The rules we live by

When does a rule stop being a rule and become a religion? I thought about this last week while vacuuming the area rug at midnight. The dog hair was as stubborn and loyal as my dog and just at home. The machine was loud, and the moon that night hovered too close to the window, oddly out of place, almost intruding. I stepped out on the street for a closer look and realised Bruce Springsteen who was blaring from my speaker, was letting his want loose, crossing the lane, brushing up against other people’s sleep. My grandmother would have needed to sit down after witnessing this scene. In the houses I grew up in, everything had its hour. The broom never came out after sunset. Women didn’t either. Washing happened before noon. The house had a timetable and you were expected to move through it like a devotee. My house, for better or worse, has no such order. It is feral, forgiving.

The more I spoke to people about their home rules it struck me that no one had ready made answers. Funnily, this required thinking, real thinking, and it required you to go through your day and place your hand on the walls, plate in the sink, raise your voice a bit and then catch yourself mid-habit. Oh, so that's what I've been doing. Which sends the thinking elsewhere: What rule from your childhood home do you still live by? What rule did you deliberately undo? Is there a rule that exists because you’re afraid of becoming a certain kind of person?

For the most part, rules in urban homes are a kind of breaking free and rectifying the blind ones we grew up with. Maybe the question is not so much about the rules, but about what we are trying to build. Wondering how these ideas move from thought into habit, I spoke to three women about the rules that shape their homes.

DEEPIKA RAMESH, BANGALORE

Deepika Ramesh lives mostly alone. Her family visits sometimes, but she's not exactly social enough to entertain guests often. "So whatever rules I have, they are mostly for me, and I barely break them. And they are all unspoken," she says before listing them out for me. “The curtains must not be drawn; light must enter at all times. No white tubelights. Only yellow lamps in all rooms. One scented candle is always left open to receive a straying breeze. Every day, an incense stick is burnt. I have an unconventional altar by my bedside but the incense stick is offered from the living room. Not to the god I pray to but to the day I start. No TV during the daytime. No loud music in the night. There is an ottoman with multiple Frida Kahlo on it. Nobody is allowed to sit on that. The cushions on the sofa are only to be held in your lap, and not to be slept on. The kitchen is always disorganized, but no one should rearrange them without my permission. It makes me unhappy. The same rule applies to books. They are messy, but they are my mess. And of course, beautiful cutleries are for everyday use.”

The lighting rule is the one she's never broken; not once in two years of living in her current home. Someone told her that being under yellow light isn't good for health. "I was not even tempted to factcheck it. I will defend that rule at all costs.” Sometimes she starts watching TV in the evening, and that's the only rule she bends. “Growing up, the house was filled with noise. I try to reduce the noise in my place now when I am by myself so that I can listen to the birdsong, and to the way the building comes to life," she explains. Her childhood self would find the no-TV-during-daytime rule odd. "When you come from a middle-class family, TV is the constant background of your life. I am proud of the way I have controlled that noise in my life, and that's also why I don't reprimand myself when I break that rule once in a while." Her books and notebooks must always be in her line of sight. If they aren't, she fears she'd forget the main purpose of her life, which is reading.

The house is a duplex and Sumedha’s painting studio is upstairs and curiously, she says the studio belongs to everyone. For her, it's a painting studio, yoga studio, music room. For her husband, it's a tabla studio, exercise space, woodworking studio. Her daughter has a small table of her own, with papers and colours kept within reach, and a spot to display her work. Occasionally, Sumedha opens it up to friends and neighbours who need a place to make something. "A creative space should be shared. It doesn't thrive in singularity,” says the artist who also runs programmes for children and creative immersive sessions for women in her studio. “I want to share the space and give back a little to the community that I’m part of now. It’s a style of living and this house has allowed me that,” she says. A small garden is slowly growing beside the studio, where they compost, grow tomatoes, and friends’ saplings are taking root.