BENGALURU:Friends, Indian, country people… the moment we have all been waiting for is here. The big blue box famous for flat packed beds, wardrobes and sundry things you never knew you needed is going to open in Hyderabad this month. I am waiting with bated breath for my idli stand to get a Scandinavian upgrade, and an impossible to pronounce name. (Långstjälkad röd ros?) I can’t wait for the day when I too can go to ‘just buy some tea towels’ and return home with a Billy bookshelf, two bags of tea light candles, cute vases that look like milk bottles and storage containers for my storage containers.
The world is full of possibility now.
We too too can look forward to spending their weekends traipsing around a massive warehouse, dragging our whining children as we compare the merits of a bergstopp bed versus a sjuksköterska. We can wander from one beautifully appointed set room to another and imagine ourselves living in such spaces. Industrial but with a touch of whimsy added by that sju saker pendant light. Our children too will colour, draw and play with blonde wooden blocks in their shabby chic bedrooms. Because kids in Ikea decorated homes don’t want screen time. Instead, they’re forever creatively occupied in their striped pyjama bottoms and whimsical animal t-shirts.
I too want this life. Even if I have to assemble it myself. Even if after spending hours looking at a manual that insists I have been provided with screws, cam locks, dowels and Allan keys I realise that all I have been given are the keys to hell. Because we all know that after assembling, re-assembling, threatening to divorce your partner who is not participating (because ‘Baby, I’m not good at this stuff. You’re so much more left brained than I am’) you might have assembled your Bartendern häller upp en fatöl footstool, but you will also have six dowels, two cam locks and three assorted screws left over.
And you know you’re not meant to have anything left over. You wonder what step you missed but are too tired to care. Plus there’s a divorce lawyer to hire. So you surreptitiously put the spare pieces at the back of junk drawer and forget all about them. Till you find them a couple of years later when you’re spring cleaning and think ‘Ha! The stool is still going strong. I don’t need these anymore’ and you throw them in the bin. Of course the stool will collapse the next day.
I believe that these years of folly are behind me now. I can now face Ikea with renewed strength and self belief. You know why? Because I’ve spent a crap load of money on Lego, and if my kids can assemble a replica of the Millennium Falcon with Lego, goddamn it they can put together their own FLÄRDFULL bunk bed.
So, happy shopping India. It’s time to unleash your inner DIY maverick. The one you always knew existed deep down inside you, which the Indian education system squashed. But remember, there’s no shame in keeping your local carpenter on speed dial. Just in case.