I had just returned from Pune and was looking forward to a peaceful, lazy Sunday . But the universe had other plans .
Prima Donna gave me two tickets to ‘ The Mirrored Room’ by Yayoi Kusama. This is a permanent installation at the NMACC but it has limited viewing that has to be pre-booked. This exhibition is also only open when a bigger art show is going on so that you don’t get disappointed with your 5 minute spot !
So luckily for us there was a major show called POP : Fame, Love, Power with original art works brought in specially for us !
The show traced POP art from its beginning in 1955 till the most recent installation ‘Broken Bouquet’ in 2021.
It began with the first floor dedicated to FAME and it was fun trying to identify the celebrities in the photos without looking at the legend.
Of course there were the famous Gold Marilyn Monroe as the 16 Jackie Kennedy
My nonagenarian father who is a cardiac patient is sorely missing his wife of 67 years. My mum’s passing came as a bolt from the blue for the entire family as she showed no symptoms of the devious Glioblastoforme tumour that was stealthily growing in her brain. And in all the years that they were married, my mother’s chief passion/ occupation was to run after my father and make sure he was comfortable. Even when she was unable to see, she served him his tea in bed and chopped his salad before every meal. It is no wonder then that he is having difficulty in adjusting to his new situation despite the fact that he is still getting his tea in the morning and his chopped salad thanks to the care given by my brother and his wife.
Yet a few weeks’ back, he developed a swelling in his legs which finally resulted in hospitalisation. It also meant getting an attendant as he needed help while walking .
The attendant we could get was an Ibrahim who only spoke Hindi and even though my dad has spoken Hindi all his working life , claimed that he couldn’t understand Ibrahim’s Hindi .
And one night dad complained that Ibrahim was yelling at him saying that he is a nuisance and should learn to behave himself . That same night he insisted that Ibrahim was reprimanding him for not taking his medication as advised and should be more responsible.
Naturally my sister in law questioned Ibrahim and it turned out that Ibrahim was on a long distance call to his family back home and was talking to his four year old son and pregnant wife !
Now this does seem too close for comfort or was it genuinely a misunderstanding in communication?
De-clutter, minimalistic living, have become the new buzz words in today’s living. Life style shows and life style gurus like Mary Kondo have a huge fan following with their tips on how to organise your things and thereby your lives. Living by the credo that less is more has had many of us suddenly throwing out things that haven’t been used for the past 5 years or even months. No longer will Hubby Dear show with pride his grandma’s 100 year old beaten brass pots that has served three generations of his family. It isn’t even consigned to the loft because recently we have broken down the loft!
Every big job has a small beginning
Like most of us , I purge my home of clutter twice in a year : once in spring time and once after the monsoons. Of course, there are times when I de-clutter even more often when I suddenly get overwhelmed by the piles of clothes lying on my rocking chair.
Recently, however, we decided to renovate one tiny bathroom that badly needed repair, refurbishment and a new life. So we ripped up the tiles, took out the fixtures and began building a bathroom from scratch. Before we knew it, we moved on to the adjoining room which had jammed windows that hadn’t been open for 20 years . So we decided to replace the windows and consequently paint the room.
In order to do this, we had to empty out the room and keep all the stuff in another room. This room happened to be our living room.
And then, we found that our kitchen needed re-doing so the kitchen was ripped apart and all the stuff came into – you guessed right – our living room.
While the kitchen work was being done, we decided to paint the other bedrooms one by one (on advice of the contractor who told us to grab onto the workmen who were free and put them to work when they needed to work rather than call them when we needed them and they had no time to do it). And so more stuff was emptied out of cupboards and rooms and shifted to our living room.
So now we have a huge pile of clutter occupying our living room and as we go back into our rooms, find that there is a lot of stuff that we needn’t put back into the cupboards or rooms that they came from.
And till we find someone to take away the stuff that we have weeded out, the clutter in our living room is slowly increasing.
Isn’t that strange that what began as an exercise in de-clutter has now resulted in more clutter?
Twenty- five Seven 