Underneath

It was the golden time of my life. I used to live at my grandpa's place .It was a big house with over 15 rooms , 3 halls and 2 huge gardens. There was no dearth of squarefeets to play for a mischievous 7 year old but nevertheless my playing area was the smallest and darkest room of the house which was called the Kholi for its reputation and the pungent smell. Inside the room were some century old wardrobes locked from decades, some massive earthenware which happened to look like they came straight from Mohenjo-Daro. There was a long bed kept in the middle made of solid teak wood that would require at least 4 strongly built men to even move an inch. The room had only the ventilator as the source of natural light. It was there in such a way that its position when matched with the dense trees in the garden allowed the sunlight to come only for 4 hours exactly. That used to happen in the afternoons after lunch and those would be my playing hours when I could be myself and enjoy being the captain of a spaceship, My spaceship comprised of a very old Russian radio that i had found out there itself , old cassettes and some worn out electrical switches. The Russian radio had 2 big knobs that would make a distinctive click sound when turned completely. Every afternoon, this was the schedule. I would be there in my cockpit on the top of the bed with my flight deck neatly lined up. Nevertheless there was never a safety clearance given by my mother who was always worried If I would do something stupid there. My dad was very strict and If he found me out playing there, My authority as a captain would be compromised with a tight slap on my right cheek .But most of times He would be on long tours. My mother's tactics to keep me away from the kholi like presence of a hairy monster called joo joo baba present under the bed wouldn't work. I knew I was completely safe in my ship.

One day in the middle of my fantasy flight, I heard my father's loud voice . I had no option but to eject out of the flight immediately. In the hustle, I knocked out the radio and It slipped under the bed . There was no time to take it out and anyways.I knew nobody would touch it . So I ran and opened a tin tin magazine although that did not save my right cheek because he knew from my panting that I was there .Two days later when I returned back, I looked out for the radio which used to be navigation system of my ship but I could not find it. I gave up searching and assumed It would have been hidden my mom or dad to restrict me from taking off. I could not find another bulky useless box which would have the same kind of knobs. And the spaceship never took off again.

Time passed by and I was now a 15 year old .My dad is very particular about time and he had gifted me a digital clock with a unique chime alarm. I still clearly remember, it was a  summer vacation, all my relatives had gathered in the house. I had been shifted to the kholi for 1 week as I was most used to the place and was the eldest among all my cousins and also the bravest I must admit. The bed had not moved an inch since the last decade , but had been polished well  as part of the house cleaning custom every diwali. I was too tired and slept immediately but I woke up in the middle of the night by a strange noise which was similar to something being dragged right underneath me. But as I was getting up , my alarm clock fell inside the gap in between the wall and the bed . I knew I would take it out when the alarm would ring so I did not bother to start searching for it. The next morning I woke up and went to the kitchen for tea . The slap on my right confirmed I was late. But my alarm did not ring, I was sure that the clock would have stopped when It fell under the bed. I started searching and called in some help from the servants. We looked in every nook and corner under the bed and even around the room , the clock was nowhere to be found. I took my mom's help to get up in the morning and the rest of the week was no much eventful other than the swollen right cheek for losing the precious clock.

Every year we had the same summer vacation schedule and I was detailed for the kholi every year. Soon I was 18 and got an admission in a college in the capital and I moved out of the grandpa's house leaving behind all the sweet memories. My visits to grandpa's house were limited now. My father got transferred when I was in the final year, this completely cut the visits to my grandpa's house. Then 3 months later I graduated and got my job .I planned for a visit to my grandpa's house before I joined the job. When I revisited the kholi, it appeared to be more gloomy. When It was my last night there, I demanded to go back and sleep in my kholi because I was not sure When I would return again and what would happen to the place. The room was cleaned up and I was back in my ship and It was the same even after a complete decade . I was comforted beyond words . There was pin drop silence so I took out my music player of which I had got habituated to, in the college years. I was listening to a slow song When I dozed off completely and I did notice that my music player slipped inside the gap . As my habit was and because of the music I was too lazy to take it out. The next morning I was searching for my music player and It made me realize one pattern  . Everything that had gone underneath the bed was untraceable but this time I was not buying it out. I called in everybody in the house to search .But there was no sign of the player inside the whole room . Nobody had entered after me so the possibility of a theft was ruled out. Well I had to take it, I had my train early in the morning and  was short of time to do a thorough interrogation of the crime scene. I had stepped out of my house  to catch my train when I realized I had left my purse in the kholi  itself. I ran back and found it at least. As I was shutting the door , I heard the alarm tune of my clock that I had lost underneath the bed 10 years ago . My hair were standing on the strands, I dared not to look underneath and stepped back . Then I heard a dragging sound , the same that I always had heard when I was the captain . The alarm stopped and there was a thud as if a bulky box was toppled over, followed by 2 clicks, that was enough to make me run on my toes.

The Kholi remains locked till date.