Nothing is indisposable!

Nice reading your thoughts on keeping old things from generations. We always have sentimental attachment to things belonged to our dead parents and grandparents. There was a tamil story long ago once where a child keeps a air-pillow without folding it because her mother had blow into it her breath and now that mother was dead.
But keeping mementos is one kind of luxury because it needs space. In small houses, like ours, only memories are heirlooms.
And then also, I think maybe preserving old things was not really in our culture. On every Bhogi day, people of olden days burnt all old things ( even the thatti roofs) and bought new for the year. The mud pots , baskets and jaadis was thrown away, no body kept them because grandmother cooked in it !! Anything broken or damaged was always thrown off as not auspicious, saying " binnam" .

My husband's Great Uncle ( who was history teacher ) use to say preservation, museum -keeping etc was all European ideas. He use to say, even big temples , king's palaces, if was damaged, was demolished full and rebuilt. No preservation on sentiment reasons ! In our culture, we don't hold on to gone things.It shows in our cremation practice - fully burnt to ash and dissolved in water. No mummification like Egypt or keeping in coffins. All our preserving was only in mind, no material ! It was simple life and full freedom from clutter. I like this Uncle's thought very much.

 

Wonderful thought. I was just wondering, Sir, is there anything like a disposable cabinet (as in the governmental context)?

Besides, mementos are only material objects; memories of the ancestors are "more" permanent (till the day comes when our minds are scrapped in Alzheimer's store) and need no more than some gigabytes of space (eco friendly hardware at that).

 

Yes I belong to a family that loves its tradition and cherishes its heritage. And we are cursed with not having a nonagenarian living with us. I was drop-jawed to read that you still have your grandparent's cradles and dolls around ! How fortunate to have your own private museum !

At our place, the oldest object is a photograph of my grandparent's wedding. All other memorabilia are strictly oral scraps of recalled and retold family lore, which I hope to record in a log book someday, should some future descedant of the family start investigating his/her roots in order to decipher where he/she got a particular idiosyncracy from.

Our life on earth itself being disposable, there's no wonder that nothing we have created for ourselves is 'indisposable'.

 

I am in the school of thought that belongs to "let us not get possessed by our pride possessions". I am saying this from the point of view of our future generations and not from my perspective as I also prefer to hold on to everything that belongs to my great grand or grand parents as long as I could afford to do so. Without being insensitive to the traditions and the values of the elders, why not every generation write about their values and interesting aspects of life in a Chuvadi, note book, CD, Video, MP3 or whatever is the technology existed at that time. In future, I am not sure the next generations would even worry about learning about their great grand or grand parents and how they lived, especially considering their fast life unless it is an essay that they need to write for the school or for their research paper. Until now, we are conducting the yearly ceremonies of the elders and in future, I do not expect the next generations to do it. I would be happy if they go to a old age home and feed them in memory of their parents and grand parents. May be days are not far off, when the urns and electronic data about the previous generations are the only pride possession.

Viswa