Hunting relics

Yes, this is sort of part two of last time’s blog. But I am not going to get all militant and mean about people despoiling national monuments, though I can go on at some length about that. This time around, I am going to talk about collecting souvenirs, which can rank among them some of the strangest and ugliest things on the face of human existence. Did you ever read Myth Directions, a hilarious one from the creative compulsions of Robert Aspirin? It is about the search for the perfect birthday present for a Pervect and has Skeeve and Tananda travelling cross-dimension scouring unknown worlds for Just the Right Thing. Then, on a stopover in the vaguely humanoid realm called Jahk, they find IT. An extraordinarily ugly, misshapen, wart-pocked, toad-like statuette that is the Trophy, a prize given to the team that wins the Big Game. It is well-guarded, carefully protected by a network of magik wards, highly valued by the local populace. Of course, our heroes want it, not just as a souvenir of an adventure, but as the most unique gift any friend can ever get. (This is not an ad for the book, but read it, it is fun!)

Most earthly souvenirs may not be that ugly, even in imagination. But they are certainly weird. I know I have quite a collection. Let’s start with keys. As a family, we accumulated many, from the basement locker room and lounge at a US university to car keys that belonged to a Toyota that was once owned by a friend and that I loved driving. Perhaps my most memorable key story hinges on the one I took from a small pensione in rural Italy. I was responsible for returning it to the concierge, but being a fairly scatterbrained child, I sort of didn’t…and remembered when we were many miles down the autostrada!

As I grew up and my budget increased, there was a definite hunt for the souvenir that did not spell ticky-tacky-tourist-trash. In my own small way, I managed it. There was the Kokopelli keyring from Santa Fe, the agate pebble from Rocky Mountain National Park, the pearls from Niagara Falls, the blown glass lamp from New York, even the scar on my leg from the mining cemetery in Central City, Colorado. They are all records of a journey once travelled, an adventure lived through.

India has a vast and wonderful treasurehouse of potential souvenirs. There were the pot-shards I collected at Lothal, in Gujarat, relics of the Indus Valley civilisation. I took them all the way to the US when I took off to college, and they were unpacked and packed back into their cottonwool and tissue beds many times until I gave them to the campus museum when I finally left to come home. There is the huge collection of plastic boxes that I collected during a stay in Delhi, objets that I covet but my family scoffs at; each has a story to it, a time remembered with a special sigh. From Bangalore I have sandalwood in various forms, which wander through different parts of my closet until I forget why I have them and throw them, completely odourless by then, into the garbage. And there are coins, shells, fabrics, books and lamps from different journeys made at different times in our family history.

But the best and most lasting souvenir is perhaps the memories that I have collected. Some painful, some happy, some just strange, I - like everyone else - keep them until time hazes them over and the reality becomes clouded by wishes. And when I pull them out to see if they still exist, sometimes I find only dream-dust and cobwebs. For those times, we all could use the presence of a Trophy, don’t you think?