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.

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By

Ananta Narayan Nanda

Bhubaneswar

18-10-2025

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