The Drawing Room

In a confused moment of despair and hope, I saw the old dining table being removed by some men from our neighbors house . I was always very attached to it. It was though very bulky and I remember, my uncle and my dad couldn’t move it even an inch without the help of at least 3 more people, but still that weight and grandeur had its charm. The excellently carved legs, the rough but beautifully tarnished top, the metal angles at the corner and the perfect chocolate brown color made it a brilliant work of art.


Though this piece of furniture caught my attention most, as a matter of fact the dining table was not the only attractive thing in our neighbors hall, but other furniture required a lot of maintenance and effort to keep them looking smart with which my uncle seemed to be least bothered.

For example, the lamp in the corner of the house was so convoluted that it could be easily mistaken to a miniature of a Japanese rollercoaster track. But finding out what this piece of furniture is, was far less challenging than trying to clean it. And without cleaning, it appeared more as some dust collecting device largely due to its transparent tubes. It was obviously not working but am sure even if it did, the thick layers of dust in it won’t allow even a single photon to escape from it. But once cleaned, it looked so beautiful that one could hardly take his eyes off it.

Then there was an old table fan made of iron which was rusted due to the neglect. We used to call it a ‘rata-tat-tat-tat’ machine gun because it made more noise than the air it blew. But there was an apparent advantage of this for our parents. The uncle had a habit of reading newspaper in the morning sitting in front of this fan. The noise made was so excruciating that many of the neighbors’ kids, including me(the kumbhkarnas, as everybody called us) whose deep sleep was even unfathomable by the loudest alarms, could not stand the shrill of the fan and had to get out of our beds.

Then there were these wooden cupboards huge enough to easily fit in a baby elephant. These cupboards had permanent locks on them and they were never moved from their place. Even during an earthquake five years back, when many houses suffered a roof-fall in our society, the cupboards didn’t move at all and this permanently established that they were fixed to ground and are in fact gateways to a great treasure. What I and my friends could surely make out was that it was a permanent settlement for lot of rats and the bottom of the cupboards were used so frequently by rats that it could be easily declared the highway for them.

Then there were other items like the rest arm chair made of bamboo whose shape would give you a soothing relief but for the nails which pointed out from the seat and made it an experience of the nail-bed. The carpet on floor which we earlier thought was of beige colour and later realized that it had almost 15 different colors when our uncle allowed it a privilege of vacuum cleaning. The clock tower, the wall hangings, paintings, crockery, wooden roof & flooring and everything was apparently very dusty (giving the hall a look of a dungeon) but had a hidden beauty which waited to be revealed.

I and my friends were pretty sure that this drawing room which could hardly draw any attention due to the way it was kept, could draw-in interest of so many. It would have only required some maintenance and more than that a little willingness to preserve them, but my uncle chose an easier way out. He had sold all the furniture to a carpenter who would probably reuse the wood from it.

As I sat in my balcony and saw the table being brought down from the front stairs and put in the truck, followed by the lamp, fan, cupboards and everything, my eyes became wet. My uncle spotted that and assured me that the new stuff in the drawing room would be made of the same wood and it would look more beautiful.

Today, about a year later, when I visited the renovated drawing room, there was no fan in the room but an AC to provide purified air, the cupboards were replaced by smart steel almirahs and the lamp gave way to the hanging lights from the roof. Instead of the wooden flooring it had marble tiles and the roof was hidden under a false ceiling. The paintings were replaced by the wall mounted LCD TV and the crockery was compromised by soft toys. The walls wore a plastic coated paint and the table was reduced to smart thin, sleek glass supported on four steel rods.

Everything was spotlessly clean and in place, but this all looked so odd to me.

The thoughts of the same drawing room occupied me for the whole day but I couldn’t find what was so disturbing about that drawing room. In the evening when I was returning back to my home, a kid handed me an advertisement leaflet for a yoga class and I found answer to my query.

The last line in the leaflet read – “Beauty lies in the soul and not in the body”.

I was smiling and couldn’t ever agree more with it but today.