Migrating for college altered how I perceived shared space. Growing up with just my mother and younger sister in the midst of middle class urban Hyderabad, I had my own privacy. Behind closed doors, I would let my imagination take over the bedroom walls, the lyrics I screamed into a hairbrush, and the enthusiastic nature of studying. It felt strangely performative, the way I began to behave in college. It felt more like an act than anything else when I flipped open a book or translated texts in hope to learn a new language.
I thought that I was unique, my thoughts individualistic and my feelings foreign. Surely the policing on my clothes, my hair, my makeup were never experienced before. Until I read books of how women across economic strata were stuck in this game of being policed by the very ones they lived with. My family judged the worth length of my shorts based on where I was going, the mode of transportation I would be using, and whom I was going to be with. At least at home I had the freedom to wear shorts, but when living away for college – I was not allowed to even wear shorts out. A stranger judged my morale, my worth, and my family all because I chose to wear a piece of clothing that covered my thighs mid length.
I started using alarms and timers just before I started college. Having a bell signal when I could go eat, go take a bath, watch TV and how long I would study all became part of the performance. I was complimented for my time management but only I knew the pain with which I adhered to it. Conversations back home, around the breakfast table, and drives home from social events molded the very nature I viewed time. ‘Do you know, Mrs. _’s daughter spent two hours before breakfast working on sample papers?’, ‘Mr. _’s son stays up after dinner to work on his homework and only spends an hour watching TV the whole day’, and ‘Your cousin never steps out of the house to visit friends, she is always studying and stuck in her bedroom’.
loved when I could look back on those pages, read and laugh.
The memory is still months old, fresh in desperation. The hands of the clock tower would near 6:55 and there would be droves of girls running in flipflops for the beach, heels for a conference, sandals for a day out, sneakers for a run and out feet would pound across the gates of the hostel together. The synergy of girls who never knew each other would overwhelm the wardens and try as many as they could hire but the sheer number of college girls’ emotions from a night out would drown out their constant efforts to punish our late arrivals. The same panic would set them over the edge, as girls would crowd around a table trying to get slips of paper signed by these cruel gatekeepers. Phones were stuffed in front of faces, pens exchanged because there was a requirement to get video call permission from family to cross the holy threshold of the hostel. These were the unspoken moments of shared disgruntlement, of nonviolent fights for a day away from our barricaded windowed bedrooms.
I laugh at myself, when I start checking the clocks on walls and watches on wrists – especially after sunset. The hostel I lived in was stringent with the time its residents were allowed out. We were given a window, 6:30 to 6:55 PM to be back in the building. Called ‘princesses in towers’, the high-rent, horrible food hostel hiked up the cost of living for every year I lived there. The security measures in place, the attached bathroom, and the 24/7 access to air conditioning in my room were the reasons I stayed. I have become accustomed to running back, blabbering apologies to wardens that even now I hesitate to say yes to plans that require me to be out past 5 PM.
I found solace not in the corner debris of the Internet, where conversations bubble and communities fester – but in the pages of a diary. I found the idea of handwriting my story old school and easy to destroy. I wish I could say there was a café where I was free to express myself, a railway berth where I felt protected behind the dinghy curtain, or a corner of a library. It is through ink I used to detail my disappointment in my life, the letdowns by the ones I loved, and the loss of confidence I felt. Glitter, gel, ink, waterproof, and all sorts I used to copy quotes from books I pirated off the Internet. I felt I am used to the sight of cardboard boxes, scissors and tape thrust into my hands with the message of ‘move out’. I am detached by material objects and constantly beautify the spaces I live in with painted pieces of recycled paper; photographs cut from newspapers and magazines and decorations I nicked for free from events I helped organize. These spaces when lit with gifted candles and fairy lights, posters I saved up for. Even then, they were intruded upon, forced to be removed. These décor were an expression of my identity, an extension of my personality. My dreams were etched on sticky notes, manifesting hopes for the future. My room narrated the picture of the will to live a bigger life than the one I was leading. One of my most prized objects of endurance and resilience had been the pothos growing from a recycled plastic bottle of water. Leaving it behind felt like I was severing the tether to my aspirations.
And since then my headphones and my sketchbooks have become that secret door to dissociating from reality. Within sounds of strangers in conversation I lose myself to this world. My imagination grants me access to emotions and the ability to touch those tough feelings. I give myself at least this hour where I do not study or work or ‘over’think – where I do not mull over unsaid words and unaccomplished accolades. I guard this hour when I am en travel, when I a feel threatened or when my self-confidence feels violated.
The Gulzar House fire created a fire within me. A safe space could feel violated and destroyed by inadequate safety measures used to build it and protect it. The climate crisis has only worsened the growing concern that I will never truly have the ideal definition of a home with a front yard, back yard, and garage that is protected by wildfires, tornadoes, earthquakes and floods. There is no permanence in this world, and as I hop from hostel to shared apartments, the idea is further cemented in my head. My idea of home is connected to people now. People whom I can rely on for a safe night, for a comforting laugh and for a good hug. I am finding home in places where shade is available, and heating too. Airports have been transformed to a hub of this reality, transition spaces where everyone feels safe. The climate crisis can take away the foundation stone of home, but it cannot take away the constant human drive to remain connected through souls.
The Typist's Archive: Act Two 
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