Rousing a memory, long disavowed

Many years ago now my cousin told me this: my aunt would tell her at bedtime that sleeps fly through the air, spreading out over the land like fruit bats leaving their roost on leisurely wing beats. You had to catch one in your eyes and then keep them shut, lest it flee to someone else – perhaps even to the rightful owner. For clearly, as we all know, there are more people in the world than there is sound sleep. (Like the poet lamented: why so many poets, o lord, and so little poetry to go around?) Fleet footed sleep, one for each, no one’s to keep.

Someone must’ve waylaid my sleep last night, for I was up a bit later than usual, reading. And so when I did put off the lights and lay down still, it was a stream of words that my eyes caught instead, blinking away as they put them into staggered lines like typecast. My husband can hear my eyelashes scrape against the pillow and know that I’m up, thinking. He puts his arms around me then, to help me sleep. That is just one of the vast repository of lovable gestures that he is the master of. So aware of me, so generous, so demonstrative. But he wasn’t around last night and my thoughts inevitable turned to lovers past. And who better to share these with than the stars? So I stepped out.

Maybe they trap them by the dozen now – hundreds even, like Amur Falcons in Nagaland – in mist nets, to sell for a good price. Don’t open your eyes; they have traps set up for sleep.

The new moon had set and the stars were like fireflies in the swaying trees. There must be a better metaphor for that, I thought, and they immediately turned into lights flaring on distant ships tossing upon the stormy sea of eucalyptus leaves. I paced the courtyard, whirling like a dervish to frame the dots within the gaps, to join them in familiar shapes. When you’ve spent enough time with the stars they take on poses that only you can see. Orion with his bow drawn taut had already gone over the horizon, and his dachshund, with the jewel of Sirius in his collar had followed close behind. Straight overhead, Virgo lay back languorous to rub the belly of Leo, who sat up all of a sudden to see what Hydra was looking at. Triangulating my way from the more familiar characters, I arrived to the eucalyptus trees and was surprised to see Argo, sailing on its eternal voyage with Jason and the Argonauts to bring back the Golden Fleece. It was no coincidence then.

I sat down on the steps at the end of the courtyard and the wind rose, blowing in gusts so the susurrant leaves sounded like incoming waves washing over me, lifting me bodily and tilting me till the world seemed to keel. That’s how it is with first love too. The only thing missing was the hyena. That was a long time ago. Ten years now. Man, I’m growing old! (Don’t ‘man’ me, my husband would say. He doesn’t like me talking like that, “like a teenager trying to sound cool”, he says.)

Everyone else had gone to bed while I sat up with the boy who first showed me the stars. It was our first trip together to the forest and we didn’t want to miss a thing. Who knew when the forest might bestow upon us its magic, the precious encounter, the moment that we’d remember for the rest of our lives? And so we sat on the steps of the veranda of the forest guest house, letting the night wash over us, bringing us closer.

My memory colours the hyena a shimmering silver, striped as if with deep shadows, the fur along its back bristling. It walked across the lawn against the far hedge, from the right to the left; it did not even know that it was watched. And it paints the boy next to me as a cool presence in thin cotton pyjamas, his skin smelling of the forest stream; for he always knew what one ought to be doing at any moment, and that’s where we’d been going for our evening baths – to a small rocky pool where giant spiders had stretched their webs to catch the hairy caterpillars that fell with alarming regularity.

I haven’t really given in to memories like this before: it feels a bit like cheating. Do mothers think about what their lives could’ve been if they hadn’t had kids? And does that make them bad mothers?

Memories lie dormant like little voles in the winter. They must be roused and fed and allowed to gambol about once in a while, allowed a spring and a summer so to speak, however brief; lest they go into a sleep too deep and be lost forever. I held this one in the hollow of my hand, holding it up next to my face the better to see, and it snuggled in, making the most of the warmth. It was so close I could smell the dust on its fur…

The crunch of dry leaves startled me, bringing me back with a jolt to the treed courtyard with the swaying eucalyptus. I looked up and saw a large black mass move against the silhouetted trees. Bristles along its back shimmered in the starlight colandering through trees, and I held my breath. Then the light shone upon its tushes. He got wind of me after he had passed me and he paused, gave me a perfunctory grunted nod, and then snuffled on, his stiff tail wagging. A wild boar. I’d sometimes seen him about during the day, his sleep having eluded him.

Maybe sleeps sometimes do double shifts, going to the animals of the night once we wake up, taking with them our restless dreams and then bringing us theirs.