Things left behind..

Those were summer days and as every year my niece and nephew were here during their school break. It’s their Maama’s (maternal uncle’s home) and its an annual custom running for generations of family kids.

Like always, we wait their arrival for days, they come like hurricane. Everything around changes. The beddings come out, kitchen is busier, house is filled with sounds, and days run into late nights.

And then they leave.

For weeks, after they leave, I keep on stumbling over things they have left behind. An incomplete craft, paintings, hairclips, stickers stuck on the side tables, icecream sticks left after finishing kulfi, fridge with their favourite foods. I live with the kidsfor some more days even after they are gone. I miss them and yet I miss them not.

I feel similar when my employee leaves. Even for weeks and months after the person is gone, the traces are left behind that noone can wipe.

MOMs from previous meetings with un/finished actionables, email thread that started with them and still continues, a personal What’sapp chat that started with official reason and ended up with something very personal, a random picture shared with a particular context, a practice that got started by the employee which we are still carrying on, some disagreement that led to nothing !!!

We carry so much of that employee even after s/he is gone long.

We can say the organsiations are impersonal spaces but in reality they are sum total of moments from our people’s lives.