The Museum of the self

How would it be if I treated myself and my world as a museum? How would it be if I looked at grandma’s old account books as precious material for future scholars who would like to know what half a kilo of urad dal cost? How would it be if I took my mother’s diaries as a link in the chain of women’s words, to be handed over to her granddaughter so that they could know each other? How would it be if we named each person in a picture so that memory, that unreliable trickster, would  not have to be relied upon? How would it be if we kept diaries and noted down stray thoughts? How would it be if we respected ourselves and made our own museums? How would it be if we kept the letters we received and kept copies of the letters we sent? How would it be if we could see the museum as a faded old colonial artefact that demands hierarchies and categorisation (‘Museum piece’? ‘Should be in a museum’) and rewrote the museum to mean this piece of stone we chose together on a beach, that handkerchief you monogrammed for me, that bookmark I made for you from an invitation card? How would it be if we all took our lives more seriously — and thus extended this respect to others, thus making the museum enterprise a harbinger of human rights?