Lost & Found

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I looked everywhere for my high school and college certificates but couldn't find them. Then, realizing the manner in which I had been storing all kinds of paper documents-in drawers, under beds, in old suitcases-I got myself two dozen plastic files in assorted colours. I gave each file a name, like "User Manuals" or "Property Docs" or "Taxes FY10 to FY15." Indeed, there's one labelled "Certificates" too, which had started this process in the first place. By dedicating that file to my 17 years of getting an education, I hoped my missing school and college diplomas would somehow find their way to their new home.

I'm not so worried anyway. First, I've never lost anything. Things only get misplaced in our house. Second, who'd want to see those certificates at this point in my life? I'm long past the age when you go for job interviews, or when some young girl might say, "Daddy doesn't believe you are a graduate."

Misplaced is such a comforting word. Why, it suggests that a certain object is not "irrecoverably lost." So it will in the future be recovered. Weeks ago, I was in my study, where I had removed my computer's side panel, secured by a single half-inch screw. I do this occasionally to vacuum dust out. While I was putting the panel back, the screw slipped out. I saw it fall. I think I even saw it bounce on the tiled floor. But then it vanished.

I looked all over the floor, below the computer desk, below the nearby bookshelf, even on the veranda next to the room. I then used the vacuum cleaner to suck every molecule it could from anywhere the screw could have remotely rested. Then, after covering my face with a towel, I pulled the vacuum cleaner's brown bag out and emptied it. All it contained was a load of dust bunnies, hair, a few paper clips, and a pearl earring that had been missing for months! Of course I had always, rightly, insisted it had only been misplaced.

However, no PC screw in VC. And I wasn't letting anything-not even a screw-screw up any work I had to do. I replaced the computer's side panel without the screw and it stayed there in its slot. Weeks later, the misplaced screw hasn't made a difference-I'm writing this on the same PC.

Now, from my long-time understanding of misplaced objects, I know how they are often finally located. Consider more examples. I was wrapping a gift and couldn't find the sellotape anywhere. So I managed with a small tube of glue. Then, one day, as I was searching for a misplaced chequebook, I found the sellotape. Another day, I misplaced my keys (happens regularly). It was nearly time to leave for work when I realized that my wallet too was missing. (Fortunately, that morning I had not misplaced my glasses, making any searching easier.) That's when my wife asked, "Did you take the sandwiches I packed for you?"

"No," I said, and started to look for the foil-wrapped sandwiches, my lunch, which I had surely seen ten minutes earlier. Not in the kitchen. Not on the desk, in the hall or the fridge. By now I had even started mildly suggesting that it was she who must have misplaced my lunch. Despite that, she charitably took over the sandwich search, while I quietly looked for my keys and wallet (she could always make another sandwich). Finally, she came to the hall looking like she always does when she finds something I had misplaced. "You'd kept it next to the bed, my dear," she said, "along with your wallet and your keys. Here… you are getting late."

The point I'm trying to make: If you want to find something you've misplaced, it usually helps to trick it into being found by looking for something else.It gets a bit more knotty if misplaced things leave the house. Four years ago, my friend and former editor Ashok Mahadevan had lent me a set of Seinfeld comedy DVDs. I'd watched and re-watched them, since he was in no hurry to get them back. One day, recently, I was visiting Ashok's house when he said something funny.

"Ha, ha," I laughed. "You sound like Jerry Seinfeld."Ashok's wife Jessica laughed too. "You know, we used to have a whole set of Seinfeld DVDs," she then told me sentimentally. "I enjoyed them so much. I have no idea where they are now. I've asked all my friends…"

"They're all at my house," I interrupted. Jessica was delighted.

"But I always knew they were with him," said Ashok matter-of-factly.

The Seinfeld discs returned to their rightful home the very next week. Jessica claims she'd asked her husband about them but he'd had no idea. Ashok can't recall any of that. But, had she questioned him thoroughly about some other missing object that he had no hand in misplacing, the DVDs might have showed up three years ago. Why, he'd then have responded with something like, "I don't know a thing about your digital camera, but I lent your Seinfeld DVDs to…"

My school and college certificates are still missing. Actually, I'm a bit scared to even search. What if I just end up finding the screw?