The poetry of space (Excerpts)

Ajay Kelkar

For much of my career, I never thought about the spaces I occupied at work. They seemed incidental—merely functional, a container for the more pressing tasks. But if we truly consider it, we spend nearly 80,000 hours working: 40 years, 50 weeks a year, 40 hours a week. That’s 80,000 hours in spaces that nurture or drain us, often without us even noticing.

I had moved from a fashion-forward retailer to a bank, so the attire changed to blue-grey shades and blue-grey, with a tie to boot. But so did the workspace. Compared to the open plan, bustling with color energy, it transformed into white walls with standard assembly-line furniture.

It was a Friday, I remember & I was in early to get a head start on the day. The office floor was being cleaned & it was slippery, but I walked fast nevertheless. Before I knew it, I had slipped & fallen, hitting my neck on the side of a table on my way down. A large gash just below the carotid artery led to a massive gush of blood. Colleagues hurried toward me, held the injury, and rushed me to Jaslok Hospital. I knew the banking world could be cutthroat, but this went too far! Anyway, I survived the tumultuous entry into the bank. Forever after that, each time I created an office space, I examined the table edges closely!

Years later, at Cequity, I found myself in a similar place—physically and emotionally. There was a small meeting room with a view of the gulmohar trees that always seemed to be in bloom. I loved that room. It became my refuge, where I could think clearly about what mattered most. I remember sitting there, looking out at the Gulmohar tree-lined street below, as I wrestled with another big decision: to leave the company I had co-founded and step into an entirely different future. The view outside steadied me and grounded me in nature’s rhythms, giving me a sense of strength to take the call my heart was telling me to take.

What power do these spaces hold over us? Do they provide a sanctuary from the world outside, allowing us to process contradictory thoughts in familiarity? Or is it simply that they will enable us to make leaps of faith that the world asks of us?

Can physical spaces be where we keep our earliest emotional and psychological furniture?

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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.