Rock-a-bye baby
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Rock-a-bye, baby
In the treetop
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock
When the bough breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all
Baby is drowsing
Cosy and fair
Mother sits near
In her rocking chair
Forward and back
The cradle she swings
And though baby sleeps
He hears what she sings
From the high rooftops
Down to the sea
No one's as dear
As baby to me
Wee little fingers
Eyes wide and bright
Now sound asleep
Until morning light
It was so far away. She slowly guided her head upwards and had to go till her chin was in a straight line with her throat, and not at a right angle. The ceiling gaped down at her and filled the room with a hollowness that scared her. She felt an eery loneliness with so much vacuum above her. The window that opened onto a view of a large Peepal tree was situated in the direction of her feet on the bed, facing her. It was like a TV on the wall with only one channel on. Sometimes when she sat on her bed looking at the tussle of the mighty tree with the yawling wind, some leaves would fly in through her window and settle near her. The tree grew along the side of the road that was a source of constant noise throughout the day; the same, during the night acted in the exact opposite manner. The suddenly deserted road made the ears, used to the honks and screeching wheels of zooming vehicles throughout the day, echo with an unusual silence which was deafening. Like a house sans the hustle-bustle of its inhabitants-suddenly abandoned. The occasional swooshing of a few after-midnight trucks or cars only making the stillness more profound and the sleepless nights prolonged.
She liked her room well-lit. Preferably, the white light of the tube-light or the candescent tubes. The dark yellow night-bulb reflected the furniture and the cream-coloured walls in her room in a morose dimness that gave her a sinking feeling. So she had to choose between absolute darkness and the glum light yielded by the night-bulb at night, before she retired for the night. What she used to do was put the night-light on, sprint towards her bed, and cover her self, with the bed-sheet over her head, tightly shut her eyes and wish fretfully for sleep to come. The switch board was a four steps walk from her bed, on the opposite wall, inches away from the window. She wised it was at a hands' reach so she could switch on the lights if the need arose during the night. If only she could make her heart beat on a steady pace, she was sure she could manage to sleep quickly. But it kept running ahead of her. And the more she tried to breathe slowly to catch it the more it sped away. She forced herself to focus on the days' events to drown her self into a stream of consciousness and divert her mind. It used to be easier during the school days when there was so much to ponder over, along with the next working days' anticipation, but the holidays were uneventful for her. The days flowed in a monotonous similitude. Her new-born baby brother was too young to be played with. And she had nothing to do.
All day long she sat in her room, doing her holidays’ homework and mostly looking out from her window at the workings of the gargantuan Peepal tree. It was overpowering… the circumference it mapped with its boughs. Even when the window was shut and the curtains drawn, she could sense the tree in all its singular magnanimity. She was afraid of ever standing under it for a more than a split second, afraid of it engulfing her, afraid of its long arms to close their wooden fingers around her neck till she could not breathe. The mere idea of not being able to inhale any air, stifled her. She wished that when she died, her soul would leave her body the second she inhaled the last ounce of her destined air, that she should be dead before she could exhale that air out; she wished to die with some air in her lungs.
Sometimes while bathing, she used to feel drowned with the gush of water on her head, and shudder frantically tearing the water from her face with her wet fingers, trying to make room for oxygen to enter through the nostrils or the mouth, gasping like a fish without water. She never used the shower. Once, while bathing, she suddenly had a random thought; she hated this, sometimes ideas just propped in her brain even before she had conceived any of them. She imagined the wet floor beneath her suddenly dissolving...into an open mouth of a large whale come out on the surface of a bottomless sea, its sharp teeth and salivary glands glaring out of a black pit. She used to get up in a fright -letting the bathing mug full of water tumble on the marble floor, the drops of water shooting up towards her face-and come tottering near the closed door of the bathroom and keep her hand on the door latch, ready to open and feel the ground solid beneath her feet. After a minute, she would calm herself down and hurry through the bathing trying to push defiant ideas into the recesses of her mind.
They were like virtual flashes in her brain, uncalled-for. She couldn't help escape her own imagination. It was like a civil war within the state of her being...as the flashes came unannounced from the chinks and corners of her mind, the remaining logical part would try to get rid of them...as if the ideas would fall off like droplets from damp hair by shaking the head violently.
As the hands of the clock doctored away time to suit her miseries for the approaching night, the flashes would begin to hit her like pointed darts, catching her unawares. The household machinery would slowly halt-the clanking of the utensils being washed would cease, the maid would sweep the kitchen clean after the dinner,the cacophonous diversions of the television would be plugged out, the wailing baby would be put to sleep, the lights would be switched off, one by one...flick, flick, flick… darkening the halls and passages of the house, and her parents would retire to their room and shut the door, the house would come to a standstill. The roads and streets and shops and hawkers and vendors and passersby- everything and everybody would be put to pillow in the neighbourhood...and the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood of the neighbourhood...one by one…flick… flick flick…
Everybody would be sleeping, and she would be wide awake inside her bed-sheet under the dim yellow light, feeling the swaying gargantuan Peepal tree outside the window with the crow perched on it, hidden by the dense branches, tearing on the remains of the dead rat, with its black pointed beak. She would be awake...
Puny little nothing, shivering under her filament cover. From under her sheet she ventured her gaze around the four-walls of her room onto her house to the neighbourhood to the city to the country to the earth to moon..the other eight planets spinning independently in the universe, the Milky Way, the galaxies and even those undiscovered hidden planets and unidentified stars and aliens...It were as if she was unfolding this piece of paper folded infinite times...which got bigger and bigger as she opened each compartment.Like her gaze had suddenly acquired the birds eye...except the bird was flying above the outermost atmospheric layer and rising further and further beyond..
She would be so far away..so removed...so alone... in the macrocosm. As good as bound and gagged.
And then for the flashes...she was alone in her room. She was sure. But for a little girl with deep dark circles under her eyes, on the far-away corner of her room, sobbing silently, just crouching there, minding her own business. The dark vacuum beneath the bed, the one above her. The ticking of the clock in her room, the droning of the nocturnal insects...the silhouette of what looked like a person with charged hair behind the curtains, the occasional clonk at her door....an old woman standing at the foot of her bed..just standing silently, watching her effort at sleep...
She shifted towards the center of her bed for now. A wall of pillows surrounding her. One supporting her spine, another hugged under her left arm, her head on the heart of the pillow, clutched tightly. Her knees rucked up. So from the view of the mangled carcass circling above her on the fan, she would appear lying in the shape of a C.
Her heart beat away in noncompliance matching the drone of the insects. Breathe slowly..inhale exhale...slow..steady...The Carcass...no..no...think of something else..something happy...her friend was returning on Tuesday from her relatives’ house...she will go see her...what will she wear...what will they play..her favourite orange top with the red flower on the right top corner and her white skirt...but she wouldn’t be able to go cycling in the skirt...The Sobbing Girl in the Corner...she will have to wear her jeans...and she has to get the brakes in her bicycle repaired...Sobbing...and they will go on a hike...The Curtains...The Tree..The Carcass circling..tuesday tuesday tuesday...The Charged Hair…The Dark Neighbourhood...the flower.the cycle brakes..The Empty Streets..the brakes...The Universe.....She was losing...the sweat was trickling down her back...her breathing heavy...her heartbeat fast...she had to escape...to her parents’ room?...she must.
“TO HELL WITH YOU…IVE NEVER…” what was that?, she shuddered. Mom? It came from their room..Why were they screaming? Oh she dare not go now...The Crow..The Mouse..The Yellow Light...The Ceiling...she frantically pushed the bed sheet aside and sat up erect on her bed,panting..
“I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF…” She couldn’t keep her feet on the floor...the vacuum under the bed seemed to reach out to catch hold of her feet..but she must be brave...she got off with a jump..and ran to the door..but the latch...oh it wouldn’t open..it got stuck..her sweaty shaking hands couldn’t get through with it. The baby had woken now in the other room because of the screams... She could hear him crying, along with the sobbing girl in the far-away corner in her room though she couldn’t dare venture her eyes in that direction...She let the girl cry.Let the baby wail.
She cannot go out... But..but...her room and its occupants...the flashes....were closing in on her...She scrambled to her bed again...and pulled the sheet over her...re-arranged the pillow-walls around her...petrified. There was nothing to be done now. She let the deafening noise of the empty road shatter her ears, the swishing of the peepal, the sobbing now hiccoughing girl, the dissonance of the sharp circling metal panes of the fan...let all of that get lost in the clamour of the wailing baby and the occasional screams of her parents. She didn’t want her parents to fight, neither her baby brother to cry. But in a sadistic way, she could feel their presence across her room with these noises, and that soothed her slightly.
She shut her eyes on the damp pillow under her cheek, hugged the one beside her as if it would wake up, embrace her back,caress her hair gently, and sing her a lullaby. She shifted, so as not to lie directly under the fan..and...gave in...to all of them. Let each flash engulf her...and take over. She let her breath and heartbeat race...and thus she lay there, shivering in anticipation of the first rays of the sun to come and knock at her window so she could finally go to sleep...