The Butterfly Clip And The Jolnapai
By Roopa Swaminathan
“Have you looked inside that jolnapai (the Tamil word for a tote bag) of yours? Maybe your butterfly clip is inside it.”Appa asked when my ten-year-old faded and on its very-last-leg plastic butterfly clip went missing a year or so ago. Over the years appa decided that every object missing in this world could not-so-miraculously be found inside my jolnapai.
Amma, on the other hand, walked around me in circles like a dog sniffing a bone, a rolling pin in her hand which she brandished about, her mouth itching to toss an unspoken snarky question at me. “Why? Just why?”Finally, she uttered. “Why don’t you use the other new clips that you have?” she asked very pointedly.
Time is nobody’s friend. Once I had perfect blemish-free mocha skin and was the owner of waist-long hair that used to curl when wet and fall in long waves when dry. I had thick eyelashes that framed my eyes such that I haven’t ever needed eyeliner. Sure, dudes wanted to protect my short 5.1 feet figure, but my bristling and roaring presence eradicated the blokes efficiently. Now my mocha skin has turned sallow.I did not benefit much from glaucoma apart from being licensed to smoke medical marijuana.I have become the proud owner of two permanent dark circles around my eyes owing to the eye drop medication for my eye condition. That long curly or wavy hair is now squiggly strands on a good day with intermittent bald patches very imminent shortly.
My bleak plastic accessory was no different. It started its glorious life as a gaudy bright leopard patch printed over its plastic surface and beckoned me from one of those accessory shops at the mall. But over time its majestic and proud bright yellow, brown, and black colours faded away into tepid dullness. It was chipped all over and one side of the clasp was held together with cellophane tape. While amma couldn’t throw me out (poor thing – she tried many times but like the proverbial bad penny, I always came back) but she could and wanted to toss the beat-up hair-whisperer many times.
“You wrote and directed a film. Your book won the National Award in India. You have a PhD. You are a college professor. You own your own house. You have some money in the bank. So why do you still wear that stupid, scratched, and sad butterfly clip? People ask me if you’re just stingy or whether you cannot afford to buy a new hair clip,” amma screeched periodically.
It wasn’t that I was cheap. I mean – I was. I am. But that’s not why that clip was so important to me. That ten-year-old shame-inducing hairclip was perfect. Sure, it was old. Faded. But sturdy. And was that perfect size –big enough to hold my now not-so-thick hair but not so big that it looked too big for my head. It was…just right. It was as much a part of my life as my 8-year-old laptop, my 7-year-old e-book reader, and my 9-year-old iPhone 4 that I use as an alarm.
So, when this$1 extension of me went missing I searched everywhere inside the house. I’d come home to amma and appa from Shanghai during my winter break in January 2020 and got stuck with them. I’d been to the grocery store the day before and if that’s where I lost it there was no way to get it back. But I realized it was gone only the morning after I woke up.
Amma tut-tutted and continued to stare me down even as she looked very smug and satisfied that the wretched thing was gone. I panicked and ran around the under 1000-square-foot apartment with the same vigour, tension, stiff back, and pent-up anger and angst as when I’d lost my first boyfriend in college and found him in our uni’s meanest girl’s arms and almost called the Indian embassy and asked them for their protocol for applying for a new passport when I lost my passport in Istanbul (I stopped because I found that I was sitting on it). Meanwhile, Appa piped up periodically with, “Have you checked inside your jolnapai?”
Unlike the sophisticated English tote bag, the modest Tamiljolnapai is more like its unlucky step-sister. Ajolnapaicomes with baggage full of unmet expectations. It’s what a lot of unfashionable, uninspired, and poor Indians use to stuff their children’s school textbooks and notebooks, their groceries, and their paint supplies. This humungous, cavernous beast of a cloth bag, is a single compartment sack that is held together with two long cloth handles on each side and is capable of holding you, your family, donkey, and everything else you may own, enough that you can plan your escape carrying only that away from protective parents, cheating or boring partners or from an unpleasant world. That’s what my appa was referring to when he said, “Have you looked inside that jolnapai of yours? Maybe your butterfly clip is inside it.”I haven’t owned one of those cavernous beasts in over a decade. I used to, a long time back when I was very young and yet to grow up to be myself or to grasp my liking and disliking – I did own a jolnapai, a gift from appa. He outgrew his pair of black-but-fast-turning-grey polyester pants and so he took them to a tailor a few blocks down the road and had them sewn into two jolnapais. One for him.One for me.
That was then. And this is now. This me of today is someone a little more than a dormitory warden and a little less than an army commander. As I grew up and found myself I realized that I liked order. I liked the institute. I like to know where everything is situated. Open my handbag and you’ll find multiple pouches neatly placed inside. I have one that holds my meagre collection of beauty products – lipstick in red, lip balm, deodorant stick, nail clippers, and filers. Another pouch holds my sugar-free pouches (I’m trying intermittent diets now), sunglasses, contact lens case, and a tiny bottle of liquid for my contact lenses. More wallets hold my money and credit cards. When I have additional things like a butterfly clip I keep it in the pouch marked for my beauty supplies. When I change bags simply remove these pouches and place them inside the new handbag and I’m good to go.
My own home is the same. I have baskets and containers for everything from the socks to the jewelry. All folded clothes like jeans and pants are separated into different containers sitting snugly inside my wardrobe. Wake me up from a deep sleep and I shall know where the scissors are and where the golden bangles are or the diamond bracelets are (this pair stays in a six-year-old wicker basket – which was a gift basket filled with bath bombs in its previous life which I had upcycled into my day-to-day jewellery container. And, calm down. The diamonds are cubic zirconia). I do not have a jolnapai for over a decade.
You grow up, but your appa will always see a little brat in you who borrow his Parkers and at the time of returning it has to empty the jolnapai onto his computer desk for finding the pen and remember that this action deleted his monthly accounting statement on Excel. I may have outgrown the jolnapai but appa never did.
Barack Obama’s fictitious Kenyan-born birth certificate that Trump was chasing? Inside my jolnapai.
Donald Trump’s tax papers that the Dems were chasing?Inside my jolnapai.
Dane Cook’s sense of humor?Inside my jolnapai.
My lost butterfly clip?Inside my jolnapai.
I wake up and cannot find my spectacles this morning; I remember the drama of that day in October 2020. I walk around the house searching for them. I mosey into the living room to find an app reading the newspaper. I know he will suggest that I check for my glasses inside my jolnapai.
Today I cannot find any of them. Not appa. Not amma. Not my glasses.
They both have gone the way of the flesh. Until the end of the times, amma has been questioning my life choices and appa has been suggesting that my jolnapai has the answers to all of my questions in life. As the emptiness inside the house threatens to overwhelm me. I begin the long journey to find them on my own.
