Dear Diwan, We're Both Thirty Now

Aishwarya Shrivastav

I turn thirty this year. Which means, Diwan, you must be around thirty too.

Unlike the beds that came after you, you were never precious. You were built for whatever the day demanded. A place to sit, sleep, read the newspaper, peel peas, host guests, eat dinner, solve maths problems, cry quietly, or nap through a summer afternoon.

You have changed corners, houses, and cities with us. Wrapped in old chadars, balanced in moving trucks, arriving at new addresses with your familiar wooden arms and slightly sunken mattress. Every time someone said, "Put the diwan there," a strange house became ours.

When I was a child, my feet dangled beyond your edge. I lay across you after eating too many Dussehri aam, sticky-handed and sleepy, while the cooler rattled in the background. Now I am thirty, and my legs are longer, heavier, carrying the tiredness of jobs, cities, and growing up. Yet you still make room for them.

 A 30-year-old sisterhood with diwan.

Dadi slept on you too. My parents did for years when there wasn't enough space. Papa spread notebooks on you and tried to teach me maths. Before every move, I still lay all my clothes and doubts on you, as if you are part furniture, part witness, part advisor.

I wonder why people are so afraid of large women. The generous ones. The women with big laps, who take up space and offer it too. You remind me that largeness is not excess; it is capacity. It has room for surprise guests, afternoon naps, grief, mango stains, unfinished conversations, and all the side quests life keeps bringing to the door.

Looking at your worn wooden arms, polished smooth by thousands of passing hands, I wonder if growing older is simply this: carrying every version of a family and still having space left for one more.

Three generations of this house in one frame; my parents, the youngest kid, on the oldest bed.

Perhaps that is why I have loved you for so long. Not because you stayed. Neither of us did. We both changed cities, corners, and versions of ourselves.

But wherever life placed you, there was always space for one more person to sit down and belong.

Warmly

Aishwarya

*********

Objects of Our Affection is a series exploring our connections to the furniture and objects that make our spaces home. Through stories of tables, chairs, and that odd-shaped thing only you love, we celebrate the inanimate pieces that hold memory and witness our lives.

If you'd like to contribute your own story to this series, we'd love to hear from you. Micro-essays, poems, reflections, and fragments welcome. Write to us at hellothadi@gmail.com. Word limit 400.