From Rest to Restlessness

 

In the North-East corner of the ‘kolai’ (portico/veranda) in my parent’s house in Kerala, there is a furniture that is most in demand for every generation of the family members. The easy chair - Charu Kasera. It was once an ubiquitous furniture in most houses in Kerala… however, now-a-days, I find it at few homes. The disappearance of the easy chair isn’t just about furniture—it’s about changing family dynamics, the evolution of leisure, and the way our lives have become structured differently.

The easy chair, often a cane or wooden recliner, or a foldable one with cloth,  with an extended leg rest, was once a fixture in Kerala, and also in maybe many other homes in India. It was more than just a piece of furniture—it was a throne of authority and relaxation, usually reserved for the eldest in the household. There was an unwritten rule: this was karnavar’s chair (an Hindi equivalent would be Dadaji’s Chair), and its occupation by anyone else was a transgression of hierarchy. It signified a time when age commanded respect, and leisure was an earned privilege.

Its slow disappearance signals a few things. First, the erosion of the patriarchal order within homes—not in an ideological sense, but in its spatial manifestation. As families have become more nuclear, and hierarchies less pronounced, there is no singular ‘head’ who claims the best seat in the house. The living room now belongs to everyone, and the idea of a dedicated "authority seat" seems almost outdated. The living rooms have sofas which is a democratised seating arrangement and anybody can occupy any seat (the cosy spots are taken on first come first basis)

Second, the nature of leisure has changed. The easy chair was meant for passive engagement with the world—reading the newspaper, watching the world go by, or dozing off after a heavy lunch. Today, leisure is more active, more occupied. People don’t just sit; they scroll, they binge-watch, they engage. The ergonomic office chair or the ubiquitous couch has replaced the easy chair, signalling a shift in how we consume relaxation—multi-tasking even in our downtime.

Third, life has become paradoxically less laborious yet more restless. The easy chair belonged to a time when physical exhaustion was common—a day of walking, commuting, or manual labor made reclining a necessity. Today, we are tired in different ways—mentally fatigued, perpetually stimulated, but not physically exhausted in the same way. We no longer sink into a chair after a long day; we sprawl on a bed, phone in hand, scrolling away fatigue rather than resting it.

In a way, the easy chair's absence is a silent indicator of how time itself is perceived differently. The elders who once occupied it were not in a hurry. There was a different relationship with time—a patience, a slowness that today feels almost alien. Leisure wasn’t scheduled or optimised, it just was.

And so, the easy chair has gone, quietly, without ceremony. No one threw it out in a fit of modernism; it simply became irrelevant. Perhaps, in its disappearance, it leaves behind a question—have we truly progressed in our leisure, or have we simply found newer, more anxious ways to fill our time?