When I was a child, there was an old Godrej metal wardrobe in my house that would often pique my curiosity about its contents. It was kept locked and was opened only once a year during Diwali cleaning when we would be out in school. I never questioned its existence or the fact that it was locked. Maybe it had some priced ancestral antiques or my father’s savings. Sometimes, in moments of idle questioning, I would make a Bollywood-inspired guess that it housed my mother’s ornaments from her wedding kept safe for emergencies that a lower-middle-class family like ours might face anytime.
The wardrobe was one of those objects that had been there before I came into the world and had almost become a reverential entity by the time I arrived. But its existence, like the walls and the frames it stood against, could not be overlooked by a curious growing mind. That was when I queried my father about its contents.
He probably noticed my overwhelming interest and threw it open for my first-hand inquiry. The mouldering diaries it beheld took me entirely by surprise. Why did my family hide this junk behind a locked wardrobe?
