A Tour of My Home

Mom’s room - the best room in the house, and with a million-rupee view!

When you enter the door, you’ll see a painting of two belly-dancers. It’s actually a Taheyya Karyiokka double, painted by an ex, who was once a street artist. An arrow of paintings on the left corridor takes you towards the hall, and then to my room. Conversely, an arrow of family-friendly paintings and photographs take you towards the kitchen and my Mom’s room on the right.

Let’s go to my room first. It has a balcony overseeing the backside, a balcony that has the washing machine, the cat’s litter box, the clothesline, and the cat’s food. Sometimes it also has the cat, a beautiful tortoiseshell indie tabby. Some say she’s a fat cat now, but I still see a little baby.

My room has a large bed that we thought wouldn’t fit at first. It leaves enough space for the cupboards along the breadth of one wall, and a desk at the other end, close to the balcony. There’s space enough for most of my things, I am thankful, although I have known for a while that I should downsize a bit.

My room also has an attached bathroom which is modern, clean, and came with a small shelf for soaps and shampoos etc. It also has hooks at the back of the door. I appreciate when previous renters or landlords leave behind important essentials like that, when they aren’t miserly. We took some of the bars of hooks from our previous home.

‘We’ includes my Mom, the other tenant and family member living with me. My brother lives in Bosnia with his family: a wife and two lovely children. My father is no more.

Last year we lived in a larger place, a three-bedroom place which filled up during the time of my father’s operation. After he passed, it became perhaps too big and too expensive. It had an overly large hall, we could never seem to fill it.

This hall, au contraire, seems too small to fit in all the things we’ve piled in there: our extra fridge, a cupboard, another cupboard, yet another cupboard (all different sizes and shapes), and a dining table, a mirror, a dressing table, and the skeleton of a wardrobe. The hall sometimes makes me feel we should have gotten a bigger place. But could we afford it?

My Mom complains of the kitchen in a similar way. We’ve turned right from the door now. It’s too small to move around, she says, too small for the three shelves meant for storage that we brought along. It’s also furnished with a gaudy red - a ‘modular’ kitchen. But hey, it has a chimney, and seems to have space enough for everything that goes in a kitchen. I plan to install another shelf so that the microwave can have more breathing/floating-room.

Let’s come to the highlight of the place: my Mom’s room. We knew this even before we signed the deal - this room would belong to my Mom. The balcony overlooks various shades of green from the third floor to the tops of trees and the garden below which encloses them. People walk here during the permitted hours in the morning and evening, children play, seniors pray, people do yoga, exercise, play badminton, sometimes cricket. It’s a breath of fresh air - just what my Mom needed. Just what we needed.

Again, we were happy that the room accommodated a large bed and still had room (one one side) for the cupboards. One tiny cupboard on the other side was a bit blocked, but we decided to use that for storage. The room has a TV - my mother scarcely uses it, even more so now that she discovers I pay quarterly charges for the television subscription. So I end up using it mostly for OTT channels - Netflix and Amazon Prime - that my friend Faisal and I share. Maybe next quarter onwards, I’ll cancel the television subscription.

Mom’s room also has an attached bathroom, with shelves. Most rooms have hooks behind them where we need them, and we’re happy. This house has been generous. The rent may be more than my Mom wanted us to pay - the neighbours tell us we’re being overcharged - but the landlord called me beta. I cannot put a price on that.