If you have been in close touch with investment savvy parents and grandparents, you could have some truly valuable stuff handed down to you. It could be a painting that is worth a fortune today, or an item of furniture that qualifies as an antique and forms the central focus of the decor of your dining room or drawing room ...

But if you are like us, with a long history through the generations of no one having any instinct for what will grow in value in time to come, then you probably just have a boxful of treasures that are valuable only for you and the immediate family.

Thus, when I went through a collection of papers I had not really looked at before, but had treasured because they had been treasured by my parents, I found things that I consider to be true collectors’ items — though I wonder whether anyone outside the family would agree with me.

There was my father’s commission into the Navy from the ‘Governor-General of India’ in the early 1940s. How different had that day of his commission been from my husband’s commission into the Army from the President of India, I wondered. Did Father care at that time about the conferring authority? Was he contemplating which front he would be sent to since it was the middle of the Second World War? Or was he just too busy throwing his cap into the air in jubilation at being commissioned — like young cadets usually do?

Then, there were the diplomas and degrees earned by both parents.

It was thrilling to see a familiar crest and recall that my mother held her teaching degree from the same institution that my son attended. I had somehow stored Mother’s stories of her school and college days at the back of my mind and allowed myself to forget the name of her alma mater! Those yellowed documents suddenly brought visions of my mother walking through the same corridors that my son had, both starry eyed and with their entire lives ahead of them, wondering where they would go from there.

My cache of collector’s items didn’t stop at family mementoes. As I dug in deeper, I pulled out what I consider a true prize. It had come as a free hand-out with the day’s newspaper. It may have fallen out from the papers as it was lifted off the doormat, the way flyers fly about nowadays — but this one was different. It was the prototype of the Indian flag (as unanimously adopted by the Constituent Assembly at its sitting in New Delhi on July 22, 1947), and had accompanied the Hindustan Times of July 28, 1947 — a couple of weeks before India became independent.

Of course, that flag was not intact. It was slightly torn and the paper looked like it would fall apart any minute. I put it back into the envelope my father had preserved it in, vowing to get it laminated — and went to the next treasure: The Indian flag that had accompanied the same newspaper on August 15, 1947!

How excited the entire country must have been on that day! Now, they would have a flag in their hands to wave from their windows at the passing parade!

I cannot recall ever getting a flyer like that now. Instead, we are inundated with marketing messages, information about coaching classes, announcements of the latest ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ sales — and we usually toss them aside without reading them, don’t we? Because there are not really ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ tidings or moments we want to preserve, but everyday occurrences, mostly concerned with acquisitions rather than ideas and ideals and historic events.

Is that why, today, we tend to forget those ideas and ideals and instead focus on material well-being?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.