Date: 07/09/2026
All rights reserved by the author
Every house has one drawer that nobody wants to explain.
You open it looking for a pen.
Instead, you find three old keys.
Nobody knows what they open.
There is a charger for a phone that disappeared years ago.
Two batteries—probably dead.
A button.
Some rubber bands.
And at least one mysterious object that the entire family agrees must be important because nobody is brave enough to throw it away.
I once asked,
“Why do we keep all this?”
The answer was immediate.
“We might need it someday.”
That is the official philosophy of the drawer.
And strangely, once in a while, it works.
Someone needs an odd-sized battery.
There it is.
A small screw disappears from somewhere.
The drawer produces one.
An old key suddenly becomes useful.
Nobody celebrates.
Nobody apologises.
The drawer simply proves that it knew what it was doing all along.
Perhaps every family needs one place where logic is temporarily suspended.
A small museum of things we don’t understand
but absolutely refuse to throw away.
Rajat Chandra Sarmah
Guwahati, Assam, India
Email: rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com
YouTube: Converse With A Smile
