Unless one never looks at social media, there is no way to avoid seeing images of designer living rooms and dining rooms these days. Idly scrolling through such photographs (“We wanted a Mediterranean / Moroccan / <insert the look of the moment> vibe”), I couldn’t help but think of a time when the ambitions of a household’s public spaces were significantly less grand.
Visitors wouldn’t go into the bedroom, so that room didn’t matter much. The average bedroom had beds, perhaps a chest of drawers, and a couple of almirahs in wood or steel; that was it. One bedroom in our old house in Kanpur was called the “box room” because it was lined with suitcases where family members kept their clothes and linen; built-in closets hadn’t arrived yet and the almirahs and chests of drawers available weren’t enough for a large joint family.
The drawing room or living room, and the dining room, were what guests saw. Those who grew up between the ’60s and ’80s will remember certain standout features of these rooms. At one time, the drawing room was a stiff, formal place that no one used; it was opened up only when important visitors dropped in. It morphed into the more lived-in living room, and I suspect this coincided with the arrival of television in India.
The family needed to be able to gather to watch the Sunday movie or Chitrahaar (Chhaya Geet in Mumbai) on Doordarshan. Visitors might want to watch TV too; in any case, the family needed to showcase their prized possession, which was often kept in a wooden cabinet with a sliding door, or at least covered with a pretty cloth, to protect it from dust.
Until about the early ’70s, only a few households in each housing colony had a TV set, so children and adults from neighbouring homes would turn up at their doorsteps. By the time the anticipated show began, a small horde would be packed into the living room, round-eyed children sitting cross-legged on the floor in the first few rows.
But the thing I remember most fondly about the living room is the glass-fronted “showcase” that often stood against one wall.
In her marvellous memoir, Raw Umber, Sara Rai (who, incidentally, is Premchand’s granddaughter) recalls the display case in the dining room of her family’s Allahabad bungalow. Among other knickknacks was a 24-piece bone-china dining set that was never used “because… one of the pieces might break and spoil the set”. “A pair of salt and pepper cellars in the shape of small mynahs – black with yellow beaks – sat on the top shelf, trapped behind the glass, forever denied the chance to fly.”
While this display case only contained objects to do with eating and drinking, many held a far more eclectic mix. Fine crockery (brought out when special guests came over) sat amid a profusion of dolls: Russian stacking dolls (wildly popular for a while), bobble-headed dancing dolls, Japanese dolls in kimonos, sometimes in a small glass case of their own. There might also be large seashells, unfurled fans from the Far East (propped up against the back of the case), and little models of the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa or Air India Maharaja.
These objects mirrored small, sweet desires and aspirations, such as foreign travel. (Fine bone china was delicate and expensive, so it had to be stored carefully but also displayed with pride.)
Photographer Dayanita Singh, who has an unerring eye for detail, calls them “cupboards of curiosities”. “Each family would make a little museum of souvenirs or things they’d picked up from their travels,” she tells me. “But it wasn’t all for the outside world; it was also a way of preserving one’s memories, like a family album in objects.”
She plans to install a display cabinet in her home, and fill it with family keepsakes. “It’ll be a portrait of my parents for me,” she says.
I can’t wait to see it.
