Let’s SLEEP Over It.

Did you know?

I can usually go to sleep after I have woken up.

I cannot watch any movie in one go, not even a 90 minute English movie. I need to take at least one nap in between. Even at movie theaters. Ask my friends. We once went to watch Eklavya. I dozed off in an action-filled scene where Amitabh was crouched on mud in the sweltering heat amidst the lanky legs of the camels. The next scene, I see Saif and Amitabh together, only to wonder what happened in between.

G claims that she cannot sleep at anytime but night. I wonder why. I just need a place to lie on and close my eyes, telling myself that I need to fall asleep in the next 10 minutes. And this way, I can fall asleep even amid loud music.

The more exams draw near, the more I get tensed. The more I get tensed, the more I sleep. The more I sleep, the sleepier and guiltier I feel. Guilt only increases my tension, making me sleep all the more. Now this is what I call a real life synergistic effect of a vicious cycle.

I often hang around with a bunch of party animals. They meet at 8, start cooking at 9, eat dinner at 11, and then watch a movie or play a game, only to wind up at 3 in the morning. No matter what state the party is in, by 11 pm, I am fast asleep on the couch. These guys watch a movie while I sleep, call me when they are about to leave, I accompany them to the car sleepy-eyed, one of them drops me to my place, I climb up the stairs with my eyes closed, go back to my room, and resume my sleep from where I had left it.

I loved Vegas. I didn’t mind all the walking and casino hopping, as long as I had my 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night. No wonder he went home and told his mom that I am the only woman he has seen who sleeps so much.

My naps are as dream-filled as you could imagine. My dreams are a potpourri of action-packed, comic, tragic, suspense-filled and romantic melodrama.

Sleep is therapeutic for me. When I am stressed, I prefer sleeping instead of crying.

I have never had to take sleeping pills. Believe me even consuming pills prescribed to make me sleep less wouldn’t help.

I can never breeze through a class without dozing off at least once. Seminars are definitely meant to be slept in. My max concentration time is about an hour. When I can’t sit through a class, I sleep through it. I can even sleep in class with my eyes wide open. And just so that I do not fall asleep, I take my laptop to classes.

I remember a funny episode when we had a picture exhibition of one of the best wildlife photography. There was a slideshow in a dark room for about an hour, and they were showing pics of animals in the order of their biological classification. This meant that the order would be like this-

Ø Plants and trees
Ø Microbes (bacteria, virus)
Ø Protozoa
Ø Porifera
Ø Cnidarians (jellyfish)
Ø Platyhelminths (flatworms)
Ø Annelids (roundworms and earthworms)
Ø Arthropods (cockroach, spider, prawn, shrimp)
Ø Mollusk (snails)
Ø Echinoderms (starfish)
Ø Fish
Ø Amphibians
Ø Reptiles
Ø Birds
Ø Mammals

Well, I remembered till the Cnidarians. With the darkness and the AC going full blast, who cared? When I woke up, they were almost at the end of the slideshow, showing the picture of monkeys and tigers. And I had gasped aloud- “But how did they come to monkeys so soon?"

While I travel in a train, all I need is the upper berth. I love the rocking motion of the train. Barring occasional loo breaks and food breaks, I have dozed the entire length of tracks from Kolkata to Chennai.

I can never read a book on the bed to relax. I eventually fall asleep. I need to be wide awake and upright in the study even to watch a movie or read a book.

They say I sleep a lot. I say my heavy-duty batteries take a little more time to get charged.

It often happens that I fall asleep in the afternoons, only to wake up in the fading light of the evenings to imagine it to be dawn the early morning and start getting ready for school.

If I am hungry and there is no food at home and I am too lazy to cook or to go out to eat, I can fall asleep in order not to feel the hunger.

There have been more than one occasion when I have fallen asleep prior to the day of the examination, only to wake up the next morning and realize that I haven’t yet started to study.

Back in India, I couldn’t sleep in loud music or even if the night bulb glowed. After coming here, life has been so stressed and my lab work requires such weird hours that I have trained myself to catch occasional naps amid work. Most days, I do not even come home to sleep. I sleep on the couch in the lab amid the droning of machines. Unfamiliar surroundings do not bother me anymore.

I once applied to a study where all you had to do was sleep, while they traced your sleeping and dreaming patterns. I wish they had selected me.

I have slept through Sleepless in Seattle, Sleeping with the enemy, and eyes wide shut. I haven’t yet tried the movie Jaagte Raho.

Unlike other lovers, I can never claim that I have lost sleep thinking of someone.

If they made a movie about me, I’d never let them name it Sona Manaa Hai. Guess what I’d call it? Sleeping in Seattle.

All said and done, I lead as much of an active life as anyone else would. I gym, I dance, I attend classes and hang around with friends, I go for hiking, I blog, and I do a lot more. It is just that I take sleep as seriously as any other thing I do in life.

The Sleeping Beauty signing off now.

sunshine.