Home Improvement

External upheavals and makeovers mask the internal state of affairs


“Sorry dahling, can you speak up? I can’t hear a thing. We’ve got workmen in the house.”
“We’d love to see you, but the entire flooring has been pulled up and we’re jumping from sofa to chair, to table.”
“We’re re-doing the bathroom and we just can’t agree on the colours. I’ve got this plumber standing on my head, yaar.”

We’ve all heard these, and variations on these. It’s the sound of urban Indian homes and families re-inventing themselves. Two intriguing things are operating here.

One, we’ve all been sold the idea that our homes must at all times look like the insides of hotels – granite, big-fat drapes, state-of-the-art potties, wall ‘treatments’ and that whole caboodle. If you’re part of the minimalist, muted set, then it’s some exotic and utterly unserviceable stone for your floor that stains even if your dog sneezes on it, and pits if you drop a pencil on it

Depending on whether you’re ostentatious or minimalist, classic or futuristic, your windows could be ‘dressed’ in layers and yardage. You can have drapes and then ‘sheers’ – the negligee of the seductive home. What a great idea. This way you can discuss two sets of curtains endlessly, two sets of curtain rods endlessly, two textures endlessly…you get the point.

As for kitchens, the opportunities for reinvention are endless. Surfaces, accessories – whether you drink or not, a bar set; whether you eat meat or not you, a bewildering array of knives, hatchets, machetes and mallets. Endless areas to discuss and dispute.

Lighting offers endless scope. You have to rip out every fixture that you have, and bring in new stuff; those stained glass shades you hankered for a year ago, whose merits you discussed to death when you bought them, are too common now. The enormous production of Japanese paper that you bought now looks like a very rumpled and badly made pyjama leg standing in the corner of the room, so hat has to go too…

With new stone, fabric, tile, fittings, wood finishes, paints, coming in every day, you can re-do your house, sit down exhausted to a cup of tea when all the workmen have left, and instantly start eyeing areas that need even more remodeling and updating. You’re on the refashioning treadmill, and there’s no way you can get off.

So much for home improvement helping you to sound terribly toney, always in the throes of remodeling. But there is often a darker agenda at work in homes that are being perennially and frantically redone. I strongly suspect (as do psychologists around the world) that ‘doing the house up’ has become the perfect camouflage for a wobbly marriage/dysfunctional family life. You can also put all other relationships on hold, while you’re redoing the house, talking only masonry, carpentry, plumbing at your friends, who can count you out of any more nuanced and dimensional interaction, during this time.

The whole home improvement exercise neatly mimics the real thing, i.e.: home-making and relationship building or remodeling. You can have mock disagreements and mock conversations, and mock harmony too – while you urgently and thoroughly debate choices.

And in the safety of rubble, dust, noise, and workmen, you can hide and avoid looking at everything that is really wrong with your life and that needs attention. Pressing decisions like what colour of tapestry you have to buy, which wash-basin proclaims your trendiness, and whether you want granamite rather than marbonite (or some such) come up everyday, every hour, while your home is being done. This provides you and your spouse with breakfast, lunch and dinner conversations, and possibly outings to the home décor shops for many months. What better than the sound of stone cutting, masonry and carpentry to drown out the sounds of your inner needs.

Perhaps this was best depicted in a wonderful story-telling device used in the film Lost in Translation. The state of the main character’s (Bill Murray) marriage is made evident to us by the film-maker (Sofia Coppola) in a tangential way. His wife is never shown on screen; throughout the film, she is just a voice we hear on the phone, making trans-Atlantic calls to urgently consult her husband on whether teal and beige is a good combination for the bathroom, and whether he has made a decision yet about the curtains for his study from the swatches she’s sent him.


Gouri Dange
(The writer is a practicing family counsellor with a slightly shabby home.)