My Parents' room

We grow up with memories and memories make us. Bedrooms have a special significance in our lives. In Jharia, they were called rooms not bedrooms. The servants/ house help would not understand if you said 'Clean my bedroom'. They understood instructions which said  " Sahab waala kamra saaf karna' which meant 'clean the master bedroom'. When my parents decided to put furniture in their bed room, it was a big event for all of us. Carpenters were called. Drawings were made. Dad got some furniture books from Kolkata or Delhi. We poured over them. Everything looked so complicated to make. Mom was clear that she will keep the two Godrej Almirahs in her room. Now the furniture had to be made around it. The furniture was made to divide room into a walk in wardrobe and a sleeping area. Since my parents bedroom was the biggest and quietest, the guests were almost always put up in that room along with them. A sofa cum bed with storage was built for this purpose. It was a very cool one, with storage at the big head rest. Black shaded Sunmica was chosen so that the dust and grime of the coal fields is not visible. There was a separate shelf for the LP record player and one shelf to keep the LPs. The carpenters made two cabinets for the speakers with thin wooden bars which were painted white. There were two cupboards and book shelf too. One shelf was for Dad's temple i.e. pictures of Deities. We had a common temple in the house but Dad prayed longer in his room after bath. He then bowed down to the family temple, before leaving home. I was supposed to get one cupboard as I had played a huge role in planning this room. At ten years, one thinks one played a big role in lot of things. Alas, when reality strikes. The insides of the cupboards were painted white and looked so different and grand compared to the wooden polish I had seen till then. I was excited about shifting my clothes up from my Grandmother's room where I shared a Godrej almirah with my three sisters. For some days, Mom did not put anything in the cupboards and shelves as she did not like the smell of varnish and paint. After some days, Dad's clothes were put in the left side Almirah which was supposed to be mine. Heartbroken child was informed by the parent that you will get the next cupboard. Slowly Mom's old sarees started filling up that cupboard. I was told that I cannot move my clothes up as it will disturb Dad when he is sleeping. Plus it will not look appropriate as my younger siblings all will have their clothes down between two Almirahs. 

The beauty of childhood is one gets over the hurt very easily. I just moved on to other joys. Parents' bedroom was my study room during the day time. At night, it was the place Mom called you to shower her love. But if Dad called us up, rest assured we were going to be shouted at and invariably because Mom would have complained about us. Still I liked the room with its Peepul tree outside. Three big windows in three different directions. Lot of light, breeze and total privacy. In Jharia, to have a room away from the prying eyes was an achievement in itself. This room had a broad staircase leading up to it. The staircase did not lead upto any terrace, only my parents bedroom. We used to sit on the steps late in the night all six siblings, Mom and Aunt all talking and sharing. The steps had two landings. One was a big one. The wall of the small landing was used as a black board when we played 'Teacher Teacher'.  The bigger landing and steps were used to play Stone, Forest, River, Tree....where each step had a name and one had to jump on the correct step when the name was called out. The red cement steps cleaned beautifully and cooled very well when we washed them. When Mom was into gardening, from the bedroom windows, we could just see greenery on all sides. This was a rarity in our coalfield town. During the summer storms, Mom's room had maximum Peepul leaves floating in. I have collected the most beautiful Peepul leaves from this tree. Pale pink ones when they were new, beautiful fresh green leaves in the monsoons and the hottest yellows before they turned warm brown in the autumn of their life. 

When we moved from Jharia to Dhanbad, this whole feeling of my parents' bedroom moved seamlessly from one location to another. This time the room was all white with some special white paint on the wood, no tacky Sunmica. The sofa cum bed for one guest was built once again with storage exactly in the same place. The same two Godrej Almirahs were now put in a specially constructed room attached to the bedroom. Again two cupboards in the wooden cabinet unit, one with Dad's clothes and the other with my mother's old sarees. Red Granite bathroom with two level flooring, three huge windows with green trees on all sides. And of course the cleanest, sunniest and the breeziest room in the house always. A place where special guests were invited to sit and some were allowed to stay the night. We all children slept there in the summers as the air-conditioning was most effective. And with frequent power cuts, this room still stayed cool. The same set of Deities moved too. This was the room where Dad interviewed his future son-in-law. Television was not a thing to be put in bedrooms those days. It still had its revered place in the living room. This time there was a phone connection here. Our house help Santosh scrubbed the phone more than he cleaned the floors. Invariably after he finished cleaning , one of us went down to put the phone properly. 

I can write stories about each room in the house but my parents' room holds a special place in my heart. This is the room where I always experience warmth, love and clarity.