SLEEP

‘Cadet! get up, will you?’ our instructor at the NDA (National Defense Academy) was banging his knotty cane on the desk I was sitting. ‘No no sir, I never slept…’ fumbled I was trying to convince him, with not knowing when the guy reached my back corner desk which I chose so meticulously, the thick mustached heavy built tanned instructor who must have dealt with thousands of second lieutenants aspiring to be generals one day like me. And he must be well aware of the technique we aspiring generals learn of how to sleep while keeping eyes open in the class. Lifted the seven kilogram rifle in my hands up onto my head & I headed for ten rounds of the parade ground while I must sleep. A little more dialogue with the instructor & I might have ended up with twenty rounds, thirty rounds or whole night running with the rifle in hands & the instructor sitting in the middle of the ground with his bottle of rum inspecting me.

‘You’d never know the value of sleep’. My easy sleeping father once told me while I was trying to mock his snoring. He’d sleep the moment his back touches the bed & start snoring. Well I can sleep with least trouble or little trouble in the moving train. I may be lying on the berth hard or soft or left without reservation sitting at somebody’s feet leaning in the back in forty five degree. Even in moving jam packed bus sitting in one position for eight hours or many a times even standing while adjusting to lean as comfortably as I could to the middle standing pole or to the side bar of adjacent seat. But definitely not in the same room my father is sleeping. As the moving train or the moving bus would develop sound, movement or disturbances with regular intervals. May be I’ve no other option but to adjust with the situation I can sleep there. But sharing the same room with my father was not at all possible. He’d snore in varying sound notes sometimes there would be pin drop silence with his mouth wide open just sucking air inside his high capacity lungs. A loud roaring sound would then suddenly burst resembling snoring tiger or yawning elephant you can not exactly compare with. Sometimes just lungs full of air would gush out from his open mouth reminding hissing of anaconda. I’d feel pity on mother, yet she’d got acclimatized herself with his peculiar snoring. Rather if he’s not snoring, she would wake up to see if he’s sleeping or not. Once while we’d gone to our relatives’ early morning their neighbors gathered to know if “everything was fine?”

With a faint inkling of moving cat some people get up hastily as if the bomb has exploded onto their head. They call them having cautious sleep, I call them suspicious sleep. Sleeping can’t be called so if they don’t need to pour water onto you to wake you up untimely. ‘Sound sleep is the biggest blessing bestowed by the god on us, sleep tight till you wake up’ my like minded friend always says with his constant sleepy eyes. I so far could not gauge if he’s just finished his sleep or going to sleep, as his always dropping eyelids & reddish eyeballs keep me confused.

I even slept in the bone chilling icy winter of the Siachin bunkers welcoming ever engulfing sleep & red hot killer bullets from across the border. ‘Sleep takes you over like speeding car on the express highway’ yet another “sleepy” friend quipped ‘yet can’t afford to be sleepy at the wheels the deep sleep would take you over in lieu’ he didn’t forget to complete his sentence. Still, you can not sleep in the moving loaded truck in its cabin as you might snore disturbing drivers’ sleep.

‘Looks so fresh as if she just took a nice bath’ I whispered in my fellow cadets’ ear viewing as closely as I could to visiting guest who was a leading film lady. ‘Must have had tight sleep for two days’ my fellow cadet, who was ever deprived of good sleep, shot back. He’d always dream of sleeping & sleep in dreams. I always doubt his favorite deity must be Kumbhakarna an ever sleeping giant demon in Ramayana.

It was my first sound sleep after my marriage & I yes me myself got up in the middle of night just to realize that the moving train in my dreams was whistling in reality. To my amazement my newly wedded wife was snoring resembling whistling of the train. Well, her whistling was hardly audible out of our bedroom which I instantly checked up. Yet, while bolting the door back I was sinking within as I’d to listen to the music whole of my rest of the life.

By

Vijay Yelmelwar