The Room under the Stairs

By Ashwini Shenoy

A coming-of-age piece that maps memory, class, and belonging.

I had lived in Pilikatte for twelve years, almost my entire life, barring the first six months at my grandmother’s house of which I have no memory. But it felt like I had lived in our house longer. I knew the house better than my own body. The body is a complex thing. Our house was as simple as they came. One living room that converted into a bedroom at night which my entire family shared. The floor space was just enough for three mattresses to be laid next to each other. A small ill-ventilated kitchen and an outdoor bathroom that we shared with two other families. There were three windows, two doors, and one cupboard in our house. There were thirteen patches in the walls, the scaffolding had cracked at seven places and our red flooring had a million craters that sometimes made me wonder if this is how it felt, landing on Mars barefoot.

I was ten when one day it struck me, out of nowhere, that my family was different from the others in the neighborhood. Unlike others, we did not live in a big house with a terraced roof and manicured gardens, but it made me sad when I realized that we did not even own the little house we lived in. We lived in a church compound. The priest, a kind old man, had hired my father to do odd jobs at the church. The most important job being digging graves. My mother worked as a maid and cook in some of the houses in the neighborhood. My parents although born into a different faith were grateful to our priest not just for the roof over our heads and the meager salary, he paid them but because he supported my education enabling the younger, naïve me to believe that we belonged to the same social class as my friends at school.

I think twelve is the age where the world stops being a playground and starts becoming a map. For a boy, it is the year the gossamer veil of childhood doesn’t just lift, it snags on the sharp edges of reality and tears. You begin to see the architecture of your life not as a home, but as a series of boundaries. I looked at the church, the graves my father dug, and the manicured lawns of my friends, and suddenly the air felt different. The light no longer blurred the edges of our poverty; it sharpened them.

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Within a few months, the chatter that used to fill my throat dried up. I migrated to the back of the classroom, seeking the shadows of the last bench where I could watch the world without being a part of it. When my teachers whispered to my mother, she didn't press me for answers. She simply watched me with a gaze that had grown tired long before I was born. She knew that once you see the cracks in the red flooring for what they really are, no amount of pretending can make them disappear.

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Although sad, I did not feel lonely. If anything, I felt relief when other boys stopped inviting me to their birthday parties and gathering. I no longer had to find excuses for not attending them and burning a hole in my father’s pocket. It was around this time I began looking for new friends – in books, animals, trees, and people who did not seem to notice that I did not belong.

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Mr. and Mrs. Prabhu, our immediate neighbors were among the first people I befriended and grew comfortable with. They were five times my age but that did not bother me. They were kind people who let me play in their garden, offered me lemonades and biscuits on sunny afternoons, taught me about different plants, and let me borrow books from their home library. I spent all my free time there, sometimes taking my homework to their garden and completing it under the share of the mango tree.

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Then one day Mrs. Prabhu brought home a stray puppy and named her Rani. Rani had been abandoned on the street even before turning a month old and had fallen sick with a skin infection. The Prabhus took great care of her, and I helped them with whatever I could. Within two months she had transformed into a tiny, energetic furball who destroyed everything soft and chewy in the house.

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Six months later, Mrs. Prabhu decided Rani needed a comfortable place to sleep. Mr. Prabhu suggested clearing the space under the stairs and using it as a kennel. Before this, I had never paid much attention to the space under the stairs. Perhaps because it had always been full of paint buckets and gunny bags filled with coconut husks. Mr. Prabhu had put up a wall on one side, with a round window from which Rani could see the road. At the front, there was a grill gate that was kept open so that Rani could go and come as she wished. The room ( I refuse to call it a kennel) had enough space for five grown dogs or one almost-grown human to live peacefully. It made me a little envious of Rani.

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I played with Rani every evening after school. The little dog with floppy ears and a bushy tail had become my best companion in the neighborhood. Sometimes when the Prabhus were away, I would scoot next to Rani in her room and look out of the round window. I imagined living in the room under the stairs with all my books and the old radio, listening to music, or reading my favorite books while watching the rain. It would be a place I could call my own, which I would not have to share with anyone except maybe with Rani.

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For many years, the room under the stairs was my escape from the world of poverty, shame, and helplessness. It was a safe place that understood the turmoil going on in a young boy’s mind and empathized with it. On really bad days, when I felt there was no hope, I cried and prayed in that little room away from the tired and helpless eyes of my parents whom I did not wish to see me in that state. Rani gave me space and watched me with unjudging eyes.

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Now at thirty, I have my own house. We have four rooms for three people (a ratio that would have baffled my younger self), shiny white floors, bright patchless walls, and a study room that is all my own. We don’t live in the same neighborhood anymore. Mr. and Mrs. Prabhu passed on long ago and so did Rani. The house has succumbed to the modern era; the soft pink walls have been bleached white, and the wild, fragrant garden has been paved over with cold interlocks. Yet, the room under the stairs remains: a small, stubborn pocket of the past. The new owners have stuffed it with the wreckage of a life: broken chairs, rusted tools, things deemed too useless to keep but too heavy to throw away.

On really good days when the business does better than expected, I take a walk to our old neighborhood and stop in front of the house. I watch the room for a few minutes, imagining younger me and Rani in it listening to the old radio and watching the pre-monsoon shower. It helps me break free from the ugly clutch of arrogance that accompanies wealth. And on bad days – of which there are now few – I again take a walk and look at the room to remind myself of how far I have come and how beautiful and blessed life is.

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I stand at the gate and watch that little round window. I see myself in the shadows, sitting cross-legged with Rani, the low hum of the radio mixing with the scent of wet earth. Standing there, the suffocating gloss of my present life peels away. I am reminded that the boy who once envied a dog is now the man I am today, and that the most beautiful things I ever owned were the things I didn't own at all.

Ashwini Shenoy is an Indian author best known for her debut novel, Shikhandini - Warrior Princess of the Mahabharata (Leadstart, 2019) which received critical acclaim worldwide and is translated into Indian Languages like Tamil and Marathi. Her other novels are Gift of Life (2021) and In the Golden Mountains (2024). Her experimental short stories have been published in numerous national and international magazines like Kitaab, MeanPepperVine and Sahitya Akademi journal.