Folding Sheets

  

 Ever since moving out of home, most of Meera’s afternoons have remained dreary and painstakingly long. Within the four green walls of her paying guest room, she usually has a lot of conversations with herself, mostly conflicting about what to eat for lunch, where to go next, which path to take so that she could best utilise her limited social skills, how to get changes for auto rents, and most importantly, foresee the end of her five-litre water drum so that she can have another in time. She keeps in mind to never repeat another night of having no water by her side until it was choking-to-death long. 

 She felt it weird to confess that talking within her own head got her more tired than talking to a person in front. It is a lot of memory work added with emotional taxing and terrible indecisiveness that eventually ends with an overwhelming sense of hopeless failure. “I can’t even decide what to have for lunch”, she mumbles every day at 2:00 pm.

 In these summer months of Kolkata, the fan’s speed has felt way too slow for Meera’s sweaty head, especially on such afternoons when making lunch decisions seemed more difficult than understanding college lectures. Luckily though, her room was at the farthest end of the ground floor of Mrs. Sen’s three-storeyed house, and the heat wave took an unusually longer path to travel through her window. 

 There are no multiple windows, just one, and this is blocked by the compound wall and a mosquito net. There isn’t much for Meera to think about safety, she feels safe enough under Mrs. Sen’s kind, unbothered watch. Her sad, perplexed eyebrows would mostly remain droopy even when an impeccable idea of heating leftovers struck her hungry mind. The lazy fan keeps humming and creaking as she finally gets down from her cot and walks toward the kitchen fridge to bring the leftover rice and lentils from last night’s dinner.

 Right at this point her phone rings. She misses out on the clock striking 2.30 pm but never misses picking up the call. It is the usual lunch hour for Meera’s mother at office, and their unplanned syncing of lunchtimes was always an unworded pleasure for both. If there is one voice that can stop the conflicting talks inside Meera’s head, it’s her mother’s.

 They talk about everyone- Meera’s father made overburnt rotis and mutton for dinner, Meera’s sister has started developing crushes at school, Meera’s grandparents have finally decided to visit the sea, Meera’s uncle had come last evening with the latest edition of the magazine Desh. Meera does not let her mother know about the leftovers and sneaks in some appreciation for having cooked rice and lentils. “Finally, you have learned some cooking”, she says. Talking does not make Meera tired any longer.

 She leaves her kitchen after washing the plates. She clears her tray of decomposing vegetable peels. She puts some rose-scented room freshener at the four corners of her green-walled room and starts cleaning her week-old bedsheets. She knew how to unfold and fold sheets from her mother. At home during weekends, they would fold them one by one in each room, against Meera’s wish of course. Three beds in all and six pillows; bed sheets, and pillow covers of green, blue, yellow, and white. She knew her mother could get a sheet unfolded and folded at one go, and she would do this routinely once every weekend. “New sheets have new smells, don’t you like it?” Meera’s mother would ask nonchalantly while piling neatly folded sheets on the bed. Meera nodded, partly desperate to go back to her TV show. “New sheets have new smells”, Meera mumbles in her green four-walled room under the hum of a slowly turning fan, folding and unfolding sheets of green, blue, yellow, and white. Somewhere amidst the city far from home, this didn’t tire her at all.