The Queer Take: Move aside Marie Kondo; the objects in my life serve as milestones along a wayward path

The Queer Take is a fortnightly column by poet-writer Joshua Muyiwa. Read more from the series here .

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A couple of weeks ago, my landlord decided to re-do the painting of the walls and doors in my apartment. At first, I was completely stressed out by even the idea of re-arranging each of the rooms while the painting was happening. But then, I decided that I should seize this as an opportunity. I decided to file through my belongings and throw out the things that I don’t use or need anymore. One needs to start easy, so I started off with my slippers. I’ve worn the same style of rubber slippers for over a decade. I whittled down my collection from 10 pairs to four. That wasn’t so hard, I thought. I convinced myself that I didn’t need a pair in every colour to sync with the colour of the sarongs and stacks of yardage in my cupboard. Spoiler alert: Those were the only things I threw out.

I think I rode the wave of confidence too quickly, too fast. I had thought, slippers done. Onto the next task. Now, I could dig into the shelves. I opened the first shelf and found a file filled with pamphlets, ticket stubs, flyers, visiting cards and so much more. I found a ticket stub for a movie from the last month of the now-demolished Rex Theatre . I found a delegate pass for a monthly documentary film screening that used to happen in another single-screen theatre in the city. I found a train ticket to Delhi from my first trip to meet a lover. And even the pre-paid auto challan from the railway station to his house. Everything in that file seemed to have been saved for a reason. And soon, instead of cleaning, I was conversing with the stuff. I rummaged, ransacked and remembered for the next two days.

In this time, I saw that everything I had, had a story. I’ve never really had money, though I’ve never been wanting. (The fact that I can walk this fine line is the kindness of the people who love me, and look out for me.) And the things that I did spend my money on, they have meaning, they serve a particular purpose – from functional to frivolous. On the morning of the third day, the painters arrived. By then, I’d come up with the plan to shove everything into the drawers or put them in the middle of the room and cover them up with tarpaulin. It worked.

Dear Marie Kondo, all the stuff in my rented apartment sparks joy.

I grew up in the house of a collector-memsahib, a term my late grandfather would bandy about as a slight but it never did sting his intended target: my grandmother. My grandmother collects everything, she doesn’t throw out a single thing. Chipped plates were transformed into saucers for pots or serving spoon holders, plastic bags were saved through the year and used to pack goodies for the many Christmas hampers, bent forks were used as rollers for kal-kals, gift wrapping was reused, and the list goes on. I can’t seem to remember all the little ingenious ways she used broken things to fix other things, or make them work better. Her approach to this saving, storing and secreting away never seemed pragmatic, but she was able to shroud her sentimental need to hold on to things with finding a way to practically apply them. Though she does have a sentimental stash locked away in a Godrej almirah. She’s got bits of her three children’s first haircuts, some of their childhood clothes, she’s got their notebooks with their first attempts at writing the alphabet and even their baby plates and tiffin-carriers etched with their names. At some point, it seems my family was into recording themselves, and so my grandmother has boxes of audio cassettes filled with dinner-table conversations when her Nepali relatives visited her in Bangalore. She seems to have saved at least one thing from each of our pasts.

My grandmother, I came to learn quite early on, wasn’t an oddity. Every house I visited in my childhood had a showcase. And that was only the tip of the ice-berg that was their hoarding. As a child, I would squirrel away to hang out in the bedrooms of these houses with my grandmother and the other aunties. Here lay the true treasures. I’d see these women exchange stories about the things from the object being spotted to the spending. And here, I learned that even the most exquisite thing must give you bang for your buck.

In my own queer life, I’ve come to have this same relationship with objects, with materials. They’ve become like milestones to trace the wayward path of my life so far. While the whole world might think of me as imperfect, I can bring things I like from out there into my world, and here, they fit perfectly. In all my queer friends’ houses, you can lift up any object and they will be able to tell you the story behind it. And they will even tell the tale with style. It is because these materials are invested with meaning for them, for me, for each of us. But also, these materials, these meanings are moulded into an armour to take on the world – strong but also pliant. Maybe if we distract, we won’t be seen? Maybe if we distract, we will be seen? Maybe if we distract, it won’t matter?

Anyway, what’s the real problem with having a lot of stuff? It gathers dust? Well, as the famous British queen Quentin Crisp said, “There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”

Joshua Muyiwa is a Bengaluru-based poet and writer