Memories in a Carton

The color khaki soothes my eyes, it feels as familiar as a long-lost lover. Khaki was the color of my father's cadet uniform, service uniform and ceremonial attire during his 35 years of service in the Bangladesh Army. Khaki is the color of cardboard cartons which have always been a part my life. Cardboard cartons are handy utility for those who shift between places frequently; they are of different dimensions, they can be rectangular or cubic, they smell like cardboard, gum and scotch tape, the texture of the boxes can be very smooth or rough, they can be hard or soft depending on the purpose to be served. In the last 26 years of my life I have shifted to 21 houses in total due to my father's government job. Whenever my father was served with a posting order, I knew that it was time for me to pack my precious collection of books and secret diaries and love letters filled with rose petals, my huge collection of office supplies, coloring books, painting kits, my small white board which I used to use for teaching imaginary students or memorize difficult GRE words, my crest, trophies and report cards, presents from friends whom I would be leaving soon and the list of items goes on. Cartons are connectors: they connect my past and future, they carry both the remnants of old memories and the hope for making new memories. Packing and unpacking cartons has become a reflex, I can do it even in blindfolds now.

            My mother is not a great fan of cartons. To be honest, she hates cardboard boxes. In her opinion, she never had the chance to unpack all her fancy decoration pieces, crockery and cutlery sets, bed sheets, etc. from the paper boxes and decorate the concrete house ─ which we kept shifting constantly ─ to her heart's content. She is a woman who is extremely picky about which item of a house decoration to put where, or which color of curtain would be better suited with the house theme or which table cloth would look classy or tacky on her fancy wooden table; for a person like her shifting can be a nightmare. With each shifting she had to make sure that there were no scratch on her refrigerator or ancestral almirah while the laborers moved them between staircases. Had it been possible, my mother would have carried the large cartons with utmost care all by herself! It was always like a game of dollhouse for her: every one and a half year she would have to give up playing with the old house and look for a new set of dollhouse and redecorate that. That is sad and tiring. But my father was always by her side, helping her pack and unpack, cheering her up.

            As we had to shift constantly, it was very difficult for me to develop long lasting friendships. I remember one instance when I made friends with a big carton to cope with intense loneliness. It was in the year of 2008, I was in my early teens. Unfortunately, my father was transferred in the middle of the year and so, no nearby schools were willing for my midyear admission. I had to do homeschooling for the rest of the year. Every morning, from the balcony of our new concrete house, I used to see children running to the school bus and traveling to some faraway school which seemed like a wonderland to me. And there I was, stuck in the house with no schooling, no friends, but only books, diaries and empty cartons. At night, when my parents slept, I would sneak out of the children's room to meet my carton friend in the store room. It was a "her," a female carton, who didn't have any boyfriends and who had recently experienced menstruation, just like I had. We chatted for hours, we talked about how shitty General Knowledge was or how difficult it was to memorize certain Bangla poem, or how I had a crush on the boy next door who I wouldn't dare to propose, or how ostracized I felt by the girls of my age group or if I was too fat or less pretty than the other girls and whatnot. At one point, I would ask her if I could sit inside her; that way we could be closer, I suggested. She seemed to agree, and I hopped inside; the khaki soothed me with its sight and touch and smell. Sometimes I used to sit inside her with a bowl of cereal or chanachur and chatted for hours, until I got tired of not receiving any reply from my cardboard friend due to my imagination getting weaker by the hour. I would then come back to bed for a sound sleep and in my dream my best friend Ms. Teen Carton would appear; we would hold hands, chat away, munch cereal and then run away to our own wonderland with khaki dreams in our eyes.

Maliha Huq is an engineer who loves reading books and (sometimes) enjoys writing essays and fiction.