Remember that steel almirah in your parents place? And that beautiful creak and shriek that happened when you tried to open it? That hunk of metal that we all trusted our lives with?
I was back at my parents’ house. But I had not come back alone as the prodigal son. This time I had returned as a parent myself. My two kids were sleeping on their grandparents’ bed, exhausted from having spent their morning baking in the hot Mumbai sun. I realised that this was my chance. I decided to steal a few precious moments of downtime to myself, to indulge in an activity that was close to my heart. The joy of looking through old pictures.
I tiptoed in, careful not to wake up the sleeping devils. The bag with the pictures I sought was in a cupboard. An almirah. ‘Almaari’, ‘kabaat’, ‘beero’, and other isolated terms as it is referred to in different Indian households. That trusted steel almirah, typically made by Godrej, in shades fluctuating between the grey and the green, taking pride of place in the bedroom.
I twisted the handle ever so slightly. As a kid of the 80s, I knew that unlike the modern day cabinetry which promises the smooth, silent glide of a samurai sword coming out of its sheath, the cabinetry of my childhood was as noisy as the gates of haunted mansions opening up in horror movies. I must have lost my touch, for, despite my efforts, the opening of that Godrej almirah was followed by a large groan and a shriek. The kids woke up. And I bid goodbye to a promising afternoon.
I patted the almirah gently. I could scarcely be mad at it. There it was. That guardian of treasures that was almost as old as I was and very dear to my parents. That cacophony that accompanied its opening it was part of its charm.
Every family that I knew growing up had one of these in their homes. That perfectly cubicled almirahwithin which the most important assets of the household were preserved. Clothes, photographs, documents, ornaments.
The bottom half would usually be split into three equally distributed horizontal drawers. The top half would have two vertical separations. The one on the right was for hanging clothes. Sarees, ironed shirts, that odd coat that would rarely be worn. The left side would have a few more horizontal partitions.
‘His and Hers’ were all part of that same almirah. Oh, and so were ‘his and hers’. I remember the arrangement of my clothes jostling for space with my mother’s sarees and my father’s bushirts. Of course, you would never be so blasé as to let the clothes touch the steel base. You’d first tear up newspapers and arrange them at the base of each drawer and only then would you put the clothes on it. The newspapers would change frequently. So while the headlines of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination would stare at us for months, Tendulkar’s century at Perth would also be remembered each time I would pick shirts from the bottom.
The most critical records of our lives found their way to the vaulted almirah. The most precious pieces were saved in the almirah within the almirah. A drawer that would act as a safe and had its own key. This is where the jewellery, the money would be hidden. Godrej must have trusted its own manufacturing to a great extent for any robber would know exactly what to break open to make the most of what the house had to offer.
The almirah came with its own set of keys. Thick, gleaming, long keys that hung from a bunch. While it was not true of my mother, I have seen many other households where that set of keys would be tucked into the waist of a saree wearing mistress of the house.
Whether it was my parents’ place or at the countless others where these boxes of secure storage would be found, some things remained constant.
The almirah, when opened, paved the way to a family’s treasures. The almirah, when closed, played host to the family’s vanity. Along the height of the almirah would run a half length mirror that would be the perfect place to make sure that the comb had fixed up the hair stylishly, that the fall of the saree was set correctly and that the shirt was tucked in evenly. As if the ornate etching on the side of the mirror was not sufficient, the mirror would be decorated by bindis.
And as if the almirah wasn’t utilised enough by the space provided to store things inside it, the space between the almirah and the ceiling was used to store things as well. Stack of bags for travel, a cycle that isn’t being used anymore, giant pots. There truly was no end to what that patch of a few square feet could accommodate.
Over the years, amidst its layers, the history of a family built up in that almirah. The layers of objects that made up its contents became a sedimentation of memories. And as the family aged generation by generation, the almirah too grew old and started to rust. Patches of its decay would start spreading unevenly across its surface. A little mark of dark brown near the bottom, a bit of paint scraping away from its top. The almirah grew old with its owners and yet, like every family, strengthened its bond among its imperfections. It was like that unopened bottle of wine that gathers dust on the outside but blossoms in its flavour from the inside.
Times have changed now. The Indian middle class is upwardly mobile and artisan wooden cabinetry is slowly taking over from this trusted storage mechanism. And yet, the almirah continues its role faithfully in the houses of older people. It serves as a totem pole of memories and its creaks are the sweet sound of a bygone era, a nostalgia that I revisit each time I go back to my parents’ house and attempt to twist that handle ever so slightly.
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