An Enchanting Chaos

Friends !!!

There was an official phone call from Bank authority asking for some necessary documents. I assured him that I will be present tomorrow with required documents. And my search begins for those documents to submit them to the bank authority…

There was a phone call from the proof reader asking for the required reference urgently. And I was looking for that book absolutely necessary for the last time references…

There was a phone call from the medical person who needed the Aadhar card for Covid-vaccination registration.

I begin my search for all three documents!!

…and… unfortunately none were found. There were huge piles of books, bags where documents were kept, but nowhere… I was absolutely at defeating point… where to find and how to find out the necessary papers. I spent the whole day against the faltering sleep except when 2 hrs were left I vigorously fought for the sleep, and …shooting pain came in my arms… oh !! I had a bizarre possession of so many things that I was lost amidst the clutter. The disordered jumbled appeared to me like a version of cocktail and mocktail, so tasty yet no specific ingredients were to be located.

I remember my mother used to tell me that I was never able to hone in on my priorities– how my mental desktop needs some cleaning, which I should have yielded to every now and then to struggle with my muddle. I am often berated by the super-immaculate at the slightest opportunity. Every minute I spend looking through litter, wondering where I put this or that, being unable to focus because I am not organized, and that costs my valuable time. The messy table and book-shelf dampens my productivity of work. The wise slant is that clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Things are never kept into the right folder junk drawer.  Friends !!! Try to visualize a person whose body parts are not properly placed in their right folders. They are somehow scrambled all over the body of the person, in a magicians’ show.

I was open to lot of fresh possibilities always, say, it should be here…that should be there…I kept it there while coming from the kitchen…I might have put it in the kitchen cupboard…anywhere in verandah or, my God !! under the bed or.. or.. or.. anywhere on heaven and earth.  My mind travels to multi direction. One after another I was turning the pages of files and drawers – where there were letters, photos, articles kept for future generation …I was travelling in three times– past to future to present … I was at my dismayed-point how to bridge the gap. Tomorrow I have to submit the papers and I was playing with opposite wrong notes here!!! My brain waves groove over discordant notes. I was trying to voyage from discord note to find unprecedented harmony– the ‘emancipation of dissonance’.

The Poise between the two lines of thought, with a state of stress from internal contradiction, crops up amidst the morass of hypnotic written papers all around me, which, however, were weaving pleasurable dreams dissecting old traumatic memories. And, thus, mind wanders to infinite.

This is truly the key to creating balance and harmony in everything one does. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, and is typically psychologically stressed, when one cannot execute it in an action. Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is emotionally taxing. Aha! How Derrida has taught us the concept of order and disorder based on binary oppositions. It seems to me that every time someone within the system tries to create order, disorder arises. Delight in Disorder suggests the beauty amidst the small things in life such as lawn and dress, table, the dining space, the small flower pots looking bare and stripped, one is compelled to look aesthetically. One considers anything wayward or out of place to be a form of art, which explains one’s feelings about the order and disorder of the things

A sweet cup of coffee lay over the bed

The kindling of the clothes by the side in wantonness;

The floor was up with books thrown up to shoulders

Into a fine diversion;

This awful truth was ironically displayed before me. Suddenly I felt that this suffering of searching becomes an exploration that deepens my understanding, gives a greater lustre to me, a richer resonance to my words. Where do I find orders in real life? Every time new conditions lead to new threats, a new significant measure of disorder, only to see the restoration of order, which then proves to be a mere illusion of order. All kinds of logical relationships are there: consonant relationship, irrelevant relationship, dissonant relationship. I recall the instance given in the class room, I do not want to be drunk when out, but then one is drinking more wine when one is out. I am distracted from something of my everyday rigid life and offer something different from the structure and ideals of society. Sometimes it is said: a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, but of what, then, I retort back --- is an empty desk a sign of ?

Of course, there is a delight in disorder – to pinch a phrase from the 17th century poet, Robert Herrick – that is undermined by everyone from Psychologist to Marie Kondo, who is a consultant organizer. And it’s not just about desks. From kitchen cabinets to dashboards and from office drawers to desktop screens, messes abound in our everyday lives. I have tested this with dishes in the sink, clothes in the wardrobe and the indescribable assemblage on the bed and what to say of side table. What a wonderful scene one is exposed to when one is on the streets of Kolkata – a huge bus, a tram loitering without electricity, a rickshaw, on the left side, an auto on the right side, a taxi, a car with full volume horn buzzing and a cycle in between and a bike fluttering here and there to find its way and finally a poor dog trying to cross the road with his master holding the chain, a cow looking for the way out. A beautiful collage to feast the eyes!!! And yet we’re so puritanical about them, lane should be separate for the vehicles and pedestrians!!!

 

This leads me to a logical conclusion. Perhaps tidiness is the province of those with an access to the mystical realm. With humans working from home at a hitherto unheard of scale, the focus on tidy living is greater than ever. I have friends cleaning their homes for about five or six hours a day! Now that yell does not begin to do justice to my utter terror. Corporate overachievers are now obsessing about non-existent cobwebs. I have heard that some renowned persons are scrubbing surfaces clean with the zeal of criminals erasing incriminating fingerprints. Athletes are gracefully climbing ladders to peep into lofts and reorder their contents. It might be called Transcendental cleaning. Maybe many of us who are not able to channel our much-flaunted blessings are spiritually bankrupt. I might one day blast trash into space and use the sun’s heat to burn it. But given that our planet has limited resources, burning them after one use probably isn’t the answer. Well, it is just passing the time between spells of philosophical wondering.

There is, of course, that ultimate frontier that I’m saving for a really, really desperate day:  Dust you must.

It is the homes with all clutters around of books, tea-cups, medicines, plates and water bottles, pencils and pens without ink every time I go for writing --- give me hope. Freed from all the constraints of structure and appearance, they offer a glimpse into a world where couches and papers are friends, and creases and stains are the norm. I ignore the curtain hem that has come loose. I ignore the cobweb on the wall, I ignore the insects on the curtain fold. Just thinking about these un-kempt items now makes me feel good. These little pieces of evidence of individual disorder bewitch me.  Though this disorder is evidence of visual yarn with mesmerising effect – shoe flattened on the floor, or a newspaper out of place or the pleats of the saree not folded properly, wearing the same colour saree every day, one sees the beauty of the individual and considers this to be a piece of art, if it doesn't destroy, doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things. All these are conducive to create master craft coming out of different pockets and seeped into the pattern restructured over the time.

Let’s not make matters worse by holding ourselves to impossible ideals. I undercut the notion that the only way to redefine our style is to see the tilting frame hanging in the living room wall so it rests at a jovial angle. Precision is just good. Sweet anarchy is at my will. And lo!! The papers dished out to me.