Sunday, July 1, 2018

Pack rat of mementos

I am an organized person when it comes to recording and preserving memories.  

I have taken or acquired (primarily from my father’s collection) thousands of photographs. They are in form of physical prints, slides and more recently digital format. Over the past several years, I have had a large number of slides digitized and also many prints. The digital versions reside in my laptop as well as on external hard drives. In addition, several thousand are in the cloud, accessible not only on my laptop but also on the iPhone. So, I can find and show a photo of, say a trip to South America we made in 1980, or that of my grandparents, to anyone anywhere as long as I have an Internet connection. 

I write a travelogue of every major trip we undertake, replete with pictures. By now, they occupy several three ring binders, and their digital versions are available on my laptop, on external hard drives and in the cloud. Many physical mementos from these trips (e.g., ticket stubs) are carefully filed in additional three ring binders. 

The record of my academic life is well preserved as well, starting from grade records (“Pragati Patrak”, as they say in Gujarati) of high schools, all the way to the doctorate diploma from MIT. They are all digitized and stored in various places. That is also the case with my work life that extended almost four decades. Although I have thrown away most of the paper reports I generated, some still remain. When I retired a few years ago, I wrote down a short description, along with pictures, for each of some one hundred of the most interesting projects I had worked on. The memos and letters I received from my clients and senior manager praising my work are also preserved in both physical and digital formats. The clippings form newspapers and magazines that quoted me are stored away in a safe place. 

This habit of recording and storing of professional work continues in my retired life. A description of the recent work I have done for non-profits and for science teachers in a middle school is preserved. Then there is a binder that contains the record of my photography achievements. Every photo that won some accolade is copied, printed and filed, and so are commendations. 

Finally, as if all that is not sufficient, I have started writing my autobiography. I have outlined my life in India, to be elaborated later, and written down what happened during my first seven years in US. Of course, this will be illustrated through pictures that I have digitized. Important letters from friends and relatives, many of them long gone, will augment this autobiography.

In colloquial American English, a “pack rat” is a person who acquires and hoards stuff, and does not throw anything away. I have no interest in stuff, but records (diaries, commendations, certificates, photographs, letters, clippings) that jog memory---mementos---that’s a whole different ball game. 

I am a pack rat of mementos!

That having been said, like the other type of pack rat, I wonder sometimes why am I hoarding all these records? 

I hope that we will check them out when sitting on rocking chairs after we enter the next phase of retirement and slow down. We will re-live the experience and say, “remember what happened to us in Bolivia?” Maybe reading praises from family, friends or clients will cheer me up when I am feeling low.

I also want to leave a record of my life for the next generation. Perhaps my granddaughter will find my school records from India and say, “Look at these…grandpa was a good student!” Not that I am rich and famous, but my progeny may be interested in the person who immigrated to the United States and started a family. That is my hope.

Perhaps nothing of this sort will happen. All the paper records will get dumped the next time we move or when we are no longer around. The electronic records will survive but become inaccessible because of forgotten passwords. Except for mild curiosity, there will be no incentive for my present or future family members to dig out the lost information. 

Along with the atoms that constitute my physical being, the electrons that organize my records will find an alternate purpose. And that will be that.