Where to next, mora?
I bought my first piece of furniture at the age of 23. It was for the one bedroom-kitchen I shared with my college-hostel-turned-roommate in an SRA building in Mumbai. It came with a single bed frame and a small wooden cupboard. A counter top served as the kitchen.
A foldable table doubled up as dining table and workspace. Attached to the wall, its singular leg tucked into itself to breathe space into the room. Long yellow mulmul curtains demarcated the kitchen from the everything-else-room.
The only absence we felt in our amply kitted out home was seating space. How do we use our table?
So one evening, S and I marched off to a row of cane shops outside one of the biggest masjids in Bandra. We wandered from shop to shop admiring mirror frames and cane lampshades. In the light of the soft shadows they cast, a twin set of moras found us. Sturdy and polished to a gleam. “100 kilo wazan se upar le sakta hai”, we were assured. It can double up as a ladder. And a standing stool to clean the fan - I made a mental note to self. That night, for Rs. 900, we brought home our moras, cushioned with red-and-yellow striped fabric. Our table found its companion. A place for us to gather as we chopped, kneaded, ate together and worked.
When it was time to pack up our home and return to student lives, we bequeathed the moras to my then boyfriend, now spouse, who was living in a similar home in Malad. The only thing he owned were three mattresses stacked one atop of another on which he slept. The moras found their second home. A place to sit by the kitchen window as coffee brewed. A resting spot for his laptop. A clothes horse. They wore many hats in their new home.
Five years later, we decided to get married and went about setting up our first home together. The moras turned into glass-topped side tables in our one-bedroom home in Andheri. A little scuffed now with its own stories to tell. So they remained for eight years in the two houses we lived in.
When we moved into our current home in 2020, Abbas wanted an upgrade. New side tables. Real ones. I was loathe to say goodbye. So the moras turned into a seating place for the plants that live with us. Sometimes it holds a jade palm. A variegated croton in shades of red, yellow and green. The gleam has worn off the cane but none of the sturdiness. Sau kilo ka wazan. Two decades on, it remains a fixture in the story of my home.
An object of my affection.
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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.
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