One Long Night With My Father

During my childhood days, everyone in our house used to feel the deep sleep of my father at night. His melodious snores was audible from every corner of the house and I just wondered, how my mother faced such sort of high pitch music alongside. Whenever relatives used to visit our house in bulk or whenever we used to visit them, in particular, on special occasions, quite often some permutation and combinations was required for the optimal solution of “Who would be sleeping with whom and on which rooms?” On such occasions I always tried my best, so that the optimal solution wouldn't have ended up with, my father sleeping beside me.

Those days it was so much fun whenever any relatives used to visit and I remember one such occasion, when a hell lot of relatives visited our house. That night, all permutation and combination that I could have calculated failed and ultimately, I had to sleep next to my dad. I think I was in my 9th or 10th grade that time and my elder brother was not at house, as he already joined his engineering college. After dinner we had a wonderful gossip and eventually everyone went to sleep, while I prepared myself for the big challenge ahead. 

I noticed that within a few minutes, my father went to sleep and I could hear his mild snores. The volume started to increase after every successive minute and a little later, it reached the threshold level. That time I kept watching his nostrils for a while and just wondered, how such monstrous sound comes out of those tiny holes? I tried to sleep, but no way could I have slept under such blustering explosions. I had to do something in order to get some sleep and I gently pressed his nose and tried to block one of the nostrils. I was little delighted as  the volume reduced for few seconds, but very soon I realized that his one nostril was capable enough to raise the volume to the threshold level and that time the music was little different. 

Again I tried to sleep under such miserable condition, but I couldn’t. I tried my luck once more and that time, I experimented with his other nostril, by gently blocking it. But without much surprise the result was similar, as the monstrous sounds evolved through the single hole and that time the sound was again a little different. 

I had almost given up and somehow tried to sleep, but without much luck though, as I could only manage a series of few second naps. I went for a final attempt and my intention was to disturb my dad's sleep for a while. That time, I blocked both his nostrils and there was complete silence in the room for a while. But immediately, the room exploded with the blistering sounds and at that moment, the explosions originated from his mouth. Very soon the sounds reached the threshold level, but I was not able to bring him back from his dream world. With no other options left , I decided not to disturb him any further and simply lied down on the bed. 

After that night, I never gave it a second chance. But about 15 months back, when Jia arrived into this world, my parents visited us. Again at that time, I didn’t have any other option and I had to sleep beside my father. I was little horrified with the kind of explosive sounds, I had to encounter in the night. But to my surprise, he never made any kind of lullaby for me and next morning, when  I asked  my mother about the drastic change, she said to me that somehow my father stopped to snore, long time back.