Do you sometimes hear people around you complain that they cannot sleep well unless they’re in their own beds? Even when they are on holiday, supposedly having a relaxed time and reclining on eiderdown or spring mattresses, they claim that they toss and turn and fail to drop off to sleep and are bleary-eyed and irritable for most of their trip. “Give me my old lumpy mattress any day,” they say, “or that hard-board bed that I’m used to.”
You would perhaps understand if these statements came from senior citizens accustomed to the same bed (and the same side of the bed) in the same room in the same house for some four or five decades. After all, their bodies have grown accustomed to familiar hollows and bumps in their mattresses, the creaks and groans of their bones match those of the furniture, and they know how many steps to take (even while half-sleep) from bed to bath…
But when these declarations come from the young, who have barely had a decade or two to get used to life itself, you cannot help but wonder at the happy lack of uncertainty in their lives that allows them to be in their own homes and in their own beds when it is time to sleep.
How marvellous to have the luxury of choice! Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on which way you look at it), such luxury is not for the likes of me. Instead, I keep a bag permanently packed with a few necessities in order to be able to move out of the freedom of my home at a moment’s notice and be available when illness and infirmity incapacitates elders in the family and they require round-the-clock assistance.
Defeating the purpose
With that sturdy bag, it has been possible to visit hospitals and homes across the country, making do with a single change of clothes and a two-by-five foot contraption on four legs that goes by the name of a ‘bed.’ Obviously, if I’m to be the caregiver of someone in need of 24-hour attention, I’m not meant to fall asleep — and therefore nothing comfortable should be provided! That would defeat the purpose of my travel to distant places in the country, wouldn’t it?
Of course, it doesn’t work that way in my version of ‘bed and breakfast’, or rather, an excuse for a bed…
Because, for years, at home, I’ve practiced the indiscipline — and the luxury — of nodding off on chairs, settees, sofas, and beds in whichever room I happen to be when sleep calls. It used to be confusing when I’d try to get out of bed on the left while I was still half-asleep — and hit the wall instead because I was not in my bedroom. But soon I grew accustomed to a different room and a different bit of furniture each night and it stands me in great stead now.
Thus I can spend days — even weeks — in hospital rooms, overflow on both sides of what can only be called a plank that is provided for the patient’s attendant, not even hear the protesting creaks and groans of that plank with each breath I take; and snore through it all.
And then laugh when I read snippets in the newspaper described amazing beds that are available in other parts of the world: Rocking beds, magnetic beds that float in the air, water beds, beds that offer protection from bio-chemical and terrorist attacks, beds inspired by the structure of a molecule — you name it, someone has created it.
Who would actually use those fancy beds, I wonder — and would it really make a difference to the quality of their sleep? Isn’t any surface good enough when one is tired enough?
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
