A little left over

It’s funny how things end up. I had a fridge full of leftovers only this morning and now much of it has been transformed into just a few dishes full of deliciousness. And I do not speak as a conceited cook, but a very practical housekeeper. Since I hate wasting anything, I threw some of that spicy green chutney I got with the kebab takeway into a dressing for a potato salad, chopped the last couple of kebabs themselves into a sort-of-kind-of-maybe version of the famous Delhi speciality, butter chicken and introduced the little bit of potato sabji to the mouth-tinglingly chilli-spotted spinach and corn that lurked in the far corner of the bottom shelf next to the end of the banana bread. Which could probably go into a fruit-filled trifle that we could slurp up with ice cream, don’t you think?

My existence tends to be full of leftovers, of which only the edibles are saved; the rest goes into the trash. For years I have been able to get rid of the unusable bits and pieces that almost always make up a life. Photographs, emails, gifts, even memories are binned as soon as the person involved has made his or her exit from my small world. And while I do not really have any bitterness or even any feeling attached to those relics, I do occasionally pull the time shared out of my mental closet and check to see if those too can be thrown away. If they have some flavour left that will not give me the burps, they are packed carefully back into the box that they were stored in and shoved into the deep dark corners of my mind, where they rightly belong.

What bothers me, however, and prevents the cleaning and storage process of all these experiences is if part of it is left incomplete. Sort of like a box of peanuts all ready for grinding which never makes it to peanut butter. Or a pair of jeans that does not fit right any more, but will still be saved for that time of ‘just in case’ which, of course, never arrives. I hate people vanishing without explanation, however offensive and unwarranted the probable cause may be. I hate the explanations that always begin with “I don’t know why…” and end with “It’s not you, it’s me.” What is worse is a self-pitying, self-righteous silence and inaccessibility. And I hate knowing that all this will bug me, no matter that I know full well that I wanted to get out of something long before it ever ended and just never figured out how to close the book when there were still many chapters to read through. This works with jobs, with relationships, with book contracts, with any kind of agreement.

I wish life was like refrigerated leftovers. Then each phase of it would come to a logical conclusion, to be gently melded into something else that is far more useful or thrown away because it smells a little odd and leers at you when you peer into its container.