#49: A Room of One's Own

living alone is weird, and other revelations while taking up space for the first time

Hello, 2 months later.

As I navigate this new life of mine, here’s a reintroduction for my new readers. I’m Kaav - and I love books, films, and art. Reading stories and learning how to tell them well is what keeps me going.

Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.
Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

- Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

Okay, maybe a house is something to reach for right now - but a flat is a start.

I’m realising right now I’m at this beautiful point in my life where I have no idea how the future is going to look. In the last 15 days, I have moved into my first apartment, celebrated my last mid-twenties birthday, helped bring together a conference for more than 200 people, and ventured into the world of cinematography (as well as, editing - which I’ve discovered is only really difficult in the beginning). Every day I wake up in this little studio and have new revelations:

I’m doing what Virgina Woolf dreamed of so longingly, and wrote an entire book for.

I have to feed myself regularly. Indoor plants need watering. I actually made it to this phase of my life. Mindless television after a long day’s work is actually phenomenal. I might be good at my job, even on the days when I feel horrible about it. I’m…an adult now.

There is something about Keralites and houses. Ask anyone who’s grown up in a Malayali family, and you’ll realise for a proudly communist state, all we ever think about is real estate. I have, some way or the other, fallen into this: even if it is based in aesthetics and the joy of putting a home together. I’ve had Pinterest boards of my dream home since I was twelve years old. On days when I’d had enough of the world and returned from school, or college, or work, to another space full of people: I would just dream of solitude. Doing my own sheets, my own laundry, putting on some Lenny Kravitz and reading with a cup of coffee. All my art on the walls, all my plants strewn across the space. There would be a leather brown sofa, and a scarlet throw. I’d look out the window and watch the world go by with space for me to just think.

The realities of living on my own meant I had to pick some place fully furnished, so I didn’t have to spend too much on my own. All of the furniture is a sterile white. Good for spotting stains, bad for softening the mind. It’s cute enough - with birchwood flooring and only a few dents around the place. White’s a good canvas to work on. So I filled the place with colour: forest green sheets, a mustard throw, no indoor plants (until I figure out how to cook for myself), a stack of books ranging from Mughal history to teenage superhero graphic novels. A hanger for my bags, and warm yellow lamps so there was never a need for the harsh white tube light that hangs over the room.

It’s been a month - but I’m still in shock to have actually made it here. I play my music loud enough to fully revel in having no roommates. Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse, Bikini Kill. This is my one slice of the world where nobody else can have eggshells for me to tiptoe around, and as time passes, I find myself becoming bigger, my true size again. I remember how to bite instead of shrinking.

The loneliness hits every now and then, but it is almost welcome. The pain of being in a pleasant place with a notebook and an internet connection is nowhere near as harsh as the infestation of a crowd that cannot take the time to see you. The mosque across the street breathes its timely music, and you know how the day is supposed to go.

A few months ago, being an artist in a corporate job felt like walking around with clown makeup on - every document reminding you you were only always artist-adjacent, never the real thing. But now the room offers you space to be the artist anyway. You get to live two lives at once, and take full control of both. Draw up plans at work, dream up worlds at home.

Because what do women want, other than the right to take up space? In a new(ish) city, a new(ish) job, and a new(ish) year - I’ll start at home, and then take on the rest of the world.

see you next time,

Kaav x