Please be seated

Even if we are not interior designers or have zero interest in our surroundings, we do notice comfy furniture. Of course, we do not locate this visually so much as physically – our feet just take us there with a will of their own. We sink into an armchair or sofa, couch or futon. Immediately we know this could be heaven or this could be hell. It is a bodily experience, confirmed personally by our own body. That this seating arrangement is better than standing or lying down. That this is complete rest even as it frees up the mind to tackle what it must. Fancy is fancy, but cosy is ahhhh.

To be able to slump into a luxurious arrangement of well-placed cushions is a carnal event. The moan that escapes the recently seated, as he/she takes their weight off their feet, is heartfelt and almost sensual. Anatomical relaxation is underrated by the advertising community – we are told to be always on the go, pick up coffee from such and such café, be alert, be awake, type standing, etc. Even when they hawk furniture at us, they say, elegant, understated, royal, antique – all of which can translate into pain in the ass furniture, literally. For social repose, we must opt for an arrangement of limbs that, while being composed and sober, work in our favour.

Skeletal contortions, according to some quarters, are conducive to spiritual elevation. But sitting in the wrong position in the wrong place can give you muscular pain, mess with your mood, bring back bad memories, affect the psyche, kill the vibe… Best to combat the world from a position of leisure, even luxury, like the great Gatsby of the chaise longue. If Covid has made the work from home culture mandatory, then sit we must. If keeping butt on chair gets work done, then the chair's work is to keep the butt on it.

Where we earlier focused on the look of our drawing room, now we are going into the feel. Will this support my spine, we ask. Will this align hands to shoulders? Décor is so much more than what a stranger will surmise about our bank balance when he first walks into our drawing room. It is who we are whether in company or alone; that there is no gap between how we sit when the world is looking at us or not looking at us. We are cool that way.

Poets do get it right, perhaps because they too compose in a comfortable seating position by their desk, maybe with their feet up or tucked beneath them and their eyes dreamy, sipping hot tea from their favourite chipped mug.  Charles Wright says: ‘Three years ago, in the afternoons, I used to sit back here and try to answer the simple arithmetic of my life.’ Shuntaro Tanikawa says: One afternoon with the sky covered in thin clouds/I sit on a sofa/like a shelled clam.

Much is made of standing upright or running marathons or sleeping on the right mattress – but sitting around is what we do the most, and may we do it right. So, alone or in company, at home or cast out anywhere in the world, all we want is… one enormous chair, oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?