A reusable cookie tin

It had been lying in my armoir for a few months now.  An empty tin of Honey-Oatmeal cookies sat nestled among things that are necessary, useful, unused, keepsakes, iPods, scarves, handbags, clutches et al.

On one of those several flights that we took last year, to Calcutta and back, the Giggle insisted that she was hungry and the ever-so-diligent mother had quickly bought her a tin of cookies from the trolley. It was an early evening flight, so the trolley was laden with potato wafers, tins of potato stickman, salted nuts and cookies. None of it was ‘food’. The cookies though had won my favour over rest of the junk.

The famished eleven year old had finished four of the six ‘cookies in the tin, leaving the last couple for the father, who she was leaving behind in Bombay, for the coming fortnight.

And after the rest was put to good use, I had kept the tin. For myself.

As a little girl, I always wondered about the old tin that used to emerge out of my grandfather’s mahogany armoire. The tin and what came out of it. It was a rather uninteresting looking old cigarette tin. There once used to be some pictures on it, some patches remained, as did a few letters of the brand. Strange that it had not rusted. Perhaps it was a keepsake, as a memory of days when my grandfather was a smoker. But I had always watched him pull out crisp, new bank notes from it. The notes, of various colours and sizes, fitted as snug as bugs in the tin. The lid closed and stopped a couple of millimeters short of bending the edges or crumpling them.

Mine is a pink cookie tin, bought off a trolley, on a flight to Calcutta. And I had to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps. For ever since I was a little girl, I had wanted to have a tin full of crispy, colourful notes of my own. So, since today morning, my tin has found a new purpose.

             

Now, will you tell me your cookie tin story?