Bed Is Where My Head Is
For many years, it was a struggle finding a bed to
sleep on in my house. Every night, I would have to
look around to see if there was an unoccupied bed in
one of the rooms that I could sleep on. Sometimes, it
would help that I slept off while watching TV in the
living room, and then my dad, or older brother, or
one of the uncles would lift me and drop me on some
bed. The next morning I would get reprimanded for
putting them through the agony. It never really
occurred to me to complain that I had no permanent
bed to sleep on. It was almost an absurd thing for me
to ask for... like a kid demanding his own car. For
one thing, I didn't see my brother or cousins
demanding a bed. I didn't know how they dealt with
it. It seemed like a thing to figure out on your own
and I clearly wasn't smart enough. So, I was both
sheepish about this ploy of mine where I acted like I
fell asleep while watching TV, and at the same time
proud of outsmarting them.
For a few months I used to sleep in my grandfather's room, except for the few days that his brother, or some other relative visited us!
If I was tired of looking for a room, I would knock on my parents' door in the middle of the night and ask if I could sleep next to them. Mom always thought it was because I wanted to snuggle with her, and would choke up with motherly affection. When mom's maternal instincts kick in, she can give the melodramatic soaps a run for their money! But soon the halo of maternal love would fade and give way to her whining about this becoming a routine. Dad would then arrange for a place for me to sleep and all balance would be restored! (at least for a few days until I was forced to go back to my nomadic existence and this cycle would repeat itself again and again)
Then came the festivals and functions. You would think having a house full of guests would make my life hell. But, working out where I would sleep was the easiest during this time. Come night, when it was time to go to bed after all the festivities, the living rooms and studies (yes, we had multiple studies and also many empty, unused rooms) would be transformed into sleeping areas, with dharis (quilts) spread out all over the floor to accommodate everyone. All I had to do was settle on one of them and that was that! Imagine my excitement when suddenly I was indulged with choice! Usually all the kids were accommodated in one room, and we would stay up all night, talking and playing until we were so tired that we fell asleep clueless about how or where we were sleeping.
All this was new and exciting to my visiting cousins, but to me, it was an everyday affair! The excitement for me was in that both entertainment and accommodation were both getting resolved!
In summers, a lot of us would sleep in the "triangle room", which was the main living room that opened to an indoor courtyard! All the bedrooms had air-coolers, but we were still too young to enjoy the privilege... so "triangle" was where we slept. Hyderabad winters are quite hot. In the month of May and June, the temperature rises up to 44 degrees. But, the nights would occasionally get breezy, and it would sometimes rain in the courtyard and the room would smell of earth. This was my most favorite part.
Then one day, my uncle and aunt who were in the room next to my parents' room moved to their own apartment! I then jumped at this opportunity and bawled to my mom that I wanted a bedroom like every other normal kid in the world. I finally thought I was old enough to demand it! (I was about 13 or 14)
She thought it was a fair demand, and was quite surprised that I didn't express this desire earlier... dad on the other hand thought it was "highly unnecessary". Bedrooms were considered something of an extravagance and he didn't want to spoil us with it. But, finally, mom petitioned for the room to my grandparents who halfheartedly agreed, and it was the greatest day of my life!
I have to clarify here, that in a joint family like ours, we constantly had guests coming and going, who would sometimes stay for weeks or months with or without notice. And it was therefore necessary that we always had furnished and unoccupied bedrooms to accommodate them whenever they wanted to stay over. Bedrooms therefore were a luxury! I can appreciate that better today than I did as a teenage kid craving my own space.
But I finally got my bedroom and was to share it with my two brothers who were as thrilled about it as I was. My younger brother especially was ecstatic. I still remember that sweet toothy smile he had plastered on his face for days. We first ran to Synthesis library next door and picked up two posters - a huge one of Shahrukh Khan, another small one of Aamir Khan, and some stuff toys. My younger brother also bought some stickers of Yokozuna, Hulk Hogan, Undertaker and a few race cars. We then went with mom to the fabrics store to pick curtains and bedsheets. We got flashy mickey mouse curtains for the doors and windows, and I picked a bedsheet with lots of cartoon characters for my bed. My younger brother picked a batman bedsheet for his bed. By the time we came home, there were three old, rickety cots, each of a different dimensions arranged in a row in the bedroom. On them there were three really dusty mattresses, each of a different thickness! With the help of the servant, we got off as much dust as we could and got on with decorating the room. Our decoration sense was less governed by aesthetic and more by the stereotypes of what we dreamed "kids bedrooms" were like. So we tried to incorporate as many of the cliched styles as we possibly could! Who knows how long this bedroom extravaganza would last!
My older brother eventually moved to his own bedroom. In fact, it was an outhouse bachelor-pad with two rooms, a courtyard and a terrace, a separate entrance from everyone else, and also a makeshift-study in a small area behind the staircase that could fit his study table and a book shelf. I think he was the only person in the house to whom it occurred that the empty rooms could actually be occupied! To everyone else, it seemed like sacrilege to break this tradition of letting the empty rooms be! Why did I have to wait for my uncle and aunt to leave to claim my space?
Still, now I was lucky that my bedroom was the biggest one in the house! It was also next to a huge verandah the same size as my room! With mom's help, I planted a few flowering plants and maintained a little garden there. My uncle also gave me a passion tree that I tried to grow rather unsuccessfully. Part of the problem was that I had to battle with the monkeys that visited that verandah every evening and broke my pots! To add to this, at one point mom also bred some rabbits in that verandah for her school. They were white rabbits with bright red eyes and looked adorable. But, rabbits are also smelly and multiply very quickly. It became a nuisance having them around. But, I couldn't complain.
Eventually, our bedroom acquired a small tape recorder, a 17" color TV, a large aquarium with over 15 fishes (my younger brother was crazy about fishes)... four steel almirahs (that I hated but had to live with... although until I had a bedroom I had no closet for my clothes and had to make do with a shelf in my dad's closet...so it was a privilege that I could have appreciated, but didn't!) Life was blissful!
Eventually the novelty of having my own bedroom wore off. I also missed my nomadic adventures. Then one day, my aunt had a really bad accident. And being the workaholic that she is, she needed help with typing her reports into a word document on the computer every night! At that time, I was also addicted to the internet and thought it was a perfect arrangement that I could use the computer for my pleasure, also help her out with her work, and sleep in the bedroom next to her. Eventually, I did this for over a year, and found myself becoming more and more interested in her work. It was the last room I was to sleep in before I moved out of the house! (Incidentally, the room was called "question mark room" because of its unique shape... and it really settled the question of where I slept in that house)
For a few months I used to sleep in my grandfather's room, except for the few days that his brother, or some other relative visited us!
If I was tired of looking for a room, I would knock on my parents' door in the middle of the night and ask if I could sleep next to them. Mom always thought it was because I wanted to snuggle with her, and would choke up with motherly affection. When mom's maternal instincts kick in, she can give the melodramatic soaps a run for their money! But soon the halo of maternal love would fade and give way to her whining about this becoming a routine. Dad would then arrange for a place for me to sleep and all balance would be restored! (at least for a few days until I was forced to go back to my nomadic existence and this cycle would repeat itself again and again)
Then came the festivals and functions. You would think having a house full of guests would make my life hell. But, working out where I would sleep was the easiest during this time. Come night, when it was time to go to bed after all the festivities, the living rooms and studies (yes, we had multiple studies and also many empty, unused rooms) would be transformed into sleeping areas, with dharis (quilts) spread out all over the floor to accommodate everyone. All I had to do was settle on one of them and that was that! Imagine my excitement when suddenly I was indulged with choice! Usually all the kids were accommodated in one room, and we would stay up all night, talking and playing until we were so tired that we fell asleep clueless about how or where we were sleeping.
All this was new and exciting to my visiting cousins, but to me, it was an everyday affair! The excitement for me was in that both entertainment and accommodation were both getting resolved!
In summers, a lot of us would sleep in the "triangle room", which was the main living room that opened to an indoor courtyard! All the bedrooms had air-coolers, but we were still too young to enjoy the privilege... so "triangle" was where we slept. Hyderabad winters are quite hot. In the month of May and June, the temperature rises up to 44 degrees. But, the nights would occasionally get breezy, and it would sometimes rain in the courtyard and the room would smell of earth. This was my most favorite part.
Then one day, my uncle and aunt who were in the room next to my parents' room moved to their own apartment! I then jumped at this opportunity and bawled to my mom that I wanted a bedroom like every other normal kid in the world. I finally thought I was old enough to demand it! (I was about 13 or 14)
She thought it was a fair demand, and was quite surprised that I didn't express this desire earlier... dad on the other hand thought it was "highly unnecessary". Bedrooms were considered something of an extravagance and he didn't want to spoil us with it. But, finally, mom petitioned for the room to my grandparents who halfheartedly agreed, and it was the greatest day of my life!
I have to clarify here, that in a joint family like ours, we constantly had guests coming and going, who would sometimes stay for weeks or months with or without notice. And it was therefore necessary that we always had furnished and unoccupied bedrooms to accommodate them whenever they wanted to stay over. Bedrooms therefore were a luxury! I can appreciate that better today than I did as a teenage kid craving my own space.
But I finally got my bedroom and was to share it with my two brothers who were as thrilled about it as I was. My younger brother especially was ecstatic. I still remember that sweet toothy smile he had plastered on his face for days. We first ran to Synthesis library next door and picked up two posters - a huge one of Shahrukh Khan, another small one of Aamir Khan, and some stuff toys. My younger brother also bought some stickers of Yokozuna, Hulk Hogan, Undertaker and a few race cars. We then went with mom to the fabrics store to pick curtains and bedsheets. We got flashy mickey mouse curtains for the doors and windows, and I picked a bedsheet with lots of cartoon characters for my bed. My younger brother picked a batman bedsheet for his bed. By the time we came home, there were three old, rickety cots, each of a different dimensions arranged in a row in the bedroom. On them there were three really dusty mattresses, each of a different thickness! With the help of the servant, we got off as much dust as we could and got on with decorating the room. Our decoration sense was less governed by aesthetic and more by the stereotypes of what we dreamed "kids bedrooms" were like. So we tried to incorporate as many of the cliched styles as we possibly could! Who knows how long this bedroom extravaganza would last!
My older brother eventually moved to his own bedroom. In fact, it was an outhouse bachelor-pad with two rooms, a courtyard and a terrace, a separate entrance from everyone else, and also a makeshift-study in a small area behind the staircase that could fit his study table and a book shelf. I think he was the only person in the house to whom it occurred that the empty rooms could actually be occupied! To everyone else, it seemed like sacrilege to break this tradition of letting the empty rooms be! Why did I have to wait for my uncle and aunt to leave to claim my space?
Still, now I was lucky that my bedroom was the biggest one in the house! It was also next to a huge verandah the same size as my room! With mom's help, I planted a few flowering plants and maintained a little garden there. My uncle also gave me a passion tree that I tried to grow rather unsuccessfully. Part of the problem was that I had to battle with the monkeys that visited that verandah every evening and broke my pots! To add to this, at one point mom also bred some rabbits in that verandah for her school. They were white rabbits with bright red eyes and looked adorable. But, rabbits are also smelly and multiply very quickly. It became a nuisance having them around. But, I couldn't complain.
Eventually, our bedroom acquired a small tape recorder, a 17" color TV, a large aquarium with over 15 fishes (my younger brother was crazy about fishes)... four steel almirahs (that I hated but had to live with... although until I had a bedroom I had no closet for my clothes and had to make do with a shelf in my dad's closet...so it was a privilege that I could have appreciated, but didn't!) Life was blissful!
Eventually the novelty of having my own bedroom wore off. I also missed my nomadic adventures. Then one day, my aunt had a really bad accident. And being the workaholic that she is, she needed help with typing her reports into a word document on the computer every night! At that time, I was also addicted to the internet and thought it was a perfect arrangement that I could use the computer for my pleasure, also help her out with her work, and sleep in the bedroom next to her. Eventually, I did this for over a year, and found myself becoming more and more interested in her work. It was the last room I was to sleep in before I moved out of the house! (Incidentally, the room was called "question mark room" because of its unique shape... and it really settled the question of where I slept in that house)
