Day 8: Put your hands together for...

Today, I’ve invited a dear friend of mine from college to share his experience of living alone. He and I worked as a team throughout our journalism major. We (mostly he) also wrote for, edited and revamped our college magazine. We’re broadly smiling on the masthead of the 2009-2010 issue. After college he moved to Chennai for further studies and now works in Delhi. Here’s what he has to say:

A home away from home

I have now lived on my own for almost one year. This is the first time I have stepped out of the protected environment that was lovingly created by my parents and later, my college. For someone in the same age group as the owner of this blog, this is not something to be proud of.

I hate to admit it, but I really liked doing nothing at home. My parents would do all the household chores while I was busy with my life on the internet. Those were good days, but I would not recommend living like that to anyone. Ever since I moved out, I’ve had to learn many things at double the speed, and I really wish I had been more inclined to learn all those things back home.

Many of you will be unable to grasp the enormity of my so-called backwardness. I just have one example for you. By the time I bought my first packet of Bournvita, I was already past my teens.

But college afforded me a lot of luxuries denied to those living on their own. Reality hit when I moved into my first house. I was already swimming in the deep end at work. I was given a challenging assignment and would always return home late. They say you deserve some comfort after a tough day at work but I had none of that. I was on a low budget, but it mostly was poor house-hunting skills. My house was more of a shoebox—stuffy, dirty and cockroach-y.

I really am an extremist when it comes to these creatures. I believe that cockroaches are ugly, disgusting and must be killed. I bought the trusted Laxman Rekha one afternoon and painted the house with it that night. The house looked like a warzone the next morning, with at least a dozen of those foul creatures lying on their backs, past the last throes of their disgusting lives.

My next task was to get the house cleaned. Paying a housemaid for this was a little beyond my budget and hence, I set about doing it, with my roommate helping me out occasionally. It’s safe to say that we were not too successful and despite moving to a new place, we continued to live like pigs.

In the meantime, I bought myself a sofa-cum-bed. Till winters came along, I did not bother to sleep on it because I was too lazy to open and fold it every day. But then my mattress became so cold that I had to use the sofa-cum-bed to not die of frostbite. It has been a useful acquisition and I would recommend all working people to get themselves something like it.

My ever-caring mum had insisted on packing a kitchen full of utensils in one bag. Despite my loud protests, she made me lug it all the way to another city. Looking back, I really do not know how I would have managed to survive without them. After getting myself a gas connection and a burner, I began to cook. Thus, living costs fell sharply.

Cooking has been one of the most liberating talents I have acquired this year. Cooking and cleaning the house in the morning gives me some time to think along with the feeling of achievement. There is no better feeling than living in a house you have cleaned thoroughly or in eating the food you learned to cook (even if you manage it after making a thorough mess many times).

I can safely say that it kept me from going into a rut—a trap many of my colleagues have fallen into already. Every day I would face a different kind of culinary challenge and while the reward would be fairly edible most of the time, I really enjoyed having a good laugh at myself when the end product turned out to be a disaster.

They say Rome was not built in a day, neither was it built by one tireless man. No matter how much effort I put in maintaining the house, my lazy roommates made the task difficult. They would do it sometimes, often not thoroughly. I admit I am a little too picky about cleanliness, but I can assure you that it is not too difficult to achieve.

It’s been a year now and our house is much dirtier than it was when we moved in. Thankfully, we are now moving to a much better house and I plan to hand the cleaning to a housemaid once I get a raise. Hopefully, the next place will be better maintained.

Looking back, I can see how far I have come in under a year. Living on my own has been a rewarding experience. Would I recommend it? Yes, of course. Most of us long to go back home all the time. To make life bearable away from it, a little effort can go a long way in making your house feel like home.

Best of luck.

Yours truly,

A domestic bachelor