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As you walk by the Seven Hills Masala Dukan a fifty meters down and turn right, you will see a mini-market of about a dozen sheds in an area called charmingly: Chandni Chowk.
All these shops belong to the interesting community of Dhunias:
http://peoplegroupsindia.is2c.com/profiles/dhunia
Making cotton mattresses, pillows and quilts is their family preserve.
In the 1960s of KGP we were overhearing 'rumors' of beds of other materials than cotton, but one had to travel to Calcutta to fetch them. Like Dunlopillos, U-Foams, Coirs and such stylish stuff.
Now, I have never been a connoisseur of things material; I can put up and shut up. But to this day I have never been happy with any brand of pillow that I tried. Pure cotton pillows get into the habit of stiffening like chapatis made by South Indian homemakers with lumps here and there like islands in an archipelago. Trying to sleep with your bumpy head on them is double trouble...the bumps on your head and those on the pillow never match. And you try doubling up by another of the same on it. And there will be play between them. And you get a crick in the neck and try sleeping without any pillow. And it hurts.
Wise men told me that the thing to do is to buy a pillow of silk cotton. And you make a visit to Chandni Chowk and you get a hearty welcome since silk cotton is thrice as costly as say 'cotton' cotton. You buy one and it melts in your hands like candy floss. And for a week you will be in the tenth heaven. The pillow adjusts nicely to your head-bumps and you travel in Dreamland. But the life of a silk cotton pillow is just about two weeks. Instead of work-hardening like the cotton pillow, it sort of melts away like that very candy floss, except that it leaves residues in the form of sizzling silk cotton seeds that roll under your head making noise.
And you go the Chandni Chowk and the Dhunia says that nothing pure is ever good for anyone and recommends a mixture of cotton and silk cotton. He is bluffing. The result is a physical mixture unlike a chemical alloy. You are worse off because now you end up on chapatis with seeds.
For a while I was told that the optimum solution is a collapsible air-pillow made by that famous Calcutta Company called Duckback. You buy one shedding a hefty Rs 20 and pump it up to the required pressure by blowing and try to seal the damn thing with its cap. It looks good enough for two minutes but then you feel you are being tossed up...instead of the air pillow taking the shape of your head, it is the other way round...it has sutures on it...and by the time you get used to it, you find suddenly that you are on the hard cot...the air-pillow develops wiki-leaks...
I am now on 69 and more or less solvent but I haven't yet found a pillow that gives me restful ease as the poets put it...
Anyway, coming back to our Gole Bazaar Dhuniya Dukan, you will notice that it is manned by a twosome...one the owner pimping for custom with hands and throat, and the other the karigar who is covered all over by wisps of cotton here and there like a tree in the first snowfall of the season:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://www.indiatalkies.com/images/first-snowfall19135r.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.indiatalkies.com/2010/09/hills-overlooking-manali-snowfall.html&h=684&w=1024&sz=464&tbnid=EhQfG6MVHZCyiM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dfirst%2Bsnowfall%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=first+snowfall&docid=BlbijWmvI6qv3M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NSK9TrrvE5DIrQfX3pHQAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CE0Q9QEwAw&dur=11
And he is busy wielding a twanging instrument that took me back to my fearful childhood. I recall very well the sound of this harp-like giant carried by an itinerant dhunia along the streets of my seaside village Muthukur. It made a noise like the Gandiv of Arjun ready for battle. There was no need for him to shout...his instrument does it for him...and my Father rushes out beckons him in and dumps half a dozen of pillows and mattresses in the verandah. After a prolonged bout of haggling, the chap gets down to work. He opens every closed thing and pulls out the cotton bumps as matted as the tresses of a genuine sadhu:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://asianart.com/exhibitions/sadhus/large/9-Shaivite.jpg&imgrefurl=http://asianart.com/exhibitions/sadhus/9.html&h=493&w=329&sz=28&tbnid=vItgc6rUV7QgmM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=60&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsadhus%2Bin%2Bhimalayas%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=sadhus+in+himalayas&docid=E4Ej2YM1oNYSuM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OSS9TsWDC4bZrQeJ6ezPAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CEwQ9QEwBQ&dur=13
And twangs them like hell and I rush out like a rabbit.
Childhood is full of repressed fears that last till wedded bliss which acts like Amrutanjan...the cure-all of aches. The principle is that a keener ache makes you forget the cleaner one.
The other fearsome sight of my childhood is the itinerant whipping-boy. He suddenly appears with his bare back smudged with blots of clotted blood and a horsewhip in his hand and goes about whipping his back repeatedly...I learned the word for it much later...masochism. But now I know that everything that makes gruesome sound is not necessarily painful. The horse whip makes that cracking whiplash because of the technique by which the lash part of it at its end is given a supersonic speed. And what I fearfully heard were the sounds of mini-sonic booms. And my son's Biology Text had this cute high-speed photo of a guy sneezing...the droplets of the sneeze are emitted at supersonic speed and that's why they make such infernal noise...some hi-fi sneezes I heard were monstrous though...
And his wife (I am back to the whipper) carries a country-dhaki and makes even more fearful sounds with it...she doesn't beat the drum with the stick she carries in her hand...she sort of drags it along the drumhead and that is really scary making a weird sound like the very Hades...now I know that she is using the stick-slip mechanism and evokes the so-called Relaxation Oscillations much like the ones we do in our Fourth Year Lab of yore using Thyratrons to generate sawtooth waveforms.
The only pleasant childhood showmaster was this one walking a decorated bull along. He himself is dressed like the maharajas of olden days with colorful knee-length drapes and carries a bean (oboe) in his hands. Originally the bulls were the famous Ongole bulls of awesome proportions but they are too expensive. So, he drags a measly bullock that is properly 'enhanced'. Its tiny horns are embedded in a couple of huge metallic condoms. And its tinier hump is covered with a huge silken bra. But we in our childhood were not schooled in these adult devices and so we enjoyed the show when he makes the poor bullock sway his head and dance to his tune...a very pleasing show that is extant to this day.
Anyway, I find that the KGP-Chandni Chowk is no longer as drab as it was but has a very showy DP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MDz_O66LOk
Look there for a couple of dozen other videos including a dorm called C-341 RP Hall...
Great Going!
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