Mujhe Sone Do (Allow me to Sleep)!

This article is part truth, part fantasy, part satire, driven by recent happenings in the social media space, which created many a dry humor, and vigor, in the arms of the finger-trigger happy people.

This article is entirely written by a human, and ChatGPT and its variants have had no contribution or influences and hence is protected inherently by the intellectual capacity of the author or its lack of!

Sleep: The eternal dilemma and paradox for the working class of adults, which has gotten so many interpretations across. The poets and artists imagine it as an altered state of mind, where realities and the abstract merge. Scientists, some, think it is a state where creativity peaks. Medical professionals tell us that this is the state where we humans recover, recuperate, and rejuvenate and rebuild ourselves. Yogis claim that they can bypass many of the common person’s tryst into the deep sleep cycle and thus need less of it to feel refreshed. And to some, who are the Leaders across, they seem to believe it is wasted productive time, which they could have used for Nation Building. And to the millions of party mongers, it is an afterthought when they are knocked out, despite their best attempt not to do so, after a heavy dose of intoxication and gluttony.

Barring a few episodes of lack of sleep, I, the normal human being, love to sleep. 9 hours was necessary for me, right till grade 12, and I remember falling asleep at 9 15 PM when in Grade 10, and waking hesitantly at 6 30 AM in the morning, for the 8 AM class. While in college, we roommates competed in this wonderful luxury of life, during which we never had to worry about academics, and could literally live our dreams. For me, and a few others, that break from 12 NOON to 2 PM was a luxury, where we could rush, have lunch, keep the alarm for 1.55PM, and sleep in peace!

My biggest worry when I got a job was: How will I sustain that afternoon, without that deep sleep? To me, it was something I enjoyed immensely, and did not want to sacrifice. The result of which I got the title “Mujhe Sone Do (Let me Sleep)” in my college yearbook, a rare privilege that no one else got.

Well, I managed since work did not allow me that luxury. It was a startup, and I often worked 7 days a week. My commitment was a mix of cursing my manager and completely immersing myself in work, depending on what I was doing. Work thus became worship, and I slowly forgot that luxury called the afternoon nap.

Fast forward 2 decades, my career took me across a few cities in India, and then to US. Sleep was normally confined to the night, I was not a party monger, and the luxury of afternoon nap was confined to the weekends. Life moved on, I did well at work, but never did I neglect sleep.

Now, I was not getting any younger, and at some point, either old habits die hard, or catches up with you. As I was thick in my entrepreneurial journey, that meant I was once again working 7 days a week, often 14 to 16 hours per day, sleep was limited to 6 hours a day mostly. But the quality was not bad, and despite my numerous trips, I could get what was needed, some while on travel, some during the breaks, and some sitting in the waiting halls of the transportation.

The afternoon nap, which is now a mix of nap and sleep, restarted in 2017. I had taken a part time morning job, parallel with my entrepreneurship, and that allowed me to come home for lunch, take a nap, and then get back to work. That continues even today, and I shut myself off from the World for that, between 2 PM and 4 PM. A powerful, refreshing way to recover, that fortunately does not interfere with the night sleep, but then, not as deep and refreshing as my school and college days that I envy now, where I was a dead wood, in that phase.

So why this sleep autobiography? What does a reader get from it? What am I trying to glorify?

A human mind, which has millions of thoughts and thousands of decisions to make each day, needs that sleep, to get away from it all, and refresh and recharge itself. In addition to conscious sleep, it also needs that drift, and dreaming phase, where one would sit on a beach and simply stare at the waves crashing, or watch that ghost crab dig holes in the sand, or that kid giggling happily as it runs on the beach aimlessly, or that old soul picking up sea shells of different shapes and colors, or those birds flying up and down in the waves of the wind, to make that occasional dip and sprint to catch a fish in flight. Or stare deep down, as the sea meets the ocean, and one can see a bare outline of a ship slowly drifting to its destination, in what we feel will take ages!

If Einstein slept for 9 hours a day, and Newton had to be woken via an apple falling, and if Usain Bolt has to sleep deep to run fast, and if Leonardo da Vinci took power naps, often, I think we the common man, needs plenty of it, to stay sane. Now if one adds to that, the waking time needed for daily ablutions, exercise, listening to music, reading books, gardening, conversations with the family, and a few others, one can imagine how much quality time would be left for work, as defined in the corporate culture of life. I do not want to give a number here, since it does vary, and could depend on careful planning.

But for sure, I loved my caption, Mujhe Sone Do. And am envious of my son, and the youngsters, who seem to have the capability to sleep endlessly, and snap up in an instant, and get onto to that waking cycle of life. Something that I cannot do these, days, for I am no longer in my prime youth!

Adios, Amigos! duerme bien esta noche!!

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