Furniture Memories
Memories and furniture are intertwined in my life.
I left my parents’ home when I was 17. Since then I had several homes, in various countries. In 1990, I returned to India and three years later, inherited furniture I grew up with.
It happened when my mother moved from Asansol in West Bengal to Delhi. It was 40 plus years of her life time. She left Punjab as a young bride of 20 years or so, to marry my father, who in his late teens had taken the same journey across the country to attend the one and only school of mining engineering at that time, in Dhanbad, Bihar.
I don’t know what furniture they had when they married but over the years, as I grew up, bits and pieces of stories came out. Today, I have pieces of the furniture and stories, with me.
There is the dining table (which now sits in my home) with the six armless chairs (and one head of the table chair with arms), which brought around it family and friends for major meals. When the numerous cousins and other children came around, there would be a smaller, additional wooden table in the corner of the dining room, much lower in height to theirs, for us.
In my mother’s 3x5 feet ‘dressing room’ there was a wooden and cane box which held the laundry. It now sits in my bedroom, housing clothes for dry cleaning.
On our front veranda, where a great deal of family time was spent, there were two reclining wood and cane chairs and a square wooden table that sat between the chairs. On and around this table numerous cups of tea were consumed, discussions held and plans made. The chairs are now in our bedroom and the table is in my son’s room.
As children, in our bedroom, there was a two-door wooden almirah, with three deep shelves and two slim drawers above the shelves. It now sits in our basement, holding excess linen and pots and pans not in active use. For a while it was in my sister’s house in Calcutta. A Burma teak wood beauty of an almirah, my sister painted it white, much to my mother’s horror.
In our house in Chinakuri, there were two wooden cupboards on the veranda, off the kitchen. With wire mesh in front, they stored staples such as onions and potatoes and fruit — that did not need to be refrigerated. When the furniture came to us in Delhi, there was a debate in our family as to what we would do with them. The mesh was torn, but could be repaired, I pointed out. But, what would we use it for, my ever-practical husband asked? It was too dusty, in the Delhi climate, to use it outside the house. But, they had a raw beauty and I wanted to have them with me, in the house.
I asked the carpenter to replace the mesh with wood and clean and re-polish the cupboards. I loved their bare straight lines and two sturdy shelves. Now, one sits in our bedroom with a painted wooden box — a birthday gift from a dear friend and a glass bowl from Herat, Afghanistan. Above it there are two Degas prints. One I got from Italy; the other was gift from my childhood friend Anita Chanda, who visited some years ago.
The other cupboard is in the dining area on the ground floor. One shelf holds paper bags we can use as we rush out of the house. The second shelf is for electrical stuff and a tool box. On the top, we have a bowl with keys to the basement and a stained glass window. Above it, a Frida Kahlo print — self portrait with the parrots.
Then, there is a wooden table with a curvy top and equally curved legs, that sits on our first floor. It houses various items.
In the dining area on the ground floor, sits the crockery cupboard from my parents. A very art deco period design, it’s a classic piece.
In the 1950s, on a trip to Kashmir, my parents ordered a carpet which now lies in our basement, Threadbare, it’s still a great piece of handwork. We exercise on it three times a week.
And then, there is the Godrej almirah. It’s an institution by itself and almost every middle-class home had one. It was a storage space that burglars couldn’t break into and were usually kept in back corner of a bedroom, housing jewelry and other valuables that needed to be kept safe. My mother’s Godrej almirah travelled to Delhi. Since we have a real safe, in our home, it lies at the bottom of the stairs going to the basement, storing surplus home cleaning and gardening supplies.
I like this furniture in my home. It makes me feel that a part of my parents’ life lives on in mine. It’s comforting and fits right into my home. As I write this, sitting at the dining table, to which I have moved my computer and monitor to get away from the heat of the first floor where I normally work, every now and then, I imagine how it was when I was young, at the table back then. That is comfort.
