pain is even more unbearable when the thing lost is very memorable and precious to us.
I have lost several articles in my life and was lucky enough sometimes to find my lost treasure. As a kid, I lost both my anklets on the auspicious occasion of the car festival in Srirangam, Tamil Nadu. The second thing I lost was my History textbook in sixth grade. The saddest part is that the book was lost just two days before the half-yearly examinations. I turned the home upside down searching for the book and somehow managed to pull through the examinations with the help of my notes.
The twist came when the book was found after two months in a small gap behind the class cupboard.
The recent additions to the list of my lost things is the red-coloured floral umbrella. This was a unique object to me as my aunt had specially gifted it to my mother. Though I regret having thus lost several items in my life, this one is something that I feel very guilty about and would like to recover at any cost.
Attached as I am with my lost articles, I was touched when I read the book The Keeper of Lost Things , by Ruth Hogan. This is one of the books I connected so much to and got hooked with its pages. When the protagonist of the novel Anthony lost his ‘gold medallion’, a gift from his late fiancé, he started to collect the lost things of other people. Anthony, upon approaching the end of his life, wrote a will passing on the entire ‘kingdom of lost things’ to his assistant Laura.
The ultimate twist came when Laura, in her effort to reunite the lost items with their rightful owners, found Anthony’s ‘gold medallion’.
Everybody at some point of time in their life would have lost some things. It could be a valueless, cheap and unimportant item or memorable, precious thing. But they too were pieces of our lives once and holds a memory within it.
ividhya06@yahoo.com
