The Places Where You sleep

The idea for this piece comes from a very good friend of mine. It was her mentioning of a nauseating bus journey that made me think of my own bus adventures and it inevitably led to the topic of sleep.

People generally can sleep a lot. You give them the chance, and wham, off to sleep. This friend of mine can sleep literally for 12 hours a day. I being the good kid, am amongst the early to rise and late to bed types, insomniac in some respects, though even I devour the afternoon siestas after a hearty lunch. And these bus journeys have something that makes me sleep a lot. Here it goes:

My schedule is like that I generally go home on weekends( have to, a necessity it is). And as luck would have it, buses are the most comfortable and speedy means of doing that. People generally tend to board the bus and doze off. There is a stop at a place mid-way, but apart from that people generally sleep. As for the nature lovers, you just cant appreciate the same view every time you make the same journey. So is the case with me and I have managed to doze off for the whole 3 hours of the journey on numerous occasions, only to be woken up by the realization that my destination has arrived. Many a stern looks from the person sitting beside me, who so greatfully extended their shoulders for my sleep.

In fact this habit has carried over from my school days. I used to have evening shift in class 9 and 10. So I used to return home around 5. And my favourite seat on the public bus was the last seat beside the window. Calcutta roads are full of potholes and there happens to be a large one near my place, so inevitably I used to wake up from my slumber whenever my stop came. But that dint prevent me from missing my stop around 5-6 times, the result being me having to walk a long way back and cursing myself at the same time.

Another place where I can associate sleep is the barbers shop. My barber happens to adore me a lot. I have been going to the same poor chap for quite some time, so he knows what kind of hair cut I generally want. He wraps me up in the cloth and I happily doze off, only to be shaken up by him that he is through. The only mishap that happened once was that he cut my hair off too short, as a result of which I was nearly bald and my mom had a real shock on seeing me. Man, I had a real bad time with people asking me what happened.

Well people might wonder how one can manage to doze off at a barber shop. But it has something to do with comfort. The feel of the scissors going over your scalp or even the razor blade gives a soothing feeling that makes you drowsy.

But to go back to the topic of sleep, I think it is a passion that varies from person to person. My room mate is a complete owl. He goes to sleep when I wake up at 7 and wakes up when I pull him out of bed for lunch at 12. I have seen people go off to sleep in the class. N it’s a real art to sleep and avoid the venomous glares of the professor. People spend their entire vacations sleeping. In my opinion the best time to sleep is during the winters. It is probably the hardest task to wake up for class, but my bad luck is that I have had so many of my soccer practice sessions at 6 in the morning, that I have missed the essence of sleeping late in the winters. But you just simply cant take away the excitement of going to bed in the winters under the warm quilt.

And as long as you continue to live on this planet, you shall have sleep to rely upon. So as I prepare to take a nap after a long hectic day, I salute the people who are preparing to go to bed at the same time as me, and I take pity on the people who are supposed to be up all night as part of their duties…..so off I go…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…