You don’t always need a pad of your own to enjoy complete freedom
It was just another day at work. The Gurgaon sky was colourless. The routine edit meeting was unremarkable. My lunch looked the usual. And I had no exciting after-work plans to look forward to. It didn’t look like a day that would change my life — temporarily. During a coffee break at the small round table in the one-room office, my colleague sowed the seeds of that change in my head: “Shweta, why don’t you become my flatmate?” The suddenness of the suggestion drew nothing but a blank stare from me. Move in with her, but why? She is not a close friend... Just a colleague with whom I am cordial, I thought.
Thirty minutes later, after another cup of strong coffee, the idea took root. From ‘but why’, I graduated to ‘why not’. During the metro ride home — the spacious Model Town apartment I shared with my parents, brother, sister-in-law and a niece — I thought some more. By the time I entered the house (to the welcoming fragrance of my mom’s chicken curry), I was ready for the experiment.
A couple of weeks later — in July 2012 — I broached the topic at home. I took my mother into confidence, knowing fully well her strong views on the importance of girls being self-reliant. Her response was positive. I quickly assigned her the task of breaking the news to the rest of the family. My father was next in queue. “But why do you want to leave us? You have everything you need. You have your room, your TV, your reading corner... How much more space does one need?” he asked over dinner one night. It’s not about space, I replied. “I am going to be 30 soon and I want to be in charge of my life. Pay rent, do groceries, cook and clean, make my own budget.” What I didn’t add to the list I rattled off was ‘stay out till late with friends and not worry about missing the last metro’. The word ‘freedom’, quite strangely, didn’t figure in the discussions that followed. I harped on the importance of discovering self-worth. And managed to connect it to having a separate address.
It took less than a week for my father to give his nod. By August, I’d moved into my new oyster — a windowless, dingy room in a modest two-bedroom apartment near Saket in south Delhi. I had to share a bathroom. There was no room for my winter clothes in the steel almirah, so I left them in the safety of my old wardrobe. Instead of a table laden with fresh, homemade food, I often returned to an empty refrigerator. Evening plans for movies, beer and pizzas slowly lost ground to buying veggies and doing laundry. And phone calls to my mother became more about quick recipes for dinner than the latest wedding in the extended family.
From an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person, I transformed into a night owl. I accompanied my flatmate to gigs, house parties, movies and pubs. My TV, which I had installed in the living room, started to look lonely and unwanted. In less than two months, I was ready to give anything to be able to sleep before prime-time TV hours. The drudgery of household chores was taking the wind out of my sails. And keeping up with my highly social and energetic flatmate proved tougher than remembering Chaucer. I started to miss the long metro rides to work and back. The comfort of being driven around — by my flatmate in her new car — did little to ease the headache of being stuck in traffic during peak hours.
Very soon, I started going back to Model Town almost every day of the week. My parents looked both puzzled and happy, but they spared me the questions. All I could think of in those days was my sunlit room, the one I had lived in for more than 12 years, and home food. At the end of a tiring day, I was happy to come home and play with my niece. The drinks, the disco, the music, the excitement of meeting new people — everything paled in comparison with the rest and relaxation I was craving.
I bid goodbye to the new home in less than a year. Back in my own corner, I realised I was lucky to have my personal space in a house filled with people. In fact, my family, after my return, went out of their way to give me more space. This doesn’t mean that I am shy of having my own pad someday. But it won’t be on the pretext of being self-reliant or experiencing complete freedom.
Shweta Andrews works with a publishing house in Delhi NCR
Resource : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/home-but-not-alone/article8978805.ece
