Reclining on memories: How my brown air leather armchair offered an unsolicited trip down memory lane

I bought a recliner. So what, one might ask. Until recently, this voluminous piece of furniture never made it to my shopping list. Neither here nor in India, nor in Singapore — places where I lived most of my life. For a person who spends part of his weekend meandering in and out of furnishing stores, buying a recliner had never occurred. Neither had I fancied or sunk into any one of them on display to try out the comfort and opulence it's known to offer.

Perceptions changed overnight when I snoozed off on a recliner at a hospital reception whereas I struggled to get 40 winks on a flat bed the whole week. Just a glance at the couch or the bed typically triggers my nocturnal panic attacks. None of the coping mechanisms that the psychologist teaches in sessions costlier than a cardiology consultation would help you when a panic attack strikes in the night. Keeping the bed lamp on dimmer, thinking about positive things, reminiscing about an old romance, focusing the eyes on a nearby picture — in my case the iconic Che Guevara poster, parting the draperies to let the streetlight stream in, etc. never work for me.

“But why does a flat bed scare me?” I posed the question to my psychologist.

“Lying on a flat surface probably triggers the fear of dying.” I thought she made sense.

So when the fear of the panic attack recurring at night gripped me in an evening last week, I bought a recliner online in a jiffy and told Puja, a friend working for the furnishing house, to arrange an immediate delivery. I was so desperate there was no time to fact-check and cost-check.

The brown airleather armchair offered not only sound sleep but also an unsolicited trip down memory lane. It catapulted me to an era in my hometown in India when remnants of feudalism were still ingrained in societal mannerisms and habits during my formative years. The Indian equivalent of the modern-day recliner, the wood-and-fabric armchair called charukasera that adorned the porch of a traditional Kerala house, is one of the seats of such aristocracy.

The picturesque porch, known as poomukham in local lingo, was a protruding sitout or a verandah propped up by pillars where guests outside of the family were entertained. People of a certain stature were offered seats on a parapet connecting the pillars while labourers would cool their heels in the courtyard to hear from the patriarch of the family who would place himself in the armchair, also known as easy chair, cooling himself with a palm leaf vishari, or fan, and spitting betelnut juice into a brass cuspidor. He would put his feet up on the extended armrest, which doubles as a leg rest, baring his thighs and beyond while gobbing out edicts tainted in red.

suresh@khaleejtimes.com