Like every other generation, ours was one that did not want to be slotted. We wanted to make our own statements, do our own thing, make our own way, not walk along the beaten path — and just about everything else that most young people want to do.
Among the many things we did not want was the same kind of house as everyone else. We did not want those ‘little boxes made out of ticky-tacky’ that made up modern suburbia. We did not want anything of ours to look just the same as anyone else’s.
And then, somehow, some of us found ourselves in the most regimented situation possible — identical homes in standard housing provided by the military. We looked around at the evenly painted walls, the ‘optimum-size’ rooms, the garden patches, the hedges, the house dividers and our hearts sank. We were going to lose our identities in the midst of all the uniformity we had followed our husbands into — and we were not the ones who were required to fall in line and follow the leader into battle without question. How could we all become ‘just the same’?
Amazingly, we didn’t.
Every home had the same furniture, beds and tables and chairs being regular issue. Even the upholstery of the sofa sets came in similar patterns and hues. But since nothing was nailed to the floor, we pushed and pulled and arranged and re-arranged: a chair here, a table there, a sofa somewhere else, a bed in a corner, a couple of extra boxes in the corridor — and magically, miraculously, each house took on the personalities of the inmates.
And nothing was regimented. Nothing was the same.
One family had that sofa set arranged into an elaborate L-shaped lounge set, the peg tables lined up, bench-like, with a precious set of encyclopedias within reach of the children. Another had the low cupboards as a divider between the drawing room and the dining area, with shelves and trays and glasses atop for easy access. Some of us had everything in practically the same arrangement as when we had entered, but casual throw rugs, curtains and cushions converted what could have been a stiff and formal room into a gaily casual one.
Obviously, our fears had been unfounded and we had managed not merely to retain our differences but to celebrate them.
To the extent that when we had to choose our homes for ‘after retirement’ we opted — deliberately, insistently and happily — for an apartment in just such a housing organisation as we had always known. Again, hundreds of identical match-box homes, with identical facades, tiled roofs and open balconies. When in mint condition, they seemed confusingly similar and we wondered if we would find our way back to the right door each time we went out.
And then scores of families moved in.
Balconies filled with plants of all shapes and colours, the glow from different lighting and curtains changed facades, someone put up a little parapet here, a fake fireplace there, the insides got makeovers as cupboards filled niches or niches got deeper, standard staircases took on different avatars with pictures and pots lining the way.
Even when we admired the way someone else had made use of their space and wanted to remodel in just the same manner, we found that the preferences of a spouse or a child or the requirements of a pet — or something else — got in the way and the end result was the stamp of the home owner.
Now we have no fears about living the same as everyone else. We do not really want to be different — but we are. Uniquely so.
— Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
