The Bed

Yesterday was just another day... yet it was raining cats and dogs throughout... and the chill in the air was piercing… I had gone out to run some errands and was speaking to baba when he told that my grandma’s bed was sold off that day. Baba was very upset, as it was this bed that he had gifted to his mother with his first month’s salary. Mamma (as we used to call my grandmother) left us all 5 months ago... And with her all of our lives and routines changed... yesterday her bed was sold off and which carried so many memories of the past years. She is not with us... and even her most precious memory was lost too… But the grief was profound… Not for this loss of furniture... rather the loss of so many dreams and happy moments overpowered this grief.

My early memories of childhood was I and mamma on that bed… sleeping, eating, playing… everything… I still remember I used to bring chalks from school so that I could write on the bedpost... pretending I was the teacher… God knows till what age I played like this. The entire shine of the bedpost was damaged till baba repolished it. I remember the blue colored mosquito net which used to be hung over the bed at night. Ma and Baba would always say that they would never sell it off as it was of really good wood. Mamma, probably till the last time she was in Rihand slept on that… She would hide food items underneath her mattress…
So many tits and bits of memories… Some of us (like me) are sentimental fools... we gather the small precious moments and store it in lifeless things... and for the rest of our lives keep associating memories with them…

I never really visualized this day would come, the day when baba retires. I had been hearing about it for the past 2-3 years… This had been the deadline for a special event in my life… but life hardly runs the way you plan. To sell off the furniture was never dreamt of... or maybe there never were any plans... Maybe we always postponed all the planning.

Now there is no mamma to shout at… and her bed is gone for us too… people and things which had been part of your life for past 26 years suddenly disappear and you are supposed to live with that --- that hurts! I never really let her absence sink in my life but yesterday when baba told about that bed...I could not control myself...
Rains and tears were dripping down my face... I kept walking in the freezing rain but the pain would just not subside … I could visualize my Rihand and my childhood… the 5 of us – me, dada, ma, baba and mamma… the happy family… all gone… the very essence is long gone… all that’s left is smiling faces with hidden tears, hollow empty lives…the laughter, the fun all missing somewhere..
Yet we smile... I smile… Sometimes evade company... Sometimes pretend to be merry and life goes on like this for us now.

In the early morning hours when I push myself to sleep… I wonder…. Will this dark night ever pass? Will we ever see the dawn…?