A SPACE OF MY OWN

Growing up is not easy… especially not with the complexities of living with an extended family, interacting with them 24 hours a day and yet craving for some personal space.During my teens, I remember this great desire for a pad of my own… where I could hibernate and escape from everything and everyone to be with my own self. Those days I was anything but this gregarious extrovert which I am now. Like all teens, I used to be extremely shy to confront people. And I could give anything at my possible capacity to anyone who would save me from this huge punishment of ‘socializing’ with so-called ‘guests’.It was easier said than done. For one, my ma never used to leave me alone. She would want me to come out, meet the guests and talk to them… talk sense, that is, while she prepared tea and eatables. Second, I had to share a room with my sister younger to me. So, most of the times when I headed for the room for some private moments, she would follow me straight into the room and try to protect her secret possessions or ‘treasures’ like crayons, stickers, stamps or comic books from my reach. At other times, she would blabber what prank her best friend played on the teacher they all hated or ask me if I liked that cute boy who has recently moved into our neighborhood, because she liked him too.Or worse still, compete with me in reading out our respective lessons aloud to insist that she is the better reader amongst the two of us. The result? We would both get tired and fall asleep before dinner at our reading tables and that made my ma lose her temper real bad. Fortunately, my dad was the only person who did not bother, as he was hardly at home, due to the nature of his job.I finally got some solitude I craved for, when my sister packed off to a hostel when she got through in the veterinary college situated in our neighboring state of Meghalaya. And hurray ! I finally had our room entirely to myself. But that was not for long. Her place was quickly taken up by my youngest sister who was growing up fast and trying to take guidance and inspiration from me. But that time you don’t realize the importance of such moments which you don’t get ever again in life. That time I used to find it such a bother when my youngest sister asked me to help her solve a math problem or to help her draw a village scene for her summer project. And whenever my other sister returned from her hostel to spend the weekend at home, we three had to hole up in that one room, fighting like cats and dogs or chatting up like long-lost friends throughout the whole night, which would drive my ma crazy either ways.When I look back to those days now, I realize that the concept of personal space probably did not even exist then and maybe that is the reason I have such a strong bond with both my sisters even though all the three of us are so different in nature and so far from each other now.It was only after I came to Delhi some six years ago, I felt the dire need to have a place of my own. At first when I was working part-time to earn my expenses for the Fashion Designing Course I was doing, I needed to live at a minimum expense. So I had to share rooms with different girls… which varied from the strict-motherly kinds to the stingy living-on-your-expense-parasite kinds. Then again there was this hygienically challenged kinds to the quarrelsome kinds. Yet again, the over-educated lawyer kinds or the student-kleptomaniac kinds. And most of the times than not, I had a tough time adjusting and catering to their natures and needs. Then I decided to stay as a PG with a Punjabi family, but had a tough time explaining my odd late night habits and the never-ending line of friends visiting at all hours of the day due to the designing projects.Slowly, after I completed my course and got a job as an assistant designer in one of the leading export houses, with a decent pay-package, I felt the need to move out of the ‘Family’ with whom I accommodated as a PG and to take up a room on rent to live on my own. And that’s when I realized what it means to have a space of my own. I could actually burrow into my room to do what I liked doing at any time of the day. Most of the times, I would just sit and stare into space, perfecting the arts of (day) dreaming or doing nothing. It kept the world out of my hair and I finally had good sleep at night. I experienced pure ‘nirvana’ once I closed the door to the rest of the world. A room for my own self, which also stood for my freedom… freedom of thought and action. It was the only place where I could ‘maro a sutta’ without anyone else finding out. It gave me creative ideas to design, paint, read, or jot down my thoughts. I could play my own music, at the volume I pleased (at reasonable hours of the day or night). I could keep things the way I wanted to, dress the way I felt like and stick the kind of posters I loved to drool over (read—a shirtless wet-n-wild John Abraham—drool…drool !!). It was a precious place for concentrated study to clear the designing papers to get the diploma or prepare for the numerous interviews that followed.Measuring it from all the sides and angles, after all these years I feel, in today’s world we all are under tremendous pressure from both within and outside the family. The pressures of family, siblings, room-mates, bosses, peers or job-targets can be quite over-struggling and can even sometimes throw a person out of gear. So, I vote for a single solitary place for each individual which we all need not necessarily a room, but a little space we can call our own. A place to unwind… a place we can be with our own selves without any pretence… a place to find our own identity… a piece of peace on earth !