Sleep while you can

For the last four days I have been coming from office at 12 midnight. Thank heavens my wife Rekha is in Kerala. I topped this performance last night (or today morning!) by leaving office at 3.30 a.m.. No surprise considering we launched an application called Chak De Girls, on ibibo.

In the last five days I have realized the sleep is an important part of man’s life. Perhaps that’s why I am home today and its just 10 p.m.. Those that work in the IT sector would understand…the others can start counting the sheep till they get some sleep.

Rekha is back from Kerala on December 2, and I hope by that time I (and my boss!) is done with the tight schedule. Coz, I don’t want my daughter to grow up and wonder: “Who is that dark skinned man, who visits mom every night?”

Till it started getting tough at ibibo.com, I had made it a habit of sleeping at 10 p.m. because my favorite dream started at 10.30 p.m. sharp. My favorite dream involved me eating a giant, white, creamy cake…and then burping. Well…to be honest with you, that was my favorite dream only till Rekha told me that we overshot the monthly budget because we had to buy 30 pillows last month!

While on the topic of sleeping, I have to tell you what my strict Armyman father did to wake me up early in the morning.

He thought that sleep was Satan’s doing and shouldn’t be indulged in. Perhaps, that’s why he would sit with us (me and my two sisters) and give us dictation till it was 10 p.m.. If only there was Fashion TV in the 80s, me and my sisters would have slept early.

While going to bed, all three would place a soap wrapper (Lyril, in our case) under our pillow because Ikroop Singh – my 5th standard classmate – had made an accidental discovery and wanted all of us to reap the benefits. Apparently, if you kept a soap wrapper (without the soap, of course) under your pillow while going to sleep…one tends to get up early. There is no proof, but it seemed to work. I would get up every day at 5.30 a.m. to see if the wrapper was there and it hadn’t moved from under the pillow.

My mother and my father had different approaches to my sleep habits. Coincidentally, both involved water.

My mother thought that if I drank loads of water in the night, I would get up at 5.30 a.m. to visit the loo and thus get into a habit of getting up early. The arrogant kid that I was, I didn’t go according to my mother’s plan. I pissed in the bed around 2.30-3.00 a.m. and spent sleepless two hours or so because of damp clothes, and then sleep heavy at 5.30 a.m.. When I continued to piss in bed even in the ninth standard (which was exposed to the whole World when we went on a Scouts expedition) my mother gave up her trials.

My father’s rules were simple if one doesn’t obey orders make his/her life miserable. After 5.35 a.m. he would stop giving orders, and instead dip his hand in water and sprinkle it on our face. Believe me, as a child early morning sleep is the best because you are dreaming of chocolates, toys, and cakes…and for it to be dampened by a spray of water is bad. This would be followed by a handful of water and if I still managed to stay in bed, a mug full of water would be on its way.

If you have been woken up like this by your parents, I am sure you still nurture that grudge. Perhaps, you might want to join the SPRAY (Society for Parent’s Real Abuse of You) or STEEP (Society Towards ‘Enema-ing’ Erring Parents) to take revenge.

But if you are 45 plus and have a kid who might be joining either SPRAY or STEEP, you might want to ensure your safety by enrolling at SPRINKLE (Society of Parents in India with Naughty Kids, Lambs and Eels).

Now, for some sleep….zzzzz

Related posts You might want to read:

1. Jammy, you stole my sleep
   Yesterday, I had a mail in my Gmail inbox which had an interesting subject: “Jammy, you stole my sleep”. My immediate reaction was, “Has the mail come from a girl or a boy?” I checked…and it had come from Viji – in all probability a south Indian (pretty!) girl. I started reading, thinking it was [...]...
2. Waking up early and related sub-plots
   As you are all aware, my grand father was a farmer-shepherd. My father interned as a shepherd before finding out that it wasn’t his calling and moved to farming. Farming involved getting up early and sleep walking to the fields two kilometers away, with two well built bullocks pulling you along. Twenty days into farming, [...]...
3. Get, Set, Go! Or should it be Get, Wet, Go!
   Bed sheets have played an important role in my life. So much, if there were to be a flood in Chennai – and I am not saying this because there is no chance of a flood in this city – and we had to evacuate, the first thing I will grab will be my bed [...]...
4. And the rainy season begins
   If you are living in Delhi or Gurgaon, my apologies….rain was never meant for you. If you live elsewhere in the country, chances are you have seen rain and understand what it is. Here is an article on the rainy season. I don’t remember when I first saw rain. Since I don’t remember, why don’t [...]...
5. Anatomy of a train journey
   It isn’t without reason that Railways has a separate budget. No, it isn’t because Mamta Banerjee wanted to have her own purse. It is because Railways is an integral part of the Indian psyche, not to mention the amount of money spent on its daily up keep and the number of passengers it helps move [...]...
6. When God asked me to marry again
   God played a joke on me last night, but I am not upset about it. How many people does God play with, anyway? I must be special. I just hope God isn’t a Radio Jockey with one of the many FM stations….and he didn’t put me on air while playing the joke on me. Here [...]...
7. Every photograph has a story to tell
   I have always believed that every photograph has a story to tell – something so compelling that one doesn’t really want to share it. Perhaps that is why it took me 26 years to tell you this story. The three children caught in this 26-year old photograph are Jamshed V Rajan (a self-proclaimed Internet guru), [...]...
8. When my mom boards the airplane…
   Yesterday, I realized that I am not the only threat to airhostess that my family has to offer. My mother is better than me when it comes to air hostesses. On Friday my mom and I traveled from Delhi to Madurai – changing flights at Chennai – and I must tell you that traveling with [...]...
9. Making full use of the bath tub
   The biggest advantage of traveling across cities as an IT professional is the bath tub you get to use in the hotels. I have been alive for 31 years now but have never lived in a house with a bath tub. The closest I have come was when we had a 300 liter overhead tank [...]...
10. Surviving an economic crisis or depression
    India has recorded a GDP Growth of 7.9 per cent – proof that we Indians have managed the economic crisis/recession a lot better than others. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi has offered Dubai a bailout plan of 10 billion U.S. dollars…which means my Malayali wife’s relatives won’t be coming back from Dubai, jobless. In short, the biggest [...]...

Posted by Jamshed V Rajan on Nov 29 2007. Filed under Office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry