Paper trails

We leave all kinds of trails in the place where we grow up. One such trail for me is a papery one - the handmade paper institute near the Agricultural College in Pune, an all time favorites. The place holds several memories for me – my wedding cards were printed here on beautiful cloth like paper, folders for a journalism conference we organized were made here (at my insistence of course).

Yet this hidden, non-descript place had somehow slipped out my mind. I was sad to hear that the Government run place had shut down for a few years due to losses. But it is up and running again. 

I walked inside and nostalgic excitement rippled through me. My hands stroked the bumpy walls made of paper. My eyes raced around looking for old favorites, noting the changes with mixed emotion, trying to take in all the products all at once. 

I was the clichéd kid in a candy store. Unfortunately the ‘candy’ was rather heavy to carry back and I could (grudgingly) pick out only a few papery treasures. Paper with beautiful, bumpy texture; paper with onion peels and flower petals embedded in it; paper a result of much hard work and handiwork. Even for a writer whose writing happens mostly on the computer, paper will always be paper. 

We requested a little tour and the tour made me love the handmade paper even more (if that were even possible). 

We walked to the back where bundles of cotton cloth scraps and paper waited patiently to be turned into beautiful textured paper. The scraps then got shredded to tiny white fluff which soaked away in special ponds. Underground conduits transported the cottony mush from station to station. 

When it was finally time to press the pulpy paper into sheets, skilled workers put the pulp on screens squeezing out water to form large sheets that were skillfully flipped onto wet burlap. Petals, onion peels or twigs can be added at this stage for the paper to have pretty somethings embedded in it. 

The pancake-like stack of pulpy sheets and burlap are kept wet for a while and sheets are then hung out to dry in air on a clothesline. An old timer told us of a time when paper would be dried on hot stone heated by red hot coals. It then lays out in stacks for a day before it can be weighed, sorted and cut. Sigh...my description can go on forever. But again that was never the point of this blog.  So what was the point of this blog?

 

Revisiting old favorite places requires a kind of letting go, even if it seems the opposite of letting go. 

Letting go in the knowledge that this was a part of my life…but no longer is…and learning to be okay with it without too much nostalgia or wistfulness.

Holding on...but moving on at the same time...Holding on to the sweetness of the memory and the time… but with the vigor of today; with the movement of today. Movement that allows us to experience the old, but without stagnating in the past. 

For there is much that I want to hold on forever…but I would never want it to hold me back...