Life slips by like a video at 2x speed sometimes, and the only timestamps we have are the things we hold on to —the people we share memories with. I have items that mark my growing-up years – there’s the stuffed toy I was gifted as a three-year-old. There is my baby sock that mama carefully stores, there is the tin of sweets on my grandfather’s shelf, and the orange bowl that my father would serve churumuri in.Â
But I think the most significant one of them all, the one that makes me giggle when I think of it even today, is something else. I thought about it. Like, called-up-and-annoyed-my-mother kind of thinking. I think the oldest object I own is this tiny doll, no bigger than my palm. It’s white and spotted black, supposed to be a dalmatian? Not sure. Regardless, it has the most adorable face, almost triangular, and has little stubs instead of full-fledged paws. Somehow, I ended up naming him Chiku.Â
I have given away many childhood toys to my cousins, my friend’s siblings – many people actually, now that I think about it – all in the promise of them treating them right. I never parted with Chiku, for some reason. Perhaps he was too tiny for them to consider, too small. All is well in the end, for after every time I deep clean my room, Chiku is the first thing I look for, in case someone has accidentally trashed or thrown him out. I don’t think my heart would be able to bear the loss if that happened. I have come to find him a very calm and peaceful figure in my room, actually.Â
Right now, he sits on my shelf back at home, in his little corner, tiny eyes catching the sunlight as it rises. I adore him quite a lot, but strangely enough, it wasn’t always so. No, in fact, early on, when I first comprehended and perceived him as a four-year-old, I apparently hated him. Hated him to the point of disgust and fear. The only reason he wasn’t given away was because my parents, in a stroke of parenting genius, decided to place Chiku as a sort of boundary for me. If there was anything that I had to be kept away from, food, rooms, freshly washed and folded clothes, the stairs – Chiku would be there, a guardian and sentry, effective in keeping me away.
Somehow, he survived that phase of mine. I think he kept a low profile as I grew up – in any case, when I did find him once again, while shifting houses, I was ready to forgive him and forget all about my disgust and fear, having only heart eyes for the tiny thing.Â
Chiku is a reminder of not just my childhood, in that way. I hold him to be more than that now. The little spotted toy that watches over me from its place on the shelf is a quiet symbol of time, of learning that though time may seem cruel in the way it marches on, there is so much to find joy in, so much to reminisce about and look fondly upon. And that sometimes, the things we fear, funnily enough, are what we learn from, are what we end up coming to love and treasure. Yes, time may be relentless, but we hold on, we persist, and we grow, despite it all.Â