some clutter, some rubble, backpacks - but mostly me

since the last about 6 years, i have maintained these annual lists of books that i have read (or re-read) and movies that I have watched (or watched again). the usual trend each year has been more inclined towards books (which i cannot do without) than movies (which i enjoy, but can live without). but that's not the thought here.

watched 2 movies this weekend, and today was adding there names in my 2005 list, and got stuck there wondering about the 'purpose' of this 'habit' that i started one day, a few years back, and religiously follow.

and it occurred, how often do we get back to our 'backpacks'.....
1. it could be such book and movie lists/ or
2. piles of books, so called a collection (mostly gathering dust)/ or
3. audio tapes or music cd's bought over many years (a lot of them out of our taste now, sitting in some box or shelf)/ or
4. a dozen or so scrap books including some thoughts, paper cuttings, clips, abstract diagrams and other zig zag/ or
5. a lot of stationery items, half sticky and broken, lying unused, but carried from house to house/ or
6. other apparent rubble incl - dry flowers, leaves, shells, stones, little show pieces, and other junk....

what am i trying to seize here, i wonder? What’s the purpose here?
1. time
2. moments
3. memories
4. a link to the past (when i see this stuff in the future)
5. an insight into my own personality and how i have changed (or perhaps not) over the years

or perhaps, a bit of it all....

for example -
i look at the tapes i had when i was in early school, and there are a couple of songs from backstreet boys, boyzone, spice girls and other such foolishness (as i think of it 'today') also ; some more typical loud music with no real depth ; and othercluttering songs n albums - i cannot get myself to play these today, at all, and yet they sit where do they do, eating the space, and reminding me subtly of days where perhaps i may have been just carefree enough to play any music, without the pre-notions of how deep it'd be, of whether it would touch my soul or not.

i would like to think today, that i have a good 'tasteful' taste in music. but in many ways, it does point to me, of howjudgemental i am on what i'd like to hear, and what is trash for me ; of the difference i have found over the years in music which is soul-stirring, and music i feel is just for the sake of it........and then i'd like to think that i wish i wouldn't say 'my taste has developed'......i wish i'd just see it as 'my tastes havechanged'......for the bygones must have filled some hours all those years back too, with happiness or whatever.
but i can't help being so critical, of self, and its just a wish.

i also look at the vast book collection i have, and which grows exponentially, always.
i remember my senior school days, when all i read was sheer philosophy, theosophy, and other such stuff, a lot of other ruritarian classics, C&H, and for humour - archie comics.
i also remember the teen years of sidney sheldons, jeffrey archer, agathas and holmes, danielle steel and other fiction.
flashback and the nancy drews, hardy boys, famous five, five find outers, and several other mystery(with no mystery, as I think today) series.
and further back the couldn't-grow-up-without enid blyton's, and the desi comics - chacha chouwdhary, pinki, billu, raman and the lot (a few names have escaped my memory completely for now).......
and all of those zillion other booksthat i got to read, and think about, and grew on......
and then the trasition back to my senior school days, and beyond, till now, and growing more, of books that i like to readnow, and of the sidney/danielle which i read today only when my mind cannot comprehend anything else ; of the comicsand blyton's i love to get back to when i find them hidden and staring a while -
and i think its been long, my relationship with books, they all have been so significant in each phase of my life, thru mychildhood to now - they all have occupied hours and hours of my life, have left imprints, thoughts that have stayed, otherswhich inspired, others which made me dream, and hope, and learn, and most importantly - broaded my vision to see beyond the fence.

...and in the same league the zillions newspaper cuttings i have kept, and pasted in the diaries, none of which i have everthrown out , the other scrap books, and articles, and little gifts which friends and schoolmates, or college mates havegiven, of notes, and chits, and other ink blots......

and all of this, i carry from destination to destination, from one door-step to the other when i move houses, and i wonder at the marvel of how the load has increased, -

and when i close my eyes and look for the ’purpose' ; I realise -
that perhaps, this rubble, this clutter, gives me the privilege of some free space in my mind, which otherwise would have been cluttered with the clutter ;
it gives me the gift of recollecting my past at a glance, than to have to rake my brains ;
it gives me the childhood I have preserved in the collections ;
in the years embedded in each such data, each such list ;
in how much I know about my own self through all the years ; which otherwise memory wouldn’t have done justice to –

and then I can see somewhat clearly, the burden & the essence of my being, perhaps, has been lightened in these literal collections than struggling for space in my mind. i have been able to preserve a past in print, than in the vaporising memories.

And then I am glad, of all my backpacks.