The Joy of Functional Spaces (and there is no place like home)

 Arun Kumar

Photo by Nathan Oakley on Unsplash

Every five minutes I squirm around but don’t seem to get comfortable. The depth of the sofa is 25”, and for short people like me, legs dangle in the air. I feel like a child living in spaces made for adults. 

A Gulliver in the land of Giants. I am at a friend’s house, but they definitely are not the Giants. My hosts also have the same build as mine.

When traveling and staying in hotels or enjoying the hospitality in the home of a kindred soul, the contour of spaces sometimes do not conform with the curves of my body.  When away from home, occasionally finding functional spaces that invite the body to sink in, relax, and give an audible sigh of relief, comes as a pleasant surprise.

Functional spaces (or the spaces that are functional) that bring the comfort and safety of a mother's womb, are a precious gift, and a sense of wellbeing, to strive for.

At home, when I get up in the morning and have my first cup of Earl Grey, things around me magically morph to fit my mind and body. The size of the teacup, and its shape, is just right for my palms to wrap around and feel the pleasant warmth on cold wintery mornings. The sofa chair I sit on is just right for the length of my legs as my back sinks in the comfort of its cushions. Sitting next to me is a side table within easy reach to place the teacup.

It all feels just perfect as if over the millions of years, evolution has shaped everything to fit flawlessly.

I am reminded of all this while staying in someone’s place when after a few days I start to miss the comforts of home. The hosts are wonderful and loving people and I have always enjoyed their company. Their set up of living spaces, however, leaves something to be desired, at least for me.

Our hosts are my height and while sitting on the end of the sofa, their feet dangle in the midair also. Their work around to regain some sense of comfort is to put another cushion behind their back to prop themselves forward. It is something that just does not work for me.

In the morning right away I miss not having a side table. It feels irksome having to lean forward and put the cup back on the coffee table (which is heavy enough that it cannot be dragged easily on the wooden floor without being in the danger of leaving marks).

After a short break, I lean forward again to pick up the teacup, take a couple of sips and lean forward to put it back on the table. The cycle of discomfort repeats.

Later comes suppertime and we sit on a dining table with highchairs, and I am reminded of the same discomfort that started the day. My feet dangle in the air, the slates on the wooden chair, and gaps between them, do not please my derriere. The chair and my bottom are locked in a silent tug of war to find the sweet spot.

The story, in different contexts, repeats throughout the day. After a while I start to think, are they doing this because they are falling prey to their desire to conform with the current home furnishings trends, or they just have some masochistic desires that I never learned about. If it is the latter, I should lock the door at the end of the day when I step into the bed.

By the way, to get into the bed makes me wish I had brought my step ladder so I can climb into bed without the fear of falling. The height of the bed can make Mount Kilimanjaro envious.

A stack of old issues of Architectural Digest on the coffee table makes me think that the real reason their home does not feel like a functional space is that they have succumbed to the disinfected norms of magazine living, and what they see repeated in the houses of their friends. And since it sells, similar sofas stock the floor space in the furniture stores, while to find comfort, you have to hunt online stores.

My friends fell prey to living by other people’s rules. In the end, everyone is following one another and lives in a background of conformal discomfort.

When nature calls, it is time for head for the toilet and I immediately miss the trust of my squatty potty, and afterwards, the cleanliness of using the bidet, My bowel movement is not a happy song as they generally are, and my derriere, once again, makes a pouty face (at least, I think it does).

Interestingly, I note how many aspects of a functional space are connected with my bottom. It makes sense, almost all day we are using its support in one way or another. I am also reminded of the story I read long ago about different body parts arguing who is more important. The bowel says to the heart, the liver etc. that if I stop functioning properly then, you all, my dears, will be down on your knees. Or maybe it actually was a story about an anal boss and my memory is playing a trick.

Oh well, enough about the derriere. I know thy comfort is important and I bow to your wishes.

Slowly hours tick by and during pleasant conversations and a wonderful meal, I keep shifting myself to try to fit contours of my body to the shapes it is presented and find some comfort. I am not succeeding too well.

I begin to daydream that inanimate objects around me are slowly morphing and molding to fit the shapes of my body, and with a deep sigh of comfort, I sink into their embrace.

Now I know what it means to say that there is no place like home. Home is a long evolution towards perfecting our functional space. And it is to that space that after some time being in travels, we wish to return to, particularly, as you get older, and aches and pains grace us easily.

I wish everyone the joy of functional places. Life is too short to spend shifting around constantly on the sofa trying to find the sweet spot that is not there.

Next time when you are at the airport and you see someone standing at the airline counter checking in a side table, a squatty potty, and a bidet, come and say hello. That will be me.

Peace.

A cup of Earl Grey is more than just a cup of Earl Grey

 Arun Kumar

Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash

It is the month of April, and it is still cold outside. Like a newborn calf, spring is trying to get on its feet, feel free, and prance around with childish abundance. It gets up, wobbles a little but sits down again to catch a few breaths. It is not quite the time for blossoms yet.

It is cold outside, and I sit in the warmth of my living room. A warm cup of Earl Grey nestles in between my palms; steam rises and its aroma wafts in the air. And with it comes the memory of transiting through the Heathrow airport where I had my first cup of Earl Grey, and I was sold. Chance happenings that sometimes become lasting companions like  Proust’s Madeleines dipped in a cup of tea.

The surroundings feel peaceful, and it is hard to imagine that at this very moment, in a different part of space, there is a war raging and a peaceful life for countless has been upended.

When viewed in the vastness of the universe, these two points in space are the same, but in one, there are children growing up with their psyche wounded forever. They will look towards the sky in the east and carry bitterness and hatred.

But thoughts digress.

In this quiet and cozy morning, I am reading a kindle book on nutrition and healthy eating. It is telling me what potential influence molecules in different foods can have on our mental and physical health. Flavonoids, Omega-3, Probiotics. It is suggesting that I drink more red wine and eat more turmeric (organic, if I can afford it). Load up on antioxidants, Arun, it says, and counter the harshness this world sometimes can bring.

This simple act of reading in a quiet surrounding, shrouds a reality, easily missed.

The fact that I had the wherewithal to buy a book on Kindle, have the luxury of the warmth of my living room, and have the time to read it, hides the fact that a confluence of several inequalities made it possible.

Let me count the ways.

I am in a position to spend $14.99 to buy a book and do not have to set aside that money to put food on the table. The financial inequality, and having discretionary income, gives me choices that people on the other side of the fence do not have.

I had the winning lottery to be born in a stable country, in a family that had the means to provide for physical nourishment, and for education.  The contribution of these social inequalities in reading the book today is no less profound.

Generally, everything in nature follows a bell curve – height of people; how long people live; height of trees in a forest; how fast a sprinter can run a 100-meter dash; or how good someone can be at playing the piano.

Included in the universality of the bell curve that proliferates all around us, is also the innate cognitive capabilities we start with. That genetics can have a hand in setting up the base level for cognitive potential makes sense from the perspective of evolution.  And just maybe, that I am reading the book has something to do with a biological inequality.

After all, we have watched plenty of dystopian movies and have read sci-fi books where parents have the choice to select genetic traits to have an offspring with desired traits. Sure, this could be all fantasy or wishful thinking. The thought, however, has crossed the psyche of mankind.

The possible contribution of genes could set the baseline on which environmental, social, economical inequalities operate to amplify initial differences, however small.

The fact that I am reading a book that is an outcome of someone spending a good part of their time and effort and I am going to gain the knowledge and information that someone else assembled, is going to further enhance the inequality we start with.

There is someone sitting in the darkness, trying to stay warm on a wintry night, mind and body numb with thoughts of warmth and food that tomorrow may bring, will miss out on learning that blueberries, preferably organic, are an excellent source of antioxidant molecules.

I am reading the book while sitting in the warmth of my living room, relishing the aroma of Earl Grey, is not such an innocuous an event, after all. Shrouded in it is a long thread of inequalities that ultimately make our life.

Maybe someday we will evolve beyond the hands of natural selection and we could all be in the place I am in this moment.

Standing tall on the horizon is Eiffel Tower

 Arun Kumar

 

Photo by Louis Paulin on Unsplash

 

As the years tick by and calendars on our living room wall slowly fade and get replaced, more and more I find myself being aware of my mortality. Nothing external has changed. The rainbow has the same hue of seven colors it always had. Seasons still progress in the sequence they always did. What has changed now is my perspective of looking at the same things I have looked at innumerable times before is occasionally different than it used to be.

 In the afternoons when I take the walk along the wooded trail near my home, there were always dead trees, some standing and some fallen, that littered the landscape. Before they were just “dead trees.” Now at times, the same landscape brings the awareness that everything is impermanent.

And me, one among all.

This change in perspective has been a jarring experience, particularly at a juncture in life when other things are also in transition. I am at the end of my long career and staring right at me is something that is termed as “The Retirement.”

An end of a journey? A new beginning? What to expect in “The Retirement”, I don’t quite know. Associated with that transition is also an acute sense of loss of identity and not knowing what I will be morphing into.

I am getting off from the train I have been on for a long time. As I step on the platform, I do know what the town has to offer. When I leave the noise of the platform behind and step out in the bright sunshine under the autumn blue sky, if someone happened to snap a picture, the look on my face will be of bafflement of a person who gets to an unknown place in the middle of the night and does not know whether to turn left or to turn right.

The one-two punches of life in transition, and the awareness of mortality, has been a potent combination that landed me on my back. Like a stranger in a new town looking to his left, or her right, I am standing at a bifurcation in the road I have been traveling on. One path goes left, and one goes right. I know they lead to two contrasting different destinations. I cannot stay indecisive forever. I need to keep moving or wither.

I need to make a choice - turn left or turn right.

I am at the moment when Neo is staring down at the Red and the Blue pill. Like him, I am at a bifurcation point. Ahead of me, the road I am on becomes two, and teases me with a choice. One road is the path of a life lived consciously; the other is the path of being on an autopilot.

One road is living at peace with my awareness of mortality. The other road is losing myself in random acts in an attempt to swim against the awareness of mortality. Try as I may, I will not swim far.

Taking the blue pill means seeking constant distractions. It is a random walk and the sum of all steps taken over a day, a week, a month, or a year, brings me to the same place I am at. I know this path will be a drowning sense of emptiness.

Taking the red pill means that the sum of all steps I take will put me in a place that is different from where I am now. And the direction of that change will be guided by what I value in life.

After a long struggle and introspection, I am taking the red pill. I am turning right, and although I still do not know what waits ahead, and whether I am currently up to the task of navigating the road, I know I have the wherewithal to do so and will find my way around.

That has always been a charm of travel and visiting new places. I know I will be safe in there and then. What I do not know is what novel views, what fragrances, or what aromas will greet me down this road. The journey, however, will be an adventure, a learning experience.

Most journeys to new places are like that. Take a right turn, and suddenly, standing tall on the horizon is Eiffel Tower.