A visitor who came home the other day kept her head bowed for a long time. Reverentially, I thought, impressed with the deep respect she was showing. After a good few minutes, she jerked her head up and exclaimed, ‘Your floor’s mosaic!’ Aha! So that was what she had been doing - scanning my floor minutely. She had been floored by my floor. I was delighted. Here at last was a connoisseur of flooring, a rare species.
‘Yes,’ I nodded my head vigorously. I could almost swear that appreciative comments about my antique floor were hovering on her lips. But my lip reading abilities were hopelessly off target. ‘Nobody has mosaic floors any more,’ were the sanctimonious words that followed, uttered with the faintest hint of a sneer in her voice. ‘But you just said my floor was mosaic,’ I said, quick to pounce on the flaw in the argument. She said she had meant that hardly any houses had mosaic floors.
‘Mosaic is passé,’ she said in a blasé tone. Turning her nose just a little in the air, she continued, ‘and it’s not even been polished lately.’ Ouch, she was right. On both counts. My floor’s common gray, black and white pockmark-like patterned mosaic is distinctly out of favour with interior decorators and has been so for many years now. That’s also why the floor wasn’t polished - the polishing experts, along with their floors, had disappeared without a trace.
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Floors have come a long way from the simple and the functional to the ornate and the extravagant. The intrusion of ‘lookism’ into the construction industry has led to highly polished and expensive floor tiles taking over from what Laurie Baker, the architect after nature’s own heart, used to advocate - humble but sensible floors made of mud and smeared with cow dung, or those made from rough stone, cement or terracotta...
From stone to mosaic floor tiles was just a short but expensive step. Variety began to flourish right under people’s feet as glazed ceramic decorative tiles, marble, polished granite and travertine tiles begged to be trod upon. The classy vitrified tiles, so popular now, have left careless walkers petrified and heavily bandaged; they are without doubt an orthopaedist’s dream.
I told her I liked my old fashioned unpolished mosaic; it wasn’t slippery and its design camouflaged the dust on it – two excellent reasons to retain the floor in all its faded glory. But she was unconvinced and not done with me yet.
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She lifted the curtain and scanned the garden. ‘You don’t believe in trimming plants, do you? Call that a garden? All overgrown and full of weeds!’ The contemporary emphasis on the natural look, of allowing plants to grow higgledy-piggledy suited my lazy approach to gardening perfectly. ‘A garden should sustain nature, help the eco- system, and, to borrow from Wordsworth, be “green to the very door”,’ I responded, sounding like a text book environmentalist. Wasted words of wisdom, for she wasn't listening.
She continued, quite the lawn ranger, ‘You’ve space for a lawn, but you let it go to seed. Just look at the grass!’ Her reference to seed and grass reminded me of Wimbledon. ‘For the cows,’ I said, ridiculously. ‘Remember, it’s Wimbledon time.’ I couldn't resist this non-sequitur. She looked perplexed. I decided not to elaborate upon Ivan Lendl’s famous “Grass is for cows” excuse for not winning Wimbledon. ‘Wimbledon? What’s Wimble done? Who, anyway, is Wimble? And cows? You keep cows?’ She sniffed delicately.
This was the time to tell her that the house right behind ours has a gobbar gas plant. I sprang it on her and she promptly rose to her feet, breathing out all the time. Biogas plants don’t smell; I tried to reassure her. Her one way breathing that sounded like an engine chugging out of the station made me anxious; I hoped she wouldn’t faint on my ancient floor or my weedy garden.
As she staggered out she noticed the pond, and remarked, ‘Covered by moss! What’s inside?’ Crocodiles, sharks and some piranhas, I wanted to tell her, but decided to stick to the truth. ‘Some guppies and more weeds. We found a snake in it too.’ She breathed out explosively as if she had applied the emergency brakes and scooted. I doubt if she’ll ever come back.
(khyrubutter@yahoo.com)
(A fortnightly column by the city-based writer, academic and author of the Butterfingers series)