The Trinket Case
The
Trinket Case
Vimal,
now fifty, recently stumbled upon a definition of existentialism on the
internet: “Human beings are born without inherent purpose; they must create
meaning for their lives through their actions.” Everything else in the
world, he read, has a purpose already assigned—either created by humans for a
reason or existing in nature with a defined role.
The idea
struck him profoundly because it reflected something he had done long ago. It
was an act that had seemed so very pointless at the time, yet he had silently
waited for years for it to acquire meaning.
Vimal was
the eldest of five children born to poor parents. His father was a marginal farmer
cum farm labourer who earned just enough to feed the family from day to day. He
also cultivated an acre of land under a sharecropping arrangement. He had a
small patch of homestead land where he and his wife grew vegetables, primarily
for their own consumption. Despite that, poverty was their permanent lodger:
they were half-fed, poorly clothed, and constantly reminded of what they did
not have—things their neighbours’ children took for granted.
As the
eldest, Vimal was repeatedly told to “learn to live without,” to control
desires, suppress hunger, and not compare himself with others. His mother, too,
was trained in that philosophy: she wore mended saris, patched leaking pots,
and battled white ants that built mounds inside their crumbling house walls.
The roof leaked in a dozen places, the bucket rope for drawing water from the
community well was frayed, and everything was always “under repair.”
Scarcity
had taught the children the art of adjustment. During meals, each kept a
watchful eye on the others’ plates to ensure the food was divided fairly. Their
mother, even without scales or measures, could portion the meal equally on five
plates. Eternal vigilance, Vimal would later say, was the price of
their liberty.
Pocket
money was unheard of, but their parents encouraged them to visit village fairs—not
to buy or steal, but to observe how traders haggled and how buyers tried to
shave off a rupee. Those outings were their first lessons in economics.
By the
age of ten, Vimal’s entrepreneurial instinct had awakened. One Holi, he decided
to try his hand at business during the village fair. He borrowed ₹5 from a
friend’s father on the condition that he’d repay ₹2 as interest the next day.
After some bargaining, he brought it down to ₹1.50.
With the
capital, he bought a packet of 100 balloons from the nearest market. Each
balloon could sell for 10 paise—₹10 for the whole lot. Armed with a long bamboo
stick rigged with three cross-pieces like an old rooftop TV antenna, he displayed
his inflated balloons and headed to the fair.
He
inflated the balloons by mouth, as there was no pump, and tied them in bunches
of ten. Then, adopting the instincts of a natural salesman, he went from child
to child. He knew that if he could make the children cry for a balloon, their
parents would relent. It worked—mostly.
But he
hadn’t anticipated leaks and bursts. Twelve balloons were wasted before he
could sell them. By midnight, with twenty balloons unsold, his revenue from 68
balloons came to ₹6.80. After repaying ₹5 principal and ₹1.50 interest, his
profit stood at 30 paise.
It was his
money—his first self-earned profit! And he was free to spend it as he wished.
Thirty
paise could buy him three fritters, but it was too late at night to eat without
brushing. He could purchase marbles for that amount, but three were too few—at
least ten were needed to play a proper match in his village.
He looked
around. At one end of the fair, palanquins bearing the idols of Lord Krishna
and Shri Radha stood parked in a neat row—ten pairs in all. The entire fair was
dedicated to celebrating their divine love. Although it was a ceremonial
gathering, a form of worship was also taking place. Vimal watched as people
placed coins on a brass plate and bowed before the deities.
But he
was determined not to part with his hard-earned 30 paise. Spending it on
something valuable at the fair felt much wiser than offering it to the idols
merely for the sake of prayer. Otherwise, he was in no mood to transition from
commercial affairs to the spiritual realm without a thorough cleansing. The
stingy priest would give him nothing more than a pinch of coloured powder—a
reminder of Holi—not even a morsel of prasadam to eat.
Then he
found a small shop selling assorted items, each for thirty paise. He examined
the goods: an aluminium ear-cleaner (unnecessary—because bamboo twigs were
free), bindi packets (his mother used vermilion, and he had no sisters).
Then his
eyes fell on a small transparent polycarbonate trinket case, aquamarine in
colour. It was made of break-resistant material, not easily fragile, and the
space inside was just enough to hold two rings or a pair of earrings, not
enough to store a mangalsutra—but somehow, it beckoned to him. My
mother could use this, he thought, though she owned no jewellery, not even
a nose pin.
It was an
impulsive purchase, one that even his father mocked as pointless. But his
mother defended him: “It’s his profit. He has the right to spend it as he
wishes.” She treasured the little box—her eldest son’s first gift bought with
his own earnings. And perhaps she wondered: If only I had earrings or a nose
pin, I could keep them here.
Twelve years
later…
Life had
never been easy for Vimal, but he learnt every lesson the hard way. He excelled
in school, clearing every board exam and securing a bank job by the age of
twenty-two. One of his first acts with his salary was to buy his mother a pair
of gold ear-tops. She placed them carefully in that same trinket box, bought twelve
years ago.
No amount
of persuasion could make her wear them immediately. ‘I will wear them on the
first Thursday in the month of Margashira,’ she said, ‘when Goddess
Lakshmi will visit and bless this house. She will see my trinket case and my
earrings, and she will bless our family.’
And so it
happened, just as she wished.
Years
later, when Vimal encountered the existentialist dictum “existence precedes
essence”, he smiled. Philosophers argued over whether the jewellery or the
box should come first, but he knew the answer. The answer was a mix of aspiration,
intelligence, planning, emotion, patience, love, and gratitude. The trinket
case had not been a mistake. It had purpose built into its being. The earrings
were destined to find their home in it.
If you
build a nest in your backyard, a bird will come to live there one day.
We often
judge our actions by the immediate results they produce, dismissing anything
that seems purposeless in the moment. But life, as Vimal learnt, is not a
ledger to be balanced instantly. Meaning ripens slowly, often in ways we cannot
foresee.
That
little trinket case—bought without reason by a ten-year-old boy—waited
patiently for its purpose to arrive. Years later, it became the resting place
of his mother’s first earrings, a quiet witness to the family’s journey from
want to dignity.
Existentialism,
Vimal realised, is not just a lofty philosophy; it is lived in such small,
seemingly random acts that gather meaning over time. We build the nest—sometimes
without knowing why…and life, sooner or later, brings the bird.
-----------------------------------------
By
Ananta Narayan Nanda
Bhubaneswar
18-10-2025
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Labels: short story
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