The glass display nailed on the wall over the television is what my mom calls a showcase, dotted with showpieces ranging from a golden Chinese cat with an oscillating paw to a series of Happy Meal toys that allow one to map phases in western pop culture. A 2008 Beijing Olympics mascot stands next to a Lilo and Stitch bobblehead. McDonald’s didn’t come to Goa till 2016, so you can understand why my Happy Meal collection, carefully curated across every Mumbai trip, is a prized possession. The row below houses medals, trophies and picture frames of two overachieving kids and their doting parents. Prizes have been won for quizzing, elocution, competitive exams and nothing remotely athletic. The showcase does, er, showcase a remarkable lack of sporting achievements.
Today we wiped it clean. We removed the plastic figurines one by one, not to wipe the dust off, but with the intention of not keeping them back in their place again. The toys were then kept in the space below my bed, and the medals were stashed away in a lonely corner of a cupboard. Men came over to dismantle the showcase, below which sat a sleek TV, mighty in its having replaced the boxy embarrassment that sat there before. We would go on to replace it with a bigger one, flush with a FireTV and all.
I have since come to view the living room as a marker of modernization in my house. That the area around the TV must befit its modernity seems to be a given. The unit it hovers above – not stands on, those are not cool anymore – should also be as sleek as the TV itself. No embarrassing pictures of a four-year-old me looking to take off the itchy saree I was forced to wear. A black-and-white family portrait is kept on it, which I have now cropped to keep as my LinkedIn display picture. The curtain windows beside it don’t have a metallic gold sheen anymore. They are sober, lacey white – almost as if they were bought from the H&M lingerie section. Over lockdown, we didn’t huddle around to watch Indian Idol. Instead, we watched K-dramas on Netflix. My grandmother, tired of the same old Marathi soaps, was introduced to David Attenborough’s croon in the backdrop. She hardly understands what he says but loves looking at the odd polar bear.
Having lived in the same house since 2002, I have seen it become three different houses. First, when we tried to lift everything from a cramped apartment space that got smaller as I grew bigger. We got everything to the new, much larger, semi-swanky house and forced the furniture to co-exist with the shinier furniture we shipped from Mumbai. As odd as the house looked, it made the segue into the 2000s much more comfortable. Then, things were got rid of to give way to the more Indianised mid-century modern furniture, but the tiles and fittings scream the early aughts to this date. There was also a shift in vocabulary. It was not a cupboard anymore; it was a wardrobe. It was not a study table anymore; it was a desk.
Added to this is my family’s history of being simply handed over articles by their friends, which makes the house look like a furniture store gone wrong. For instance, the teapoy was replaced by a giant white cube that was an architect friend’s client reject. We were sent over a giant white cube one day, and not knowing what to do with it, we made it into a coffee table. We have a set of blue chairs lying around in my bedroom that my parents were gifted by their friends. These chairs belonged to their house. My parents simply appreciated how comfortable they were, and the next thing you know, my parents drove home from Mumbai to Goa with a pair of chairs.
As much of a mish-mash the house is, and as telling it is of a family’s attempt to rank up, it is still occupied by the same set of people who sit cross-legged on the floor for breakfast, despite the large dining table. People who will lay a chatai on the marble every Sunday afternoon and nap through whatever Radhika Apte flick Netflix has now come up with. We still don’t have the modular kitchen my mom has always dreamed of having, and I don’t think we ever will. But I often wonder what lies next for it, as its empty-nester residents themselves enter different phases of life.
Such a lovely, vivid piece. Your descriptions sketch every scene for the reader's viewing. :)