
I packed the bags. Three huge bags the size of dinosaur bellies. Don’t ask me which dino. I can name any, but nomenclature doesn’t make any difference to the size of dino bellies. Or maybe they do, I don’t know! Let’s come out of the bellies and get into the bags.
Three bags full of shirts, t-shirts, and pants. My husband’s clothes. Unused clothes. Unused for 8 years. We carried these clothes along with us to two cities and into three houses.
He never wore them once.
First, he did not remember they existed. These clothes, tonnes of them, lay in his wardrobe, slowly getting buried under the pile of new ones. Since they were not visible, they were never loved by the owner. A few of them went forth and multiplied because I noticed more than one red tee, more than one black shirt, and more than one gray shirt appear abruptly. Sadly, they were never put to use.
Second, the only time he remembered of their existence was when we would move cities/houses and unpack and lay them out neatly in his wardrobe.
I would religiously open each piece of historical cottony souvenir and hang it in front of his eyes to question its fate. Each piece had a rich commendable history.
He: ‘Oh, this is from my first job! We got it during our first team offsite. Look how brilliant the color is!’ he held the black golf tee fondly in his hands, put it across his chest and tossed it on the bed.
Me: ‘Do you want to wear it now?’
He: ‘No. Maybe some day, but I want to keep it.’
Me: ‘What about this one, the red one?’ I hang out another artefact from the museum of unused clothes.
He: ‘I love it.’ Simple history.
Me: ‘So, why don’t you wear it?’ I understand when my eyebrows shoot up to the stratosphere without giving away the vitriolic upsurge within.
Toss.
All of the pieces went through the same fate. After that one cosmic moment when the clothes would see daylight, they would die in oblivion. He never looked at them again.
He did not remember to look at them.
Until our next move.
There have been days when I decided to give these clothes some visibility. I dug them out from the bottom and placed them on top of the pile. By the next day, the entire cohort of old clothes would have descended back to the bottom of the pile.
I informed my husband that a spirit existed in his wardrobe that
re-reshuffled his clothes. He believed me. Silently.
My jaw dropped. The trick didn’t work.
Once, I decided to probe why he was not wearing these clothes. There were different reasons. One was short on one sleeve, the other had a missing button. The third had a scratch in the collar. Another one had ‘faded just a little.’ The next one was too tight for him. The other was too loose. This one was ‘too feminine,’ the other was ‘too robust.’ One was ‘too red,’ the other was ‘too flowery.’ The white was ‘albino white,’ the black was ‘rhino black.’
One had a ‘PIMP MY LIFE’ written on it (I sympathize with him for this).
That discussion ended there.
So did the life of the clothes in the house.
Finally, I decided to give them away before they would start dying of old age. I gave them away to people who needed them.
Black, white, rainbow, yellow, gray, slate-gray, steel-gray, ash-gray, virgin-gray, I-can’t-name-anymore-gray; flowery and non-flowery, elite and poor, modern and retro, tight and loose, too-white and too-black, everything went out. Every single unused piece was out of the wardrobe.
Three bags, the size of dinosaur bellies waddled out of the house. Now, there is space for some air circulation behind those two wooden doors.
My husband didn’t know that I gave away a lot of his clothes. Until, just now!
Will he feel lighter with the hoard gone? I need to find out. Where’s my whiskey?
If you’ve liked this story, give it some claps. A lot of them if you can.

