Do you have any collections?
We have our attachments and hobbies in life. They keep life lovable and interesting to live through. Now one of the most commonly practiced hobbies is making collections. Some people like to do it secretly, others want people to know about it, while some do it unknowingly as well.
I believe as a child most of us have been a collector at some point or the other. I knew a boy who collected different chewing gums, now when I think about it, I don’t think he knew they would eventually expire. I hope his parents found out before he ate an expired gum.
Moving on, there was this girl, she collected recharge cards. Back then different service providers gave recharge cards to add talk time or data packs to prepaid numbers and she had made a collection of all those cards. I heard when she grew up, had a job, one day her father found those cards and threw them away thinking his little girl had outgrown them, turns out she hadn’t.
As for me, with me being a single child, it meant that I got to have all the collections in the world. So, my first collection was keychains, one of my aunts gave me a Mickey Mouse keychain and I loved it and she had given keychains of different characters and kinds to my cousins and that was the first time I realized that ‘maybe it would be a good idea to have them all’. I collected keychains for a long time, and then one day the attachment with the collection simply vanished although I still have them. None of my collections are gone.
The next collection was something I wanted to have but never got around making it, this was as a child too. There was a children’s encyclopedia my paternal grandfather gifted me, I can’t remember its publisher but at the last few pages it had pictures of all the national flags of nations around the world and when I saw them, I said “I want to have them all.” My grandfather smiled, maybe he thought I would do a lot of travelling, I didn’t and even if I did, I am not sure I am still interested in that collection.
Now, what I think one of my most beloved collections was and might still be somewhere in my mind, is my collection of cars. No, not the big ones, the 1:64 diecast ones. The first time my father went abroad he asked me what I wanted and I said a collection of cars and he brought them. There were about 50 different looking diecast cars in a box. I had spent hours playing with them when I was small, later on I made my own additions till diecast cars became really expensive and question arose that did I still value the collection that much since I had started developing other interests, like reading books and playing games.
Now, since books have been mentioned, let’s come to books. I don’t think there has been any part of my life where I haven’t been collecting books. You walk right into my house right now and you will find them everywhere, beginning from the drawing room all the way to the study room. My maternal grandfather loved to collect books, my maternal grandmother loved to read them and my mother was a school librarian; books have been part of my entire life. So, they are one constant collection and no I don’t have any rare books, just the normal ones which most people love and cherish.
Last but not the least another collection that I am actively building is of figurines. Super heroes, famous actors, anime characters etc, I mean it’s quite impressive the kind of detailing and accuracy they come with now, ten years back nothing close to it could be found. The collection is mainly for a little office or work studio I want to set up one day and do wish I am able to make a good collection because these characters have somehow impacted my mind with how they have been created.
If you ask me what’s the one collection which holds the most meaning in my life. It’s right there in the name of this blogging page. My collection of memories, after all, is an integral part of everything I write and the world that I have come to know better through it.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 