After navigating the in-betweenness, the chance to be “in place” has enabled me to cohabit, in its truest sense
A view from the balcony, before the sun rose. Pic/Rosalyn D’Mello
Since May, when, as a consequence of mentorship duties at Ocean Space, I was offered an apartment in Venice for the three-months of my term, I have felt itinerant in terms of workspace. August and September involved a lot of travel, and in October I received the keys to my apartment in Innsbruck as part of my residency at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen. Inhabiting that workspace occurred simultaneous to our gradual shift into our new rented apartment in Tramin, across the road from my in-law’s place, which was our home since we moved to Italy in June 2020. You can only imagine the sense of dislocation my body has encountered as I have navigated all this in-betweenness. It is a miracle indeed that I have been functional through all the back-and-forth which often made me miss the idyll of our 2020 lockdown life.
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The recent lockdown imposed in Austria definitely offered me a sense of relief. Since most museums and cultural institutions were shut, it made little sense for me to travel to Innsbruck. The rate of COVID-19 transmission was also so alarmingly high, I felt apprehensive meeting friends and acquaintances. It seemed wiser to remain in place, focus on my Italian A1.1 course and the other significant commitments I’d been nursing on my plate.
I have genuinely enjoyed the comfort of waking up and falling asleep every night in our apartment, especially as we transitioned from autumn to winter and observed Orion make its appearance in the night sky. Moving has been a steady process for us, because we had the luxury of not having to bring all our stuff in at once. We spent September making a list of essentials and deciding what we wanted to spend money on and what we could ask family and friends to give us from whatever they may have had to spare. Our biggest investment involved kitchen knives. We spent a small fortune on fabulous knives that will never know bluntness. The apartment came furnished with beds, a sofa-cum-bed, a lovely arm chair, a dining table with chairs, and other basic kitchen things, like a stove, oven and fridge.
The bathroom had a washing machine to boot, and so, we definitely saved money because we didn’t need to start from scratch. I decided to convert the spare room into my work room, positioning my writing desk in front of the window which lies above me, so mostly, when I am seated, I see only the sky. But the living room and the kitchen share space with each other, and one of the first things I did when we received the keys to the apartment was to take off the sheer curtains so that we have unbridled access to the Southern view of the valley. When you enter the apartment you have a very clear sense of where you are located in relation to the mountains and the river. The top floor vantage offers us panoramic views. It is a source of immense joy and pleasure to wake up when it is dark outside and then watch for those magic minutes when the sky is saturated with pink and red hues and the horizon appears majestic. I watch the sun travel along the length of sky and we enjoy watching the moon rise from behind the mountains.
The last month has offered me the comfort of a routine, however hectic and scattered. I often recalled something a close friend once said to me when I had told her about my decision to marry my partner so that being together would be easier considering the cross-continental, long-distance nature of our first year. She said she wondered how we would feel about each other once we actually lived together. Until September, all the instances of cohabitation had been intoned with a temporariness, like during the lockdown in Delhi in March 2020 when we spent almost three months together, the most intense we’d ever had the opportunity of spending until then. Despite the bizarreness of the situation, we enjoyed each other’s company tremendously and found ourselves taking care of each other with a diligence we hadn’t even known we’d had within us. It ended up being a productive time because we had each other’s backs. We exercised regularly, spent time with him teaching me German, cooked together, read, laughed, watched movies, and focussed on the most urgent task at hand, at that point in time, which involved consolidating all my things so that I could move out of the apartment as scheduled by end of May since I could no longer afford to keep paying rent.
So really, it has been since September that we have really had the chance to know what it’s like for the two of us to really be cohabiting a place that is invested with futurity, sharing household chores and expenses. I have to say, it has been a delight. But much of it because we are both responsible adults who share the labour of housework equally. We intuitively chose the tasks that cater most to our individual strengths. I am extremely efficient and resourceful in managing the kitchen while he excels at housework. He ensures our apartment is spotless. I ensure we are well-fed and our apartment well-stocked. We offer each other access to personal solitude which allows us to enjoy our time together. It is truly amazing how empowering it can be to be with someone who not only respects and loves you but who always meets you half-way and offers you his attention.
Every day I feel glad I didn’t settle for anything less than this generous, kind, and nurturing mode of loving.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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