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Journalism of Courage
For the longest time I didn’t have a study. Mostly it’s been a table here, a table there — in the corner of the living room, in an exceptionally spacious bedroom, but never a room of my own. My partner and I moved into this house in early 2018, and for almost a year, the second bedroom stayed a guest room, and my writing space was relegated to a small corner elsewhere in the house. We soon realised we hardly needed a “guest room” in all honesty — as popular as we envisioned ourselves to be, house guests were few and far between. So my partner pushed me to transform the space into my own instead. I was hesitant, wondering whether it was too much for me — an entire room! But those doubts quickly dissipated.
Given that the novel I’m working on is partly historical fiction, and spans across continents and three centuries, I’m incredibly grateful for the space — a large Rand McNally world map now hangs on the wall, pinned with notes and photographs, a “black board” is pasted on a cupboard door for notes (yes, I use real chalk, and yes, this is super useful), MUJI brown boxes hold many print outs, and most surfaces are piled high with texts and research material. There’s a shelf with my favourite books, a soft board or two, a botanical corner, and of course, my writing table (which my partner gifted me as a birthday present), and a tremendously comfortable chair which I gifted myself.
I love it. Here, I feel at home, and am nowhere happier than sitting at my table, which holds an assortment of knick-knacks for comfort and inspiration. I’m quite a tidy person, though I enjoy a gentle “planned disarray” on my table top — a line of test tubes holding dried leaves, seed pods, flowers, an army of ink pots, stones collected from walks along rivers and beaches, pine cones from the mountains, an amber ammonite fossil gifted by a friend, a small Van Gogh box, a wooden hand-carved bird named Omija, a metal stag from the Crafts Museum, a terrarium in which a lone succulent survives, and, of course, an assortment of fountain pens and notebooks.
When I’m working on a manuscript, I can be quite obsessive — which doesn’t mean I write all day, every day — but I’m thinking about the book mostly all the time (which admittedly makes me a terrible conversationalist), and this is the space where I can retreat to, and do that in much peace. It’s a cool, airy room at the back of the house, very quiet, apart from when our neighbour has their flute lessons at 5pm — which is when I take a tea break. I feel blessed to have a space like this to write in, and feel like I’ve waited many years for it to come along. It is also an incredible privilege — something I’ve come to realise to a sharper degree during these unsettled, lockdown times.
Janice Pariat is a Delhi-based writer
