The Plastic Bag Drawer

@ All rights reserved by the author
Date: 01/07/2025

Every Indian household has that one drawer—usually in the kitchen or tucked away beneath the sink—stuffed with plastic bags.
We all promise ourselves we’ll sort it one day. Neatly fold them. Maybe even recycle a few.
But we never do.
That drawer just… grows. Quietly. Patiently. Like time. Like old phone numbers saved under “Maybe Sharma Uncle?” or grudges we never talk about at family dinners.

Yesterday, I opened ours to find an old train ticket, a half-torn sweet wrapper from a birthday I’d forgotten, and—God knows how—a faded rakhi from years ago.
I stood there for a moment, just staring.
It hit me—this chaotic drawer is life. Messy, overstuffed, impossible to sort. But so full of memory.

We might never organise it perfectly.
But somehow, amidst the clutter, we still find what we need.
And somehow, that’s enough.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Instagram: @rajatchandrasarmah5
YouTube: ConverseWithASmile