Spaces affect me in a peculiar way. Inhabiting a bit of closed space for too long and letting my mind travel in and out and back again makes me feel that that bit of space that I inhabit is not entirely real nor unreal and time honestly does become fuzzy. However this is not a rambling piece on space and time.
For almost a year I've been wanting to re-paint my bathroom. I know not whether it is kosher to talk about one's bathroom on a public blog but it is a western bathroom with a propah shower stall and all other regular amenities and my bathroom is a curious space where time and space and imagination and reality have collided on multiple occasions, and very often I sit (on the cool and sometimes warm tiled floor), think, talk within, read, drink drinks of various flavours and hues, smoke and listen to music. And so my bathroom has been a rather special space for me and I spend time there.
On Saturday while sitting there and looking at the questions to put in for an exam I was gripped by the intense need to paint it and I finally got around to painting it and all through the night. I had a big tub of white paint and some small jars of coloured paints. The tub of white paint had become leather-rubber - having spent the better part of last year in the cold storage room which houses odds and ends and the dryer. I waited for it to resemble paint but since it failed to become a miracle I set out to buy some white paint and I did (alongwith a quart of red paint). And then in the night there were three walls all painted and done and the ceiling as well, and in close to an hour. But then a single shelf, the door, and the archway (yes, my bathroom has an archway - a rectangular archway...) took almost four hours (I'm telling you - something funny happens with time in that space). I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the clock. But being adamant and stubborn sometimes has its benefits. No sleeping till the bathroom was painted and cleared of all junk that it has been housing because I've been storing it. As I looked at the archway I got out the new red quart of paint (which had a fancy name to it: Liquorice. The white tub simply said, "Frost"), and so the archway - parts of it were slapped and coated with a vivid red. Another coat of paint was applied to the walls and all, and a fair spray mists and streaks of paint I realised later had flew onto my head while doing the ceiling (which thank heavens was low enough for me to just about reach with the extended roller brush). That done the bathroom was scrubbed down clean and the junk removed. (A bit of fine-tuning with colour and space is what remains, which I will attend to in bits.) Later on in the morning I lit lots of small and medium candles and was feeling quite pleased...it now dazzles. That space. But there's still something funny that happens there. Something with space and time and God-knows-what-else...
