Bed Time Stories

Mythili

She had read somewhere that counting sheep was a sure-fire way of falling asleep. She closed her eyes, imagining herself in a pen full of sheep and started counting

“One , two , three, four…….” By the time she got to nine, she knew it was futile. It wasn’t going to work.

She got up and went across to the dining room to get herself a bottle of water from the fridge. The clock showed 1.00 AM.

 She had been trying to sleep for the past four hours without any success.

She went back to bed and closed her eyes, trying to focus on something – counting backwards, remembering fairy tales from her childhood but sleep continued to evade her.

How she wished she could be like one of those  princesses and sleep for a lifetime! A few hours before dawn would be all that she would get before she was forced to wake up and get through the day.

It had been like that for the past two years since she had lost her husband. She went through her nights with just two to three hours of sleep – the dark circles around her eyes bearing testimony to her lack of sleep.  Her daughter had taken her to a doctor who had suggested she try sleeping pills. But Mythili was firm that she did not want to get dependent on anything. She had had thirty years of dependence- emotional and financial ,on one man and she was reaping the consequences today.

She wanted to fight this insomnia and learn to sleep by herself. If babies could do it, then a sixty year old like her could certainly do it too.

Reena

She was running through a dark tunnel. She could hear footsteps following her. She ran on, panting, afraid to turn back . She knew from that heavy breathing that it was him!  The walls of the tunnel walls were closing in on her. She felt claustrophobic. Her breath was stuck inside her throat.  She needed to get away.

 Her foot missed a step and she felt herself trip. She turned around,  absolutely terrified because she knew he was just a inches behind her his face plastered with that evil grin.  

She was screaming when she woke up! Her heart was beating fast and she was soaked with perspiration!  She looked at the clock, it was nearly midnight!

This was the nightmare that she had been experiencing for sometime now . It had started after that incident a couple of months ago when she had been followed by a stranger into the  basement  parking of the hospital where she worked as a nurse.

She was getting off her late-night shift and was walking towards her scooter when the man had emerged from somewhere and blocked her way. She had started running , finally making it to her scooter which she had started and driven away furiously.

But ever since that incident, the nightmares had started haunting her. She was afraid of falling asleep because she knew that the terror would hit her within about an hour of her dropping off to sleep. And once she woke up, she would stay awakfor the rest of the night terrified and unable to sleep.

She had tried delaying her bedtime so that she would be able to synchronise her waking up in terror to the arrival of her roommate – a call centre employee . Once Sudha came into the room the terror subsided and she felt calmer. But then it was a full four to five hours before Sudha would get back to the room. Until then she had to stay up like this- in a terrified state between sleep and wakefulness.  

Shreya

She stared  at the form next to her on the bed. He was fast asleep.

It amazed her how he could brutalize her body like this every night and go to sleep as though nothing was the matter.

How could someone be so selfish and immune to another person’s feelings?

It had been like that for much of the two years that she had been married. She had talked about it to her mother, her cousins and her friends. But everyone seemed to think it was her fault in some way.  

Would she like it if he decided to seek his pleasure elsewhere?

Well, it might actually be better if he decided to do that, so she got a good night’s sleep. She found him disgusting – the grunts, the heaving and the thrusting.

Over the months, she had got used to the pain. She learnt to wait for  him to finish and roll off her , after which she went to the bathroom and washed his fluids off her, often wiping the blood stains along with it. By the time she came back to the bed, her body aching and bruised she usually lost all desire to sleep.

She lay on the edge of her side of the bed staring out of the window and wondering why  was it that  women had to endure so much pain to perpetuate the species? Bed time had become dread time for her. Her tiered body longed for sleep at the end of a hard day’s work at the office and at home. But the pain kept her awake. And by the time sleep won over the pain, it would be time for her to wake up and begin yet another day playing the part of a loving wife and dutiful daughter in law.

Nina

She sat up on the upper berth of the train compartment watching her classmates sleep. They were on a college trip to Delhi. The silence inside was soothing broken only by the  rhythmic sound of the train on the tracks.

It was nearly eleven o’clock. Her eyelids were drooping with sleep but she resisted herself from giving in to sleep. She wanted to stay awake tonight and every night of the next few days of the trip until they were back. She wondered if she could manage it. But then, there was no other way!

She could not risk giving in to sleep and allow her classmates to hear her snore! She was the college fashionista and the campus beauty queen! There was no way she could break that image and start snoring like an elderly man.  

She had made the startling discovery about her snoring when one of her cousins came over to visit her. She had told her in the morning that she had not been able to sleep a wink for the entire night because Nina’s snores had kept her awake!

She had tried many remedies – sleeping on her stomach, buying a nose constrictor and some other gadgets. But she was not sure if any of them had worked. She had been too embarrassed to ask anyone else in her family about this. And  much as she hoped that her cousin had been lying or playing a cruel joke on her, she did not think this was the time to risk finding out the truth. She could not let herself sleep! She had to stay awake.

She sprinkled some water out of her water bottle  over her eyes. But the water made her eyes itch as she rubbed the drops over her eyelids. She wondered how many times should she keep doing this through the night? Her mind was already losing focus as sleep took over her consciousness.

Rani

Dinner as usual had not been enough for everyone. Her mother had insisted that she, as the oldest daughter forego her share of rice so that her brothers could eat a little more. And so  Rani had eaten the few grains that were part of that one spoon of rice she could have. She helped her mother wash up the few vessels under the tap at the end of the road in the slum they lived 

After getting back, she spread her mat on the floor next to her mother and her younger brothers and lay down. It was hot and stuffy inside the small room that they all lived in. She closed her eyes and waited for sleep .

But sleep seemed to take much longer to reach people like her retired for the night with a half empty stomach. She could hear it growl in the darkness.

She remembered her grandmother telling her how a clean conscience , a tiered body and a full stomach  were all that one needed to fall asleep. She tossed around on her mat , wondering why the first two conditions alone were not sufficient to bring in some sleep. She had to wake up early tomorrow morning and join the queue to collect water. She knew that she would not stay awake until then because sometime during the night her tiered body would win over her stomach and she would sleep. But the point was how soon would that be?

And thus, go on , the bed time experiences of women across the city – some fighting insomnia, while others fight sleep.