We moved into our flat in the last days of January and spent the first few weeks snatching opportunities to scrub and clean. When we took the flat it had just been renovated and a powdery paint and mortar dust lay everywhere, making it a grim environment to live in at first. The apartment is what's called a 2BHK (two bedroom, hall and kitchen), a standard middle class design. The bedrooms are good sized and ours has an ensuite bathroom and a small balcony. The living room, which the front door opens onto, is even bigger, with a larger balcony overlooking the low Tulsi bungalows that line the road to the flats. You might think that a third balcony is excessive, but the one that opens off the kitchen serves an important function as a clothes washing and drying area and seems to allow the local pigeons the privacy they need to shit on our drying washing. The kitchen has a long black stone work surface, much too low for someone my height, which forms an L-shape with the even lower sink positioned in the foot of the L. After more than a month without one, we now have a squat blue fridge that sits at the top of the L, next to three stone shelves set into the concrete wall.
The windows of the flat are thin but tall, with oddly frosted panes spattered with watery mortar drops that won’t come off however much you scrub at them. Fitted to all of the windows are horizontal rows of black bars, also splashed here and there with paint and mortar. The floors are marble: big rectangular slabs in the living room and small, vaguely glittering rectangles in the kitchen and bedrooms. The walls have been re-plastered well but enthusiastically, the workmen apparently having little regard for natural borders like door frames and window ledges. Most striking of the flats features is the 2-D front door, which presents the image of a carved wooden door to the first floor landing. At head height is the meditative image of Ganesha, the elephant god, and below him, the Hindi symbol for ‘Om’. Also worth noting is the hook in the ceiling of the main balcony, from which can be hung a formal swing to allow us to repose in the manner of proper middle class Gujus. We can’t really make a claim to that class though as we haven’t employed a cook, cleaner or washerwomen. This sets us apart from pretty much everyone else in Ahmedabad with a regular income and means we spend a lot of time cooking, cleaning and washing clothes.
The windows of the flat are thin but tall, with oddly frosted panes spattered with watery mortar drops that won’t come off however much you scrub at them. Fitted to all of the windows are horizontal rows of black bars, also splashed here and there with paint and mortar. The floors are marble: big rectangular slabs in the living room and small, vaguely glittering rectangles in the kitchen and bedrooms. The walls have been re-plastered well but enthusiastically, the workmen apparently having little regard for natural borders like door frames and window ledges. Most striking of the flats features is the 2-D front door, which presents the image of a carved wooden door to the first floor landing. At head height is the meditative image of Ganesha, the elephant god, and below him, the Hindi symbol for ‘Om’. Also worth noting is the hook in the ceiling of the main balcony, from which can be hung a formal swing to allow us to repose in the manner of proper middle class Gujus. We can’t really make a claim to that class though as we haven’t employed a cook, cleaner or washerwomen. This sets us apart from pretty much everyone else in Ahmedabad with a regular income and means we spend a lot of time cooking, cleaning and washing clothes.
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