My Room

"A girl's room is very private!"
~ Bianca Stratford, Ten Things I Hate About You


I didn't have my own room till I was a High School Senior. Yes, I'm that lame. You just cannot explain to middle-class Bengali parents that a fifteen year old is entitled to her own room. The thing is, when we shifted to our new apartment, all I really wanted was my very own room.


"The whole apartment is yours, honey. Why do you need a separate room for?"
Parent-logic. You just cannot win.


Distant relatives, with whom otherwise hardly I hardly spoke, advised my Ma against the notion of letting me have my own room.

"She'll fall off the bed." was the sanest among the number of reasons they came up with. Someone even told Ma to check if I was "involved" with some guy. How that should affect my right to privacy I do not know, neither did I try to find out.

Anyway, I do have a room now, and it's not exactly what I actually wanted. For one thing, it's messy. There's an inch think dust on everything. There's minimalist furniture, a bed (in which I don't fit), a desk and two overstuffed book-shelves. It looks nothing like a girl's room. I don't have a butterfly wind-chime, or any wind-chimes at all. There are no delicate handmade cushions or whatever girls like to keep in their rooms.  Nor do I have labelled boxes to organize 'pens', 'clips', 'books' and 'boyfriend'. And no, I don't sleep with a teddy (or any other kind of stuffed animal). However, there is a table-fan to ease the heat during summer.

In addition to all what I don't have in my room, I also don't have a closet/wardrobe or a dresser. Or much privacy.

Right now, as I write this post, there is Three Men in a Boat lying in the space between my monitor and keyboard. I can identify a lock, an empty Coke can, some pens, a user manual to a Nokia set, a data-card adapter, a bit of wool, a pair of scissors, Sylvia Plath and an envelope in the tizzy on my right. On my left, there are three pen-stands (basically empty jam jars and biscuit tins) overflowing with pens, most of which do not work. The aforementioned Book-shelves are at my back. One of them has an electric iron stuffed into a cranny. If I am to describe the actual contents of the shelves, it'll take another post.

There are so many things I want to change about my room. I'd like a bigger bed, on which I can turn without slipping off the edge. I'd like a mirror and a closet. I'd like it if my parents didn't dump random things like winter wear and utensil cartons in my room. I'd love to have some posters up on the walls (Nirvana for one thing). I want to be able to close the door, not because I'm not allowed to, but because the stupid door doesn't fit in it's frame. It's funny how nothing in my room really fits, and that includes me.

One day, I'll have my own house and I'll build my dream room in it, whether I live in it or no.