“Women Need Spaces Where They Are Not Needed- Finding My Morisaki Bookshop”

 

While reading More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, I realised that perhaps we all are in search of Morisaki shop kind of space in all our lives- a place that asks for nothing except our presence. For Takako in the novel, it was a secondhand bookstore tucked inside Jimbocho. For me, it was a reading room in our community, where time softened, responsibilities loosened, and I slowly returned to myself.

ikr, there is too much of me in the picture. However, i believe my friend managed to click a good one. 😜 

    Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own wanted every woman to have a room of her own and some financial support for them to write fiction. The demand for a private space is indeed an ask for autonomy – that marked freedom and economic independence. However, in the current scenario, for contemporary mothers the Woolfian space can be interpreted in a different way-women might want a space away from home – which lets them be by themselves, having no demands or responsibilities. one such place was the reading room in our community. My version of Woolfian room is where a temporary refuge is offered with no expectation in return.

    When I wrote acknowledgements for my thesis, I expressed my gratitude towards the place. After reeling in postpartum, the reading room offered me a safe, comforting and productive space. Since then, my mood lifted. Every day, I waited to hand over my domestic responsibilities so I could flee to the place. I studied for my exams, did my research, edited my poetry collection, wrote blogs and poems, immersed myself in books and did a lot more in such space.

The Reading Room❤

    Packing  the essentials in a bag that was handed down to me by Kalyan – Laptop, charger, the book that I read, a google diary that has all my todo things and pointers, highlighters, notepad, pen pouch, a cloth bag (incase I had to do a errand In the way) sunglasses, screenglass, headphones,  water bottle, some nuts to munch, lunch (3 boxes at it though, there is a board at the entrance that clearly says ‘no outside food’ but I pack from house right, doesn’t count), I begin to delve in my world.

    I don’t necessarily do productive things everyday, somedays I will be guilty of leaving Thulir, I will check on her, look at her photos, writedown the things I had to do at the house upon returning. Somedays I will wander across the villas, grab a sneakpeak of their home interior, some time I will just gawk at others.

    The place had no demands from me and that’s why I like it.  I will wear whatever I want and do things as I please. The space was neither judgmental nor speculative. I imagined that the room murmured, “No time pressure, no expected presence, exist as you please.”

    Below the reading room is a café which offered the space for my indulgence. I will drink hot chocolate on happy days and a lemon mint drink on exhaustive days and when I am health conscious, I will drink black tea. I devour their pastries and convince myself later by eating an omelette.

    Having said that, my epiphany happened somewhere along my acquaintance with More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, by Satoshi Yagisawa. (A sequel to Days at the Morisaki Bookshop -  here's my blog about it) Takako, the protagonist learns to navigate her emotions, as she tries to standby her friend's trouble and process her sorrow better by valuing her connect with the bookshop and protecting the space by valuing and celebrating it.  

This aspect resonates with the theorists who emphasize on the psychological significance and influence of a physical setting. In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bacherald proposes that spaces become emotional and imaginative shelters- which contain our memories, longing and contribute towards the process of becoming. similarly, the bookshop heals Takako by offering solace and safe space. She comes out of her heartbreak, resolves to act upon her will and continues to care and treat the place as sacred. At a difficult time, she communicates with the space “I turned to look back at the bookshop and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back.” Then I walked away.” (Yagisawa, 148)  Morisaki Bookshop offers refuge to Takako and so does my reading room to me. 

Like the Morisaki Bookstore, my reading  room did not transform me completely nor did I achieve something great but it simply held me gently as I tried to gather myself again. And maybe that is what certain spaces do—they do not ask us to become anything, they merely allow us to be.