Of Beds…………………and smells!
When I was a kid and went to a morning school I used to be a stubborn thing. My dad had a tough time to wake me up and I used to keep burying my nose deep into the pillow trying to sniff and smell when he kept asking me to leave the bed………………..I hunted for my granny’s smell. From a very young age I slept with her, and my childhood nights were spent, hugging her tight and listening to her stories. It was she who initiated me to the wonderful world of literature. She taught me Mahabharata and told me of the Treasure Island, I met Robinson Crusoe and cried for black beauty all in the warmth of her deep voice and reassuring hug.
And then as it happens with every adolescent, I grew irritable and unkind and rude and selfish as I grew up and left the cozy comfort of her bedside to demand for a separate bed. Now that I had started reading the books seemed to keep better company…………Alas ! I had forgotten that it was her words that made me pick up the first book that I had ever read and it was her genes that made me a book worm in the first place. Youth in all its fancy can be quite selfish you know, and I was surely not an exception. The smell had faded…………..
Then came high school and the bed ……..now turned into a hiding spot for the cordless phone ;for those unending nonsensical conversations with the high school sweetheart when everybody slept . It had by then become the bed of lies. The bed you denied to leave early because you stated that you kept awake all night studying but all you actually did was blow up your dad’s phone bills! And then came the day when the truth unfolded and you converted the bed into a pool of tears! You cried at your parents’ disciplinary locking of the phone and wished so hard that you lived a teenage in Kansas and not Kolkata……….The smell faded further…………..
And then the bed travelled miles away to a different city. It was college time and I was a grown up hostelite. The bed of gossip, the bed of bitching, the bed of all night long gal parties and the bed of sharing secrets. It was an exciting phase and a phase of bed piled with clothes in sizes that would make mom shriek with shock! The bed by then had stopped smelling at all, it was aseptic in a way, not unpleasant but not warm either.
Jobs were in place. A new bed was bought with own money and proudly shown off. It was big and shining and soft and tidy, but hardly left a mark. It was a bed of dead sleep after a long work day or a longer party night! It was a bed where I snored for the first time and a bed where I never dreamt. Life was getting complicated and so was I, dream was a thing of the past, it was a phase of rising high, competing, struggling, winning and failing, but never giving up and realizing with every passing day that the red riding hood inside was dying a slow death and making way for the Cosmopolitan chick who read Coelho and talked about the “Beats” and was no longer scared of the big bad wolf! On that bed innocence died forever!
And now the bed has doubled. It fits another adult, I call my husband who hugs me tighter than my granny and even tells me stories at times. It’s a bed where we have started dreaming again. It is a bed which has started smelling again!! A smell that makes you linger on and laze, a smell of familiarity , a smell of being there , a smell of sharing and a smell of being happy about it, sharing that is………..
However on those lonely nights when he is away for work or some other chore and I look at the fluffy pillow lying aside; I don’t know why , but I dig my nose deep and want to smell of my Granny’s bed. In the bouts of stress induced stupor I keep searching and sniffing to find the cozy, warm smell of that first bed where stories were born and dreams were made. Not that I don’t miss him or his smell but I miss the other even more because somewhere deep inside I know that even if I try the childhood smell is not coming back. Even during the Kolkata trips when I still share the bed with my granny we do talk and chit chat, but then we sleep off. She would not tell another story because she thinks I have grown out of it and I would not ask for another one because at her age I do not want to stress her. But somewhere we both know how much the stories would have actually helped. It might actually help me smell THE SMELL again, The smell of love , and warmth , of unadulterated care and innocence. A smell of days gone by that were the BEST, a smell that will always remain the dearest to me till my last breath…………
.jpg)