The house was broken into and trashed by some desperate druggie, two days back. Rijuka and I realized that we had lost a laptop, a solitaire diamond and some watches, jewelry, a DVD player and our prized block of knives. After the excitement of the sympathetic friends, landlord, property manager, cops, et. al. had died down, we were forced to confront our missing valuables. They were probably best written off anyways.

Its a strange thing about possessions – you never really value them when they are around, but boy, does their disappearance pinch! So, it took some effort to shake off the regret and  the “what – if” scenarios. That diamond was a special gift from mum two years back. 

And so, we made a joke of all our missing things. Watches are so passe – completely out of style. I don’t wear one anymore. Trinkets and expensive jewelry are boring – notwithstanding that I would spend hours every morning trying to decide which piece to wear.  We are now spared the pain of watching the same DVDs for the hundredth time and we never used all the knives on that block.

My room was in need of a major clean up, before the break in happened. But I was procrastinating the effort of pulling everything out and re-stacking neatly. The thief very kindly and ruthlessly put and end to my delay. Finding everything you own, strewn on the floor quickly necessitates cleaning up your wardrobe. 

Rijuka was pretty upset about her missing laptop. But soon, she too was amused at the plight of the thief, who would have to deal with an extra slow-constantly-crashing piece of machinery.  In retrospect, it was going to dawn on the burglar that there was really not much to gain from breaking into the home of three students.

Thats another funny thing about possessions –  they come and go. And so, I lost some things – but the memories and the people associated with them, are always here with me. So this must be what Taoism calls a positive attitude!

Besides, I can now have an updated, trendy collection of trinkets and watches – and some lucky person will now have the opportunity to gift me a huge, fat solitaire diamond!!