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Reimagining a room of one’s own while living together
In homes full of overlapping lives, shared routines and rooms, we trace how personal space is made. We spoke to four women point to a corner of the home that feels most theirs
Room, I think, is a suspicious word. It pretends to be generous. Room to breathe. Room to grow. Room of one' s own. But more than often it is used to announce the opposite: Not enough room. Make room. The word carries both a promise and a limitation. Space, yes, but also permission. So, what do we really mean when we say that a woman needs a room of her own? What do you picture when you hear a room of one’s own? Four walls, a door and a dreamy window? Is it a four-poster bed or the six inches between her eyes and the book she is reading?
A room can shrink to a dining table after the house has gone to bed. A room can spill outward, grow into the size of the night sky, terrifying yet liberating. I started this piece by asking friends and strangers: Growing up, did your mother have a room of her own? Almost always, the answer was a no. And almost always, they added as an afterthought: the kitchen counter with the radio at dawn, the corner where she folded herself to pray, lamp flickering.
ISHITA SATI
For Ishita Sati, the memory kept bouncing between two spots: the balcony where herbs and flowers jostled for space, where her mother nudged pots around like they had opinions of their own, and the living room chair where she would collapse after teaching first graders all day, shoes off, hair in a loose knot, letting the day flop over her like a tired cat.
The house was shared; her parents, her aunt and cousins, her brother, Lola, the dog, all inside the same compound. She had no doubts when I asked about her space in the family home. The bedroom switched allegiance depending on which sibling had exams, who needed silence more. The little study too kept changing hands. It was Ishita’s, then her brother’s, then hers again when she came back to live at her family home in Deharadun during Covid. Her father, stuck with leftover wood, sawed and nailed until the splinters became a bench and a bookshelf for that awkward corner. “The wood has a past life. It used to be my childhood cupboard. It once held all my clothes,” she says. “I knew putting in this big table would take up all the space. But the heart wants what it wants. And somehow it made sense.”
Every time Ishita had friends over, she began with an apology. For the smallness, the narrowness, the way the room was crammed, like a handbag about to split. Her friends, two could squeeze on the diwan and the rest would huddle on the grey Ladakhi rug that was brought out as soon as the weather turned. Teacups balanced on tables and ledges. Lola nosed her way through, insistent, tail sweeping small arcs of dust into the light, like someone underlining the scene.
Her favourite memory from her Dehradun room was on a day just like this, when friends jammed into the evening and the room brimmed with music. She narrates from her brand-new apartment and new life in Bangalore. It has been a little over two months since she moved. She misses being woken up by Lola sliding the door open. The slant of light through papaya leaves. Terrace noise leaking in: cousins shouting, someone humming badly. “Once my father was on the terrace listening to music, old-people style. Blasting straight from the phone, no speaker, no earphones. This is how I found out that my father is a Dua Lipa fan.” Her laugh cracks open and echoes in her sparse new apartment.
SHILPA COLLURU
Leaving teaches one kind of freedom; returning, another. Shilpa Colluru, a brand strategist by profession, had spent most of adult years in Bangalore until she decided to return to her childhood home in Vizag six years ago. “I wanted to move back home when there was no medical emergency and spend time with my parents when it mattered,” she says.
The thing about moving back is that it suggests the impossibility of a clean slate. Family homes don’t forget. They remember the past life of the shelves and chairs, where the computer table once stood, which wall was never meant for vanity. The house followed her mother’s grammar, and Shilpa learned to write on the margins.
Some personal spaces can be collaborations, even when unintended. The pullout foldable ironing table her mother thoughtfully installed is now Shilpa’s work desk; her grandfather’s reading chair is now her favourite spot; the balcony has transformed into a theatre for her city dogs. Shilpa doesn’t intend to erase her mother’s stamp. She layers over it. She is not alone, but is still herself.
What if daughters moving back in is not just private circumstances, but part of the larger story of women balancing autonomy with inheritance and duty? There are challenges, of course. The room holds itself still for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, then comes the knock. Always the knock. When parents grow old, their thoughts fray at the edges. If they don’t say the thing now, it’s gone. So, you hear it immediately. Salt is finished. Don’t forget to call the plumber. Did you pay the bill? Urgent in its own small way, and it slices through whatever thought you were tending.
“Old people are stuck in their ways and are extremely forgetful. They aren’t going to change, they aren’t going to remember. So, after 15 minutes, I’m the only one still fuming. They’ve forgotten we had an argument. They sure as hell don’t remember what it was about or what it was I asked them to change about their behaviour. So, I learnt to let stuff go. Laugh at the situation,” she says and follows it up with a life-saving advice “I also ensure that I get out of the house on a daily basis to get my me-time.” Her favourite part about the move is to watch her two city dogs, Sophie and Biscuit, treat the balcony like a new planet. They watch squirrels, pedestrians, the postman. They sit alert, chests lifting with the thrill of movement below. In their vigil they claim a kind of privacy she can’t.
SANIYA ZEHRA
A room of one’s own, the phrase is simple-sounding. But for a young mother, it is misleading. Isolation can feel like a trap, I learn when I speak to Saniya Zehra. “I had moved to Bombay for work and lived alone for a bit. It was nice but honestly, I wasn’t a fan of it. Technically though because of WFH, even after getting married I was living alone for the most part of the day. I have had my space these last couple of years which I had developed quite a taste for. Now with the baby and our parents helping, it does feel a little overwhelming from time to time.” It’s clear that a room alone cannot hold a life spilling over tantrums, toys, and tiny emergencies.
She has instead claimed a corner of the living room. The sofa is soft and low. The lamp, shaped like a small flowering tree, throws a halo over her workspace. The view shifts: balcony, playpen, work-screen, balcony again. Everything is within reach. Every version of her is allowed to exist together. “I had to return to work after my maternity leave three months back. No one (nanny, husband, our mothers) dares to disturb a work-from-home-mom in her space. I think that’s also what’s basically given me the exclusive access to this corner," she says before describing the first day back after maternity leave—with her mother nearby to help, when she first sat here with a gigantic cup of coffee, unavailable even to her child, letting everyone, even the house, wait. Since then, no one has moved the sofa or the table. Only she is allowed to switch on the floor lamp she fell for online, every day before sunset.
Saniya sends me a picture of the one time she made an allowance. Ibrahim, her eight-month-old son, eyes wide amidst screens and gadgets, wedged into her workspace like he’s slightly late for a very important Zoom call.
ROHITA MADAPPA
A room can be everywhere and nowhere, a place of work and escape, of seeing and not being seen. For Rohita Madappa, the room is the outdoors. It is a garden. For her, ownership is about tending. The sudden inky blot of a new orchid opening overnight. The ginger torch lilies that seem taller each time, stretching past twelve feet now, greedy for the sun. “Mornings in my garden are sacred. My work desk also looks into the garden so I get to see it all day.”
Rohita lives with her twin toddlers, her husband, her mother-in-law, and a dog named Zoe. She has never lived entirely alone and thinks she would have loved to try it before the children, but now she admits that with twins, a village feels not just necessary, but right. The garden is her claim. She re-planted it, nurtured vegetables, created an orchid corner, and her Sunday mini-picnics make it both sanctuary and stage. She has learnt her space can be simultaneously private and generous, demanding care and offering joy.
She remembers the brunch she hosted for her closest friends: the light poured in, too golden to be real, and everything on the table seemed slightly exaggerated, fairy-tale-like. Space was not claimed by closing off, but by multiplying: an extra chair, another spoon, the mango chutney being passed around, and laughter spilling past what walls could only aspire to hold.
Ownership can be sunlight and soil. Belonging can be flexible, even silly in its temperament. You don’t always have to slam doors or stake flags. Why equate inhabiting a room with hiding, escaping, retreating from the world? Can it stay yours, without closing itself off? Can it include people? Can it include life? Can it hold noise? Can it forgive? Can it open wide and still be yours?
Ishita’s family home room in Dehradun, small but overflowing with memory. Image courtesy, Ishita Sati
Sophie, once a city dog, now at ease in her country home. Image courtesy, Shilpa Colluru
Sophie, claiming the balcony as a planet of her own. Image courtesy, Shilpa Colluru
For Rohita Madappa, a room of one's own translates to sunlight and soil, not doors or latches. Photo by Nachiket Pimprikar
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