A Trek Into The Past: Bedroom Exploits

A Trek Into The Past

Bedroom Exploits

by

Yakkity Yak




It must be shocking that bedroom exploits figure in our early lives in ironic co-existence with all the gloom and the doom, the rough and the tumble! Like most kids during our time, we were partial to the game of football. The lack of space, however, was a major stumbling block in our desire to satiate the irresistible urge to kick the ball around. After smashing a few window-panes while knocking the ball around in the small turf-patches in the neighbourhood, we self forfeited our chance to whack it around in these patches any more. We had no money to pay for the repairs of broken window panes in the neighbourhood. Neither would our parents want to bail us out, any longer. The self forfeiture was hence, a self-imposition borne out of extreme remorse. Even if we had not made such an imposition, we could not dribble past our mother. Without saying, she imposed a ban on us kicking around in the neighbourhood. We could not leave the house at any course. Even if we should sneak out to play during any of her absence from the house, say, when she makes her routine homage to the temples, she had some means to find out. Her forensic approach to the matter was simple yet effective. Each time she returned from her sojourn to the temple, she will inspect the soles of all our feet. Since she kept the house spotlessly clean and since we could not afford to have a pair of slippers of our own, any smeared soles were to her, sure indications that we must have stepped out of the house bare-footed. Even if we could scrub off the dirt-smears, it was just too hard to scrub off the chlorophyll-stains picked up from the lawn. Faced with such a predicament, we retreated to the bedroom to hone our footballing-skills and to give expression to our bedroom exploits!

We found much to our delight that actually sleeping on bare hard floors, since the bedroom was bare of any furniture, is not a bad thing after all. The bedroom was relatively speaking, a vast expanse of empty space; eminently suited to a game of football. We rolled up paper balls from old newspapers and had a gala time kicking and diving after it to stop goals from being scored. We also had our fair share of aerial duels as we fought hard for the ball in mid air. Alas, this was to be the source of trouble in our bedroom exploits! It all stems from the fact that the entire room was illuminated only by a single light bulb. The bulb, as it was, was hanging precariously from the ceiling. Unable to take the severe knocks from the ball, so furiously fought in mid aerial-duels, it soon got detached from the ceiling and began to oscillate dangerously above us. We were never fearful of the light bulb plonking down on us. It was the more onerous ordeal of having to account for the sorry state of the bulb to our father when he returned home. It was more this that haunted us rather badly.
In a flash of brilliance, I crouched down and offered my broad shoulders to my younger brother, urging him to stand on them while I hoisted him up to see what restorative work could be undertaken to the hapless, ill-fated light bulb. I shouted copious instructions to him to make a full scale examination of what ailed the bulb so that we could render all necessary first aid to keep it firm and upright again. In a desperate but inspired moment, he triumphantly reported that he had come to grips with the problem. He reported that the screws that kept the bulb nailed to the ceiling had come loose, unable to take the severe beatings from our mid air combats. The ravages proved too much and the holes that held up the screws, were, quite explicably, overly dilated! I then conjured up a devious but ingenious scheme of action to put things right, straight away! I hoisted him up again on my shoulders and barked out further instructions to him, to tighten the holes by wrapping some paper onto the screws. The simple plan worked, like gold! The screws started to hold on snugly and flushed to the otherwise gaping holes. It was not really a rare engineering feat, but nonetheless, a no less ingenuous one. When my father returned later in the evening, he was none the wiser. We survived another day so that we could continue our bedroom exploits yet again the next day.