Home is our abode, we go back to reset, recharge, and rejuvenate, be it big or small. It is one of those places where the mind is most at ease, and we look forward to spending time with our family and making the most out of it.While we have a habit of measuring a good home by how huge it is, by the number of rooms, the square footage, the size of the hall we can fill with guests, but comfort has never really obeyed a tape measure. A house can be roomy and still feel hollow, or quite small and still feel like the warmest place a person knows.Some of the happiest homes are located in the most impractical places. They are old, oddly shaped, crammed up in neighbourhoods, and passed down across generations.One such space is Jagdish Sailor’s home in Gujarat’s Surat, which is quite small but full of warmth.
Photo: @iamsuratcity/ Instagram
A street of narrow homes
In the Rander area of Surat, in Gujarat, more than 80 ancestral houses have unique dimensions that seem almost impossible to live in.The street is mostly home to the area’s fishing community, families who have stayed there for generations rather than move somewhere larger and further from the water. Rander itself sits on the bank of the Tapti (also called the Tapi) River, which gives these homes a soothing view from their terrace.
Meet Jagdish Sailor, who lives in one such narrow home
One of these houses belongs to Jagdish Sailor, and it is narrow even by the standards of its neighbours. According to a video shared by BBC Global Women on Instagram, the home is so narrow that if you stretch both arms out, you can touch the walls on either side at the same time. Its width is just 1.2m, while its length runs to roughly 25m.Despite all that tightness, it is a complete home. The Sailor family says it has a seating area, a kitchen, and an office-cum-bedroom on the first floor, with the roof opening out to a view of the river Tapi. Four generations of the family have lived here in turn, which says more about the place than any home’s size can.
But why did the family stay for that long?
The obvious question is whether anyone could truly be comfortable in so little space, and the family’s answer is a firm yes. The Sailor family insists the home is very comfortable and peaceful, and they prefer its closeness to the river over roomier accommodation elsewhere.They have found ways and means to live happily in the home. Only five people can eat at one time, the family says, yet the same house has hosted many festivals and even weddings over the years. According to them, the narrowness has never crowded out the celebrations; it has only made them more tightly and more fondly, packed.
