The Bed

I liked the way Anant brought home the idea of ...... of how he couldn't leave his bed which, initially he thought was going to challenge his Autjority of the household The following posts can be viewed at http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz The Bed It was just a bed. A four-post wooden bed. Two days before my marriage, as I came back from office, I saw these two carpenters busy in assembling this bed. It was a teak wood bed, ornate, with small mirrors and quite big in size. It had displaced everything in my room, including my single bed and it seemed that the bed was waiting to swallow the whole room. The carpenters, while assembling it explained to me that they had taken 3 months to make this bed, with all that carving and making the bed suitable for ‘Bitiya Rani’ and her things in the those built-in boxes underneath. Bitiya Rani! And what about me, I couldn’t dare ask? I wanted to peep inside the boxes to see if anything was hidden there but they were empty. As I came out of the room, my mother gave me that meaningful and amused kind of smile. I knew that my dear father-in-law had not sent a bed but a Trojan horse into my room, our house, my life, and my existence. I knew it. Through this piece of dead wood, he plans to send his dear daughter into my bedroom, our house and slowly take kabja over the whole place. Our lives. I know these girls; they all do this kind of tricks. Just like the camel and the tent- first the head, then the neck and then the whole body. Oongli pakad ke pahuncha pakad leti hain yeh ladkiyan. No way! I won’t let her usurp my authority and my exclusive domain. I wondered if this decision to get married was correct or not; looking from the way things were shaping, I didn’t think so. The bed had occupied the prime real estate in the house and certainly in my bedroom. I didn’t sleep in it that night. As I slept in the other room, I dreamt of the bed changing into an alien spreading its four tentacles slowly but surely all over my house. The mattress was delivered the next day and with mom’s red bedcover over it, it surely looked a lot less menacing, but still like a Chinese dragon; a red fire-spewing dragon with expansionist designs. A day later, the bed changed itself into a shaadi-ka-storehouse with all those guest occupying every inch of our house, including my room. Cellophane-wrapped wedding presents with some carrying the Christmas design or a Happy Birthday written on them, hold-alls waiting to burst, attaché cases with cloth cover on them, milk bottles with infants attached to them, sarees in various stages of packing/unpacking, shagun-ka-samaan with Satiya inscribed in red geroo, laddoo boxes with miniature Ganesh statuette on them, empty jewellary boxes with their silken undergarments, Raymond suit pieces with names written with a sketch pen, fruits waiting to rot, gifts exclusively meant for passing them on- I was jealous that the bed had so brazenly assumed such an important and an all-encompassing status overnight. In our house. And made a place so quickly for itself in our lives like a jinn out from his bottle in the form of a new boy-servant. ‘Hukum, mere aaka’, it seemed to say. And without my explicit permission. How dare it! I hated the bed. After two night, the bed changed into a bookshelf. On top of it, I found a silk, gold and diamond studded book, surrounded by motiya, red roses and hand-plucked petals. I was pushed in my room by my sisters and bhabhi. Not even mandatory and filmy ‘Devarji, jaldi nahi karna’. Just go! The room smelled of mithai, fruits and flowers. I looked at the book. What is this book all about? These two are in conspiracy- the bookshelf of a bed and the book. I was too tired, mentally empty and had no desire or patience to read this book. Any book. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I was mesmerized by its smell, the newness of the book, which reminded of those we used to buy in summer for our next class and keep near our bedside till the schools opened; or, like the smell of that new car, straight from the showroom. I hesitatingly removed the silk cover, open the book hurriedly with a boyish curiosity, unstuck some chipke-huey pages. I just wanted to read the book and reach to the end as quickly as possible, to know what is written on that last page and to unload my excitement. It was a small book with two pages only- the first and the last. The first page was entitled welcome and the on last page was written, come again. I kept the book in my arms and slept. The bed watched us silently. Some days passed, or was it months, I don’t know. The bed became an explorator’s dream, an archaeologist’s temptation. It beckoned me to find out the mysteries of those hillocks, rivulets, ravines and the springs that smell of life. The bed had changed into a valley of flowers, a thin mountain spring that emanates and confronts us suddenly on the hair-pin bend of the road and when you stop to taste its life-sustaining water, it continues to flow with a gurgle, totally unmindful of your presence, into the deep crevices in those perennial bushes below. Sometimes, the mirrors in the bed would reflect those dancing figurines from Khajuraho, trying to please kaamdev. The bed became a chameleon- changing its appearance with the change of seasons, woolen blankets, mosquito nets and chenille coverings. I could see a small sapling trying to break the wooden ground of the bed. Was it love? Before I could even explore fully to my boyish delight, our two incomplete halves became one to create another one. Suddenly, she was occupying the space between two of us and yet, by some mysterious alchemy, some sorcerer’s magic, some out-of-syllabus law of chemistry that I had skipped in my school, she was joining us like the co-valent bond; she was the O between the our two H. H-O-H. The bed had changed itself into a nursery where, most of the time, she would find that space right between our two hearts, now ‘idling’ in unison like some All India permit holder truck driver’s automobiles by the roadside dhaba. Every night, and on days too, the bed would remind us of that new life and we would be attracted to it like an helpless iron file to the magnet. Like some hungry insects to the life-light. Involuntarily. Hypnotically. Naturally. Almost like zombies in a trance. And then, we left the bed, but we somehow knew we would return to it. The bed remained in our hearts and when we came back to it, the bed had somehow expanded, anticipating the growing need to accommodate all four of us. The bed had now become a playground, a dining table, a kiddies wrestling arena, a toy box and our Fort Knox, where all our worldly wealth was right there itself in the form of those two. More than all the money and power on the earth. Making the decision to have children was to decide forever to have our hearts placed outside our bodies. And we didn’t even take that important decision consciously. It just happened and like beggars on Diwali night, we watched from a distance in awe, stared at God’s fireworks- with admiration, with jealousy and yet, with eternal gratefulness to Him. And suddenly, we were conjoined to them; they wake, we wake, they eat, we eat, they sleep, we sleep. The bed had become our prison and we, its willing and chained life-timers. At times, when kids were not well, the bed would become a bed-of-nails fit for an Indian yogi only and every moment would stretch itself into eternity. Our hearts in our mouths, prayers on our lips and tears in our eyes, we waited for that difficult moment to pass, the upheavals to subside. Or, when mom was in those last months. A drop of pin would wake us up and I would rush to find out if she needed anything, while the nurse slept. And, the bed will become Bhagwadgita and ask me to stop crying and be at peace with the laws of nature- that Atman was trying to changes its outer covering only. What comes must go and this too shall pass, it spoke like a sage. And, I would keep my weary head on the bed to wake up the next minute, fearing the worst. Is she breathing? Is she still there? What to do? The sand clock was emptying fast The bed watched us writhe in anguish, pain and helplessness like a mute spectator, offering no solutions, just solace. Maybe, the bed knew all the answers to all of my silly questions. But, I wasn’t even asking any. The bed had become the barometer of my emotions; I have fought many a battles and realized to my surprise that all those I won, I lost and those I lost- turned out to astonishing victories. As I shed my clothes, my vanity, my ego, my false pride, my worldly everything, and with my weary soul and body- defeated, punished, bruised and hurt, the bed became Tiger balm, that druid’s magic potion which not only cures but also provides sustenance to fight- for another day. I learnt never to bring anger or bitterness to this bed and to bury in it my small secrets and victories, written in passion. The bed has always been my box seat on which I have seen many a movies and laughed and shed tears while she sleeps peacefully, oblivious of naughty Sid’s inner turmoil, Gump’s innocent queries or even ET’s magical finger reaching to cure the human child’s hurt; It becomes a snack bar to satiate my sudden desire for munchies and coffee; a round-table for family meetings where we have discussed many an important issues of life; a card table where we cheated and played ‘kot-pees’ and ‘3-2-5’. I have traveled far and wide. Slept on expensive beds in 5-star hotels, air-conditioned coaches with complimentary sheets and blankets, standing or sitting in a general compartment’s bare wooden seats and much-scarce railway platform benches. But everywhere, I have yearned for peaceful sleep like that in my own bed. My slave bed, my pillow and my part of territory- my feudal instincts find peace in this very limited space of my bedroom. Here I can be me. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. These days, I sometimes find her looking into its innards of the bed for her past, knitted into small clothes and sweaters. There is a glint of future in her eyes, which she somehow wants to fit into this past. On seeing me, she packs her tears and her hopes with the naphthalene balls into those kiddy clothes. As I leave the sanctuary of this bed to explore and measure distances, I wonder if this is my ‘Do Gaz Zameen’ that Emperor Zafar so eloquently yearned for? Is it my casket where my bandaged mummy rests? Is it just a bed? Is it just a four-post wooden bed? http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com Presented to you by Shwetank shekhar http://shwetank.shekhar.tripod.com