And I hear the winds from the Cashmere mountains

You probably all know how interior decoration magazines always contain stories around every piece of furniture that is portrayed in the photos. My life is actually filled with those stories; a strange and long tuktuk-ride to a special place for ceramics in Chiang Mai, conflicts and aggressive bargaining at a spice market in Stone Town, sitting in a family's living room on Sulawesi politely eating their cookies to get to pay the dive vacation with credit card and shipping a bedspread from Kerala after getting the package stitched by the village tailor.

And today this sofa table moved in. It is a chest made in India and while we unpacked it from its bubble wrap, I found it so sad not knowing its story. It would have been so lovely to remember that awfully hot and dry day in Jaipur, the pink city of Rajasthan. We had attended a three days long wedding and ended the weekend with some shopping at the market. Right beside the market square was a small shop for wooden furniture, hand-made in a small village right outside the city. Each piece was unique and we easily found our chest. The shop-owner approached us and even though I was eager to purchase this jewel, I acted a little indifferent to not ruin a good bargain. We negotiated slowly and kindly. And we learned to know about the shop-owner's family and how the furnitures had been made by the same family for 100 years or more. We shook hands and carried it to the shipping office by the other side of the square. We arranged the ground transport and the chest was carefully wrapped in brown paper. We asked how long it would take, but the shipping agent just nodded his head in a way that didn't provide any answer or information at all. Well, he said in his Rajasthan accent, it is not as if the camels have any fixed departure times. And he added that the package will go with rickshaw to the pickup point by the silk route. After that you just have to wait and see...

While we travelled home, our chest was passing Samarkand. By mistake it was given to the young princess as a wedding chest and only when she realised that it wasn't spacious enough for her treasure of gold and gemstones, she sent it through deserts, oases, cities and rivers to Konstantinopel. It took a year. Maybe two. Then we received a message that it had finally made it to the port of Copenhagen. A misty evening, in the shade of the darkness, we found the port officer. The smoke in the dodgiest part of the port was not possible to identify and the port officer wasn't exactly cheerful. He said that we can't get the package without paying customs, port fees and storage. It was a dense atmosphere filled with uneasiness and discomfort and when we handed him a credit card he said, in his broadest Danish with the cigarett still burning in the corner of his mouth; Cash only. The package was filled with stamps, hand writings and stains from a long journey. We brought it home, unwrapped the brown paper and the chest filled the room with all its history...

Well, at least that is what I thought to myself while I was taking off the bubble wrap and reminded myself of that we just bought it from a place two kilometres away. However, if I listen carefully, I can still hear the winds from the Cashmere mountains through the wood and the bottom is filled with sand from the Silk Route...