I’m pursuing my masters in women’s studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, while my brother studies in Lucknow. The lockdown has brought both of us home.
We belong to a middle-class family where monthly expenses are calculated as soon as our parents get their salaries. There’s hardly any chance of digressing from the plan.
We own a small house, which was constructed long before I was born. It has limited space: a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and an extra room which was used by my grandmother. When my brother and I were little, we shared our parents’ bedroom. However, the need for a study room arose as we grew up, especially as my elder brother inched towards his Class 10 boards.
A new room was purposely constructed on one side of the entire house to allow us to study peacefully, away from household chores. The size of the study room was equivalent to two rooms of our house, which compelled both of us to use the same room until my brother moved to Chennai and then to Lucknow. Later, I used the room for two years before moving to Delhi and subsequently to Mumbai for my master’s degree. When both of us moved out of the house, the study room got converted into a spare room but remained a place of respite when we visited home.
While each room of the house served its purpose diligently, the roles had to be changed when my grandmother got seriously ill a few months ago. Since our study – the spare room – was big and spacious, we thought it would be convenient to move our grandmother there, thinking my brother and I would use her room when we came back during vacations. Although this room could cater to only one of us at a time, owing to the differences in our academic calendars, we visited home at different times of the year.
The size of this room wasn’t much of a worry, that is, until now – with both of us at home because of the lockdown!
I often used to sleep in my parents’ room but this time, I needed a room of my own to study for an entrance exam (though, who knows when that will happen). I have a messed up sleep cycle and using my parents’ room surely meant messing up their schedules as well and I was not up for that. To not let anyone else be affected by my sleep cycle, I demanded a room of my own.
This demand was given serious thought. It was decided then to let my brother use my grandmother’s room and, as fate would have it, I was allotted the only option that was left in the house – the living room!
The living room is largely used to welcome guests – it has sofas, a teapoy, chairs, a television set and a showcase filled with trophies won by my brother (and a few by me).
My parents did a good job of convincing me to use the living room and the process of transforming the living room into my room started as soon as I (forcibly) agreed. I arranged the room the way I had always imagined it, less inhabited by things. I enjoyed my own minimalistic space and made efforts to develop a connection with the room, which otherwise, was believed to be a room to welcome guests. The living room started seeming more lively to me than before.
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However, the room gradually became too lively to find my own space. The inherent “living roomy” features of the room made it nearly impossible for me to convert it into a room of my own despite putting several efforts.
The living room is the centre of our house – one can see the entire house from here, starting from the main gate to the kitchen and to the bedroom. Doors of this room are always kept open because my parents, like many Indian parents, do not believe in the concept of closed doors (privacy). The open doors make me witness every moment happening in the house. No one can enter or exit the house without passing the living room. Thus, every time someone comes inside or steps outside the house, it is impossible for them to evade my ever surveilling human camera. The proneness of the living room to receive every single piece of information from the house made the task of converting the room into my own unattainable.
My parents are less busy with their jobs now, so they engage themselves more in housework. My father waters the plants, fills the cooler tanks, buys groceries, collects milk packets from the milk distributor, etc. In order to complete each of these tasks, he has to move in and out of the house and hence, pass through the living room.
The kitchen too, is attached to the living room, which gives me an idea about every single recipe that gets cooked; be it the aromas of freshly made bhaaji or of the same curry that my mom recooks and makes us eat for two meals. The bedroom too, shares walls with the living room, thereupon making my ears and mind hear my Mom and Dad chit-chatting with each other or browsing WhatsApp videos and finding ways to cure COVID-19 with home remedies (all of it, of course, with their phone volume at the loudest).
As I sit to study in the living room or a room of my own, I get to know everything that is happening in my house and yet, the one thing that I look forward to is having a room only of my own, which would give me a better idea about what’s happening inside my room, my (own) space instead of the entire house.
The quest to find a room of my own makes me peek through the window, and think about more horrifying struggles that people are going through. Some are walking hundreds of miles each day and losing their lives to reach a room of their own, while some are facing violence inside their own rooms by their abusers in the same house. Meanwhile, my demand for a room – despite having one already – says a lot about the privilege some of us are bestowed with.
Dnyaneshwari Burghate is pursuing her masters in women’s studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
Featured image credit: Ashwini Chaudhary/Unsplash