SLEEP MANAGEMENT
May 1 2008 | Views 1273 |
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Tags: Humour sleeping women insomnia men profound thoughts window panes
Tags: Humour sleeping women insomnia men profound thoughts window panes
Sleep Management- HUMOUR
A hot summer afternoon always makes one drowsy and ENVIOUS of those who can afford the luxury of a catnap in the chill of an AC…
There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock. ~Author Unknown
This is one of the most profound thoughts…since these days sleep is missing from my life. Sulekha has made me an insomniac…and without enough sleep it is said we are all like tall two year olds, and this is written by one such sleep deprived zombie. Recently a friend remarked that I should not use kajal..kohl as it gets smudged…and looks like dark circles, I had to correct her..saying this is not kaajal ..These are dark circles.
These defining moments bring out the thinker in each of us and one starts ruminating on the deeper aspects of life. It takes more than an hour from my place to the university and sitting in the bus one becomes Rhodin’s thinker especially when all around you can see heads rolling, falling, and crashing against the window panes under the influence of sleep. I wonder why the people- sleep through the journey early morning and they sleep on their way back too. The students sleeping is obvious, they sleep just before dawn but what is perplexing is the faculty, the women faculty who sleep as soon as they enter and even on their return journey…and I suspect the nightly calisthenics is the last reason for one to sleep early morning….it is a much deeper woe...a woe betide women...
Sleeping is no small matter…it requires planning as to how, where, when, with whom…etc etc. For a man it is no big deal as society permits him to sleep without much ado. The problem arises only when he decides to sleep with someone.
But for a woman…..it is considered one of those multiple things for which she is made to feel guilty…even when there is no other person in consideration.
Before marriage there were no such issues…insomnia during the weekdays and on Sundays one slept till the stomach growled so one had to get up to eat….and then one went off to sleep again. Of course Dad’s voice floated hourly like the alarm saying it is 7am get up, till it is one 1pm…now at least get up… But that seemed a long long time ago.
Marriage changes everything….and sleeping becomes a luxury…especially undisturbed sleep. You leave your bed at 5am and get to meet it only after 11pm.
You are newly wed…you have stars in your eyes…and you obviously don’t go to sleep and in the day you have to sit through endless ceremonies and just sit all dolled up exchanging pleasantries. The Ghoonghat these days is so short that one cannot even dose off without people catching you at it. That is why the ghoonghat was actually invented…but now it has become vestigial. But somehow your better half faces no such problems…the entire household goes berserk trying to get him to rest, catch up on his sleep, etc, etc. But here you are sitting and nodding your head and dreaming of a sound nap. And you don’t take that much coveted snooze as your image of the perfect bahu will take a beating…the perfect bahu helps out in afternoons chopping vegetables, watching all those Ekta Kapoor soaps, etc.
But the survival instinct always wins and newly weds have invented an ingenious way …they go to movies to sleep. Only lovers go coochy-cooing in movies, newly weds sleep through them…three hours of blissful sleep. Then you start meditating at all times in real earnest with eyes shut. One also develops the art of thinking…deep thinking that requires you close yourself to the world and sometimes even snore.
Then life blesses you with little bundles of joy. Those soft looks of helplessness don’t let them fool you.
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. ~Leo J. Burke
The baby every two hours is wired to cry…and it is a ritual…as you multitask as a mother dairy, then the toilet cleaner and then the Lakshman Jhula. By the time you go back to sleep it is time for the next feed and the mother dairy to open up. Mothers try hard to attune themselves to match those little problems but then there is so much else to do…sleeping seems a waste of time with unlimited tasks to finish….and strangely the man never hears the baby cry in the night.
But from then on you forget what an undisturbed sleep is.
Are you awake? ….is one of the saner questions asked when you are sleeping. You undergo the entire cycle of stress as the babies reach the terrible ones, two, threes, rebellious fours and son on…as the years keep progressing and the titles are constant. Then there are all kinds of stress but the stress of examinations is by far the most potent and it is in a more accentuated form unlike your premarital days where you felt the five minute more of sleep was more important then learning the stupid answer but not now…your child has to get 200 out of 100 so you cannot sleep, you experience the much dreaded examination anxiety. Before marriage for that extra 5 minutes of sleep which lasted some hours one never suffered such guilt pangs but now the guilt pangs are so severe that one becomes an insomniac…especially during the children’s examinations.
Are you awake? ….is one of the saner questions asked when you are sleeping. You undergo the entire cycle of stress as the babies reach the terrible ones, two, threes, rebellious fours and son on…as the years keep progressing and the titles are constant. Then there are all kinds of stress but the stress of examinations is by far the most potent and it is in a more accentuated form unlike your premarital days where you felt the five minute more of sleep was more important then learning the stupid answer but not now…your child has to get 200 out of 100 so you cannot sleep, you experience the much dreaded examination anxiety. Before marriage for that extra 5 minutes of sleep which lasted some hours one never suffered such guilt pangs but now the guilt pangs are so severe that one becomes an insomniac…especially during the children’s examinations.
Then running the house is like a filling a well...it is never finished….so even if one has the luxury of a siesta a woman will sleep in fits because of the guilt that she might as well put her time to better use rather than sleep away the time. Then there will be a continuous flow of words…just tell me where is the …, sorry but cannot find the…., did you take my….., you want to eat this for….., and everything seems to need urgent attention in those forty winks. If a man is sleeping at any odd hour too, a silence will descend, and everyone will speak in hushed tones so that the man does not get disturbed.
But a woman is always in the perpetual dilemma……To sleep or not to sleep
If she sleeps, she is guilt ridden that she had tons to do and she wiled away her time sleeping and in some part of the world it is morning already and she would be late in receiving the future, so she chooses to beat the need for sleep.
The conclusion I can draw is that slumber hits back with a vengeance forcing her to doze in the bus, in beauty parlors, in the waiting rooms of doctors, in buses, in cars, in loos, etc etc…she can sleep peacefully anywhere but on the bed.
BTW the world is run by sleep deprived people and so I take solace in that…those who can…sleep…those who cannot …write these blogs in the afternoon sun and give the world something to sleep over.
*** This is the first year of World Sleep Day celebrated on 21st March 2008
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