My Middle Class Lens: Separate Rooms? Nah, We Sleep And Dream Together

I don’t remember when I slept alone in a room at my home. Since childhood, I have been sleeping next to my parents and siblings in the same room. I never got a separate room for myself because it was just not common in our middle-class family. Togetherness is defined as less space between each other in the bed.

Middle-class families believe in making out the maximum from the minimum. They spend less on luxuries and more on basic needs. In fact, the definition of luxuries is different for middle-class families. Luxury doesn’t lie in big birthday parties or weddings, but in good food made during these days. Luxury doesn’t lie in buying expensive clothes but in purchasing them during a sale.  Similarly, luxury is not in staying in separate rooms but in sleeping in the same room which has the facility of a good fan, AC or room heater. Only one room has a good and big bed enough to adjust the entire family.

Middle-class families avoid spending money on ‘unnecessary’ things when they can adjust to the limited options. Having separate rooms is a luxury that many middle-class families either can’t afford or consider a waste of money. Especially in Indian families, having separate rooms is not common. Only in well-to-do families, you can see that kids too have a room of their own.

But in middle-class families, every person in the family sleeps together, close enough to know when one wakes and how much one snores. They watch TV in the same room, have dinner in the same room and discuss the day with heavy eyes in the same room. After they doze off, the dreams too are shared by everyone as they see each other.

It is said that the most private time of a person is the night when they unwind and sleep. During the sleeping hours, a person forgets the consciousness of being around people. They behave and do things that they would never want others to know. But in middle-class families, there are no such secrets. Every person in the family knows about each other’s habits and conditions. Whether a person snores, kicks or speaks in sleep, whether a person brushes before sleep or not and much more. Is this intimacy possible in other houses?

Many would say that the lack of separate rooms is a lack of privacy in a person’s own house. Well, it is if we consider privacy in terms of space. In middle-class families, secrets have no space. But if one wants privacy, one will have to live a dual life - one which is befitting the class and one that matches the heights of their dreams. Because of the same reason, people in middle-class families are good at keeping secrets even though the secret life doesn’t have a long timeline.

Being a middle-class person myself, it is very difficult for me to keep secrets from my parents. But I am ready to put that privacy at a cost to attain the togetherness I gain while I sleep between my parents, holding their hands. It is this moment that I will once be left missing forever. Secrets can be created again but time spent with family cannot.

I am not generalising this feeling. Many would differ. Many would say they miss the freedom of privacy which is understandable. So ">middle-class families need to change one thing in attaining this togetherness - allow people to have a private life. Having a private life is not just about having a private room. Having a private life is about doing things in life without the fear of being caught. And middle-class families need to give that freedom to their family members. Then the togetherness will become more cohesive.

Views expressed are the author's own.

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