A Sacred Space
The room where I write is sacred. This belief is disregarded by my Golden Retriever who barges in when he wants. But that’s a different matter. The writing room has a vintage wooden desk, wide enough to accommodate my laptop, a potted plant and my morning cup of tea; narrow enough to thwart my propensity of over-cluttering it. It has no drawers to store any folders, or secrets. My desk has aged. Bruised slightly at the edges, it carries a stain the size of a coin.
A large, pista-green bookshelf, which I salvaged a few years ago, stands beside it. Books – bought and borrowed, inherited and gifted – have lived in it for half a decade. They are organised from the well-thumbed ones to the never having been read at all.
My desk faces a glass window bearing Post-its, privy to private fictions, invented plots and character descriptions. In the afternoons, when the sunlight is too harsh, I draw the curtains and continue to write. That is the thing: I can close myself on the world at whim. I am fortunate.
At one time, I naively believed that I did my best writing in my own room. It couldn’t be anywhere else. As I write this, however, it has begun to pour. The sky has turned ashen and a streak of silver lightning cuts across it. The neighbourhood trees sway, my window rattles. I am reminded of the folklores my grandfather narrated as bedtime stories, where our ancestors imagined storms to be a manifestation of the wrath of god or the thunderous wail of a forlorn giant. Our ancestors did not have writing rooms for imagination to flourish. It made me wonder: did I really need a designated room to write, or could I write anywhere?
I realize now that writing is a state of being. Those who are consumed by it are constantly writing in their heads. When I go for an evening stroll, my mind is curating scenes and dialogues, swapping chapters and possible endings. It’s like a puzzle slowly coming together, and then being picked apart. My mind is my real writing room.
Radhika Iyengar is a journalist and, in 2020, was the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent.
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