Butterflies and Hurricanes

It was a chilly December morning. Mum got out of the cocoon that was her blanket and carefully pulled the foot-rug towards herself with her toes. Stepping on the cold floor made her sneeze unstoppably; and her sneezes were always loud enough to wake the entire neighbourhood. Which would actually be of help to her, given that she had to extricate three sleepy kids from their snuggly beds on a foggy morning for school.

Like all usual mornings, she got up, tottered around in the kitchen and had a cup of chai in the living room. Those ten minutes were rightfully hers. Silent. Peaceful. Then she sighed, mentally preparing herself for the hullabaloo that was to follow. She had to wake me up. There was a reason my grandfather called me Kumbhkaran ki nani. 

She’d started calling out my name before she even entered the room. Different variations of “Chinkyyyy” that had somehow found their own rhythm and progression over the years. She switched the light on and saw that I wasn’t in bed. This had never happened in the entirety of the five years I had spent in that house.

The mosquito net – fondly known as the machchar daani – was still intact; securely fastened by four pieces of scraggly strings tied to random hooks around the room. There was a gaping hole right in the centre on top, conveniently covered by a stray piece of paper.

She went inside the washroom, expecting to find me lolling on the seat, asleep. I wasn’t there. Was I in the other bathroom? Nope. She asked my brother. He didn’t know. She went to my sister’s room. I wasn’t there either. Maybe I had sleepwalked all the way to the kitchen. (I did that once). She checked all the rooms, even the most unlikely places – the store room, the aangan, the porch. After a brief panic-striken fifteen minutes, Papa came out of his bed and calmly pointed out where I had been all this time.

Have you seen house-flies stuck in spider webs?

I looked exactly like that. Having rolled off my bed in the middle of the night, I landed in the safe lap of the machchar daani. Found hanging between the net and the side of the bed, I was oblivious to the world, still deeply ensconced in the evidently heavy slumber I was in. (Thanks to Papa’s shoving-the-net-deep-under-the mattress prowess). Yes, I was that light. Yes, I was that tiny. Yes, I was that escapable to the eyes.

All this while, I’d had no inkling that I was being frantically searched for by the entire household. When I woke up, I had a mosquito net imprint on my face that stayed for an hour or two. Everyone laughed – not at me, but at the ludicrousness of the situation. I laughed with them, but all I wanted to do was go back to sleep.

It has been over twenty years since. A couple of days ago, in the feverish aftermath of a nightmare, I found myself in the throes of one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I rolled off my bed, fast asleep, and woke up mid-fall. My heart jumped out of my ribcage. I gasped, broke into a cold sweat, and sat up in bed. It had knocked the air out of me.

The dream was fading away fast, but it had left a bitter aftertaste. I sighed. I felt a twinge. I missed my house, my Mum, my safety net.

I got out of bed to make some chai. It was a chilly December morning. Silent. Peaceful. I had ten minutes before I had to start getting ready for office. I stepped on the cold floor, and started sneezing uncontrollably.