Covid-bereaved cling to material memories

Covid victims’ kin tap into power of objects

- Sharmila Ganesan

From Digital Pocket Watches To Rare Coins, What A Loved One Left Behind Now Moves Them Forward

It’s not just food that stays warm inside Jignesh Vai-ty’s dented steel lunch boxes. The two airtight dabbas— which refuse to let even tomato puree leak—have kept the memory of his father fresh for this Mulundbased final-year engineering student for over two years now. Shailendra, his catering firm employee father, would never part with it but hasn’t returned to fetch it since August 11, 2020.

Freighted with fingerprints, saturated with sentiments and retro-fitted with remembrances, the inanimate belongings of those who succumbed suddenly to Covid exert a quiet grip over their inheritors as they go about in the post-pandemic world. A do-it-yourself father’s pair of blue dumbbells, an arthritic mother’s knee implant, a polymath husband’s coin album, a brilliant fellow Covid warrior’s photo— objects that once pronounced an absence now amplify a presence for loved ones who are gingerly moving forward with what was left behind, turning tactile memories into tender talismans.

The silver metallic men’s watch that hangs loose on 52year-old Bhandup-based teacher Sneh Malhotra’s wrist, belongs to the 40-odd lot that had surprised her from a wooden drawer she had opened a month after losing the sweet-toothed, corn-pakoda-loving high court reporter “who loved me more than I loved him” to Covid. A willing assistant to her husband Gagan, a post-graduate in archaeology and numismatics, in the frequent cleaning sessions of albums full of coins foraged from “god knows where” and chronologically arranged “from the time of Akbar or maybe before till 2020”, Sneh was aware of his appetite for rare currency, stamps and even pens.