Stories

It is a double bed. I requested the hotel manager to replace the double with the single bed. A million times I decided to move out to a better place but the thought of the hypermarkets, stores, souks, branded restaurants nearby could never make me move out.

Above all, the bus stand opposite to my old shabby building was the prime reason for me to stay here. It offered me cheaper rides through the country. No driver refused to pick and drop me because of the location of the house.

Some times, through the window I could see the villagers bringing in their cattle to sell. The smell was bad in the air, still I refused to move out. Yesterday I moved the tables and rearranged the books. I will have to pay a lot to take the books back with me to India. After cleaning up the mess accumulated through the semester, I rested on my bed.

It was hot and I was sweating. Did those men and women sweat and smell? How could they? The summer might have taken all their salt and water and left only blood. I am bleeding, the smell of menstrual blood makes me sick. What did those women feel who bled due to miscarriage, premature delivery or delivery of a dead child on road. Oh what a loss!

I had never slept on the left side of the bed. One reason is that it is near the AC. One day they changed the AC as it was crying buckets. Till yesterday the other half of the bed had been used for dumping my books. On the right side of the bed I placed a single size mattress to sleep comfortably. On week days I hardly use my bed but because of the pandemic, the bed has turned into my work station. The dent on the choir mattress tells me something I didn’t notice at all. Haven’t weighed my self for a long time.

The increasing heat is becoming unbearable. It didn’t feel like living in an AC room. In the past few days, I woke up several times in the night to adjust the temperature, and fan of the AC but to no avail.

Last night while chasing a baby lizard I happened to place my foot on the other side and my foot went inside as if I fell on a soft, puddly, soggy road in the rainy season, except that the colour of the sheet was light green. The lizard jumped on the bed and happily fled along the borders of the green bedsheet while I stood hopeless with one foot on the right side of the hard mattress wrapped in pink sheet and the other dipped in the fluffy mattress. I had forgotten that it was a double sized comforter that sucked in my foot like Sahib Biwi Gulam’s Mina Kumari. The stick in my hand was saved from committing a brutal act.

The softness of the left side of the bed did not endear me more. But all is not hopeless, I realized it felt cozy on the green bedsheet. I gave up on the lizard hunt and gently pulled myself back to the right side of the bed.

This morning when I sat in the couch and relaxed in the cool breeze, I accidentally put my hand on the bed and felt the cool touch of green sheet. My hands worked hard on pushing away the books to the right side of the bed. I felt the dust in my fingers so I had to get up and get a fresh sheet to enjoy the cool breeze of the AC. Lying on my bed I caught sight of the dawn through the tinted glass window which I had never noticed in the last 3 years.

Side and shift matters.