If you have ever been involved in the interior decorations of your own house, then you know you need therapy to recover from the experience. The amount of money you will spend on therapy is directly proportional to the number of decision-makers at your home. Men, when left to their own devices, will purchase a table that looks like this:
Men will buy sofas that look like this
And men will stock their kitchens like this
Naturally, when four adults and one
adult-pretender from my family put our brains together on what to do with our
new apartment, I often left the scene wondering who was really the adult-pretender.
The only thing we did agree on was that we were not able to decide anything by
ourselves. So we hired an interior decorator. Now we were paying the interior
decorator AND disagreeing among ourselves. Paying an enormous sum of money for
a meaningless thing is usually how Indian families justify in-house problems.
If you think I am wrong, just be a part of the next wedding that happens in
your family. If that doesn’t make you agree with me, be a part of the next
marriage. Big projects are to Indian families what chaos was to Littlefinger.
And sooner or later, we find ourselves falling down a hole for the very same
reasons. Lack of foundations. And logic.
So we went over the floor plan of the apartment. And decided that the lump of floor, ceiling, and walls that we had so lovingly found perfect till a few months ago had a LOT of scope for improvement, which is a polite way of saying that we were dissatisfied with everything. We could bring down a wall here and extend the kitchen there. We could bring in the servant quarter which would, my dad explained, increase the area, and hence the value of the apartment by 2.86%. We could (or maybe could not) extend the master bedroom into the hall making the bedroom bigger. But the hall smaller. We all agreed at this point that size matters. We mostly disagreed about the thing whose size mattered the most.
One of the most important questions that we
debated about was – where would be the door to the apartment. Now the apartment
already did have a door. It was a good door. It was set on three hinges and
swayed like the skirt of Marilyn Monroe. We were able to open and close it. But
most importantly we were able to walk in and out of it. It did everything we
expected a door to do. Overall, it was a good door. Personally, I felt that
given some time, I would have been able to toilet-train the door. Although I
didn’t really mind if it didn’t learn. It was a good door nevertheless.
But that door, that wretched unlucky door,
made one of the biggest cardinal sins a door could make in Indian society. Just
like a girl is cursed for life if born at the wrong date and time (her real curse is being born to the wrong
parents), our door was cursed because our Rs. 3,000 per hour Vaastu expert
told us that the door was on the wrong wall. And my Dad gasped! And my Mom
gasped! And my door gasped!
Vaastu shastra is the Indian system of
architecture loosely based on (copied
from) the Chinese system of Feng Shui. But like most things Indians do, we
don’t know how far to take a stupid idea. So whatever China did, India tried to
do better. When China brought in an authoritarian government, Indians declared
the emergency. When China became the most populous nation in the world, Indians
started to copulate like crazy. When China became the manufacturing powerhouse
for the USA, Indians started sending their children to the USA. And when China
promoted their system of superstitions, Indians copied it and named it “Vaastu
shastra”. Honestly, I think there are better people to visit for Rs. 3,000 per
hour. They might not be architecture experts, but they had a better
understanding of what to put where in order to bring happiness.
But the deed was done. The words were
spoken. The door was wrong. We all knew what would happen now. Either the door
would have to marry a tree, which would be weird even for my parents. Or the
door would be sealed shut. Which would create an innocuous problem of going in
and out of the apartment. Which meant that we needed a new door. On a new wall.
Thankfully, we had another wall. That’s the beauty of being rich. You don’t
like the door on the wall? Try a different wall. This is different from my 7’
by 11’ college room where one of the walls WAS the door. Now even my bathroom is
as big as that 77 sqft room. (I’m kidding. My bathroom is WAY bigger).
The new door on the new wall would be nice.
Of course it wouldn’t sway like Marilyn Mornoe’s skirt. But in post-2014 India
we did not need a door that swayed like the skirt of some English blonde. We
had Alia Bhatt. And we did not care if her skirt did not fly. In fact, we did
not care if there was no skirt at all. In fact, we preferred it.
I’m sorry. I digressed again. We were
talking about the door. So the new door… would be nice. It would open into a
different part of the hall. It would keep visitors from walking right into our
home and would make them take a small detour. Not a big one. We’re not THAT
rich. But anyone coming in would need to take 6 extra steps to walk into the
hall. Which was nice, Mom said. There’re a certain class of people who should not be brought into the house and need
to stay on the outer edges of the home. At first I was admonished! My Mom was
such a classist. All these years, and I didn’t even know! Now we finally had
something to bond over. Later I realized that she was talking about my friends.
So the new door created a few problems. And solved some others. And we were to decide which problems we would live with. And we thought over it for a long time. And then we slept over it. And then we slept over it again. And then I had a Tinder date where I slept over it again and again and again that night. Finally, we had a solution. And as it went with my date that night, we would use both the gates!
