Hoarders and Discarders!

When our housekeeper materialised from nowhere and announced that my wife desires urgent conversation with me, he was trying hard to suppress a gleeful smile.  That was a dead give-away, since that specific signal emanates from him only when his antenna picks up an `exciting' situation, with immense potential for entertaining fireworks, culminating in some form of discomfiture to me. You see, he is firmly plonked on my wife's corner for the past 25 years and I would be an imbecile to expect that status to change, ever.  To his credit, his judgement is generally sound on these matters, since he would have already had an advance exchange with Memsaheb on the emergent inquisition and would have helpfully organised the stake for the forthcoming scalding, if not burning!  I found the presiding deity, arms akimbo, face creased into a furrow, intently scrutinizing the contents of the cupboard, which is the repository of old magazines, newspapers, and the like.  The housekeeper followed me and as is his wont in such situations, took a comfortable position at a distance, from where he can jump in to add fuel to the raging fire as and when such intervention is required or even if it is superfluous.

My wife hissed to me `How many times should I tell you to leave my papers alone????', even though it would be well nigh impossible to hiss a whole sentence without too many sibilants in it.  But I swear she hissed and very well, too! Ah, now that the portends had appeared on the horizon and the tone was obviously ominous , I found myself already on the defensive, even before the arguments were presented and the judgement pronounced.  For, I was on familiar ground and knew from experience that even without any paraphernalia, the prosecutor-cum-judge (convenient, isn't it?) would find me guilty as charged. `What seems to be the problem' was my brave rejoinder, under the circumstances.  She dispensed with preliminaries and just summarily apportioned guilt without any fuss - `Yesterday you threw some old magazines that I had `preserved' for a long time for eventual use'?  `I did remind him, madam,' interjected the housekeeper very helpfully. He did and I did discard a load, because how was I to know that the day after disposal, the time for such `eventual use' would arrive?  And that she would barge in seeking a 3 year old magazine, which she has never so much looked at again after the initial browsing; how uncanny would that be? But, there I was, in the dock for having committed the heinous crime.  I did all the usual fidgeting the underdog does in the presence of a powerful judge - sucked my breath in soundlessly, mumbled meaninglessly, shuffled my feet a few times, wrung my hands continuously and finally confessed to my sin! Which was throwing away loads of stuff, residing in a whole cabinet for a few years, without anyone seemingly opening it except for adding more junk  to the pile.  This had happened to me earlier, simply because I am a `discarder' and my wife is a `hoarder'.

If you are an avid and shrewd observer of life, as this scribe is, you will see many kids showing precocious signs of compulsive accumulation of anything - chocolates, toys, hairpins, bangles, marbles, stunted pencils, whatever. If you fancy yourself as a genuine well-wisher of those `gifted' children and their parents, you should alert the latter to channelize the energies of such kids into an activity which legitimizes accumulation and hoarding.  Like, stamp collection, coin collection, card collection, book collection etc, which can be pursued as grown-ups also, without causing damage to the environment and people in some way.  This is a monumental task, which requires sustained and committed efforts from all around.  Otherwise, even if parents and teachers combine their efforts and manage to lull this hoarding instinct somewhat (that is, if such parents and teachers themselves are free from the virus of `hoarding') in growing children, the remedy is just temporary.  The somewhat stifled fervour resurfaces, pretty much like chicken pox not dealt with properly in childhood. With a vengeance, when such children are adults and are no longer parentable or teachable (true, many reach this stage quite early in their lives, well before adulthood for sure)  and they promptly start hoarding all sorts of undesirable things, causing tremendous grief to others around them.  The resultant problem is multi-dimensional - one, someone, who is usually a pathetic victim, has to find the space for such hoarding because hoarders themselves do not care for such niceties and living space gets encroached and eventually taken over; two, since the rule of limitation is not enforceable here and there is no oracle to say when someone would find the courage to discard the stuff, if ever, the demand for expansion of space is perennial and it is impossible to satiate that kind of hunger.  

I know of male friends who have hoarded every marble they have used as a kid.  One has accumulated thousands of discarded movie film rolls, with his favourite actor in diverse striking poses, singing various popular songs or in different stages of delivering declamatory dialogue.  One guy has got copies of all the `letters to the editor' he had written over 20 years. He uses the rationale that since no editor was good enough to publish any letter, his copies are the only ones left for posterity and so deserve the honour of being hoarded.  One friend has a few thousand cassette tapes of old, pre-CD songs (which are coated with dust and grime, from disuse) stored in various nooks and crannies in his house, even though he has graduated to other media for listening to music long back. None of these people is known to go back to their collections for any purpose, but would not dream of cleaning up! As for females, without being pilloried, one can safely say, hoarding begins with clothes and footwear and never ends; not even when the hoarded clothes and sandals are quarter the sizes they fit into currently.  Even the incentive of being able to buy fresh ones to fill up the space occupied by old stuff is not attractive enough for them to begin discarding.  They want to do both, hoard and buy new ones!!

On the other side, is the true-blue discarder! He just revels in tearing up everything he fancies; the sooner, the better, even if common sense dictates that a piece of paper may  be retained for a while and is going to be pertinent to his life in the next fortnight.  I know of people who destroy bank statements received two days back, after a cursory look and then go running for duplicate copies one week later from the bank because they cannot identify one transaction!  These specimens are more likely to discard stuff first and find themselves short of socks or underwear, because they have not had time to replenish! Many times they destroy photocopies of papers just in time; two days later they find that they need those photocopies again but unfortunately they had already disposed of the originals much earlier because they had photocopies!  They will gleefully tear up the boarding passes immediately after landing and wonder where they can get copies from, when they find that miles have not been credited to the frequent flyer account!  They would vigorously advocate throwing away yesterday's newspaper and run around like headless chicken to find the same newspaper two days later, when someone points out to them that they missed something interesting or important!

Interestingly, all hoarders are not savers of money and accumulators of wealth; and there are a number of discarders I know, who are very serious about savings to the point of being stingy! Such empirical evidence just baffles me.

And it gets livelier and entertaining when a discarder is juxtaposed to a hoarder through marriage or otherwise.  Clashes of interest are intense and objectives are diametrically opposite; the scene is set for frequent flare-ups and fierce arguments, if both parties are likely to dig in their heels.  Mercifully, if one is weaker, things subside pretty quickly and normalcy is restored.  More often than not, the discarder gets away with bouts of quiet  spring-cleaning; only because invariably the hoarder never seeks to retrieve anything from the hoard and derives satisfaction from the `idea' of hoarding.  There is absolutely no need for a 'touch and feel' kind of experience.  That would complicate things, as explained in the first two paras of this script and then all one party can say is `I am guilty' and hope to get away with that.  Because, this scene will play out again and again and again!! Neither party learns, let me assure you.