The Art of Sleeping

Disclaimer: like the crazy customer-representative calling guy, the flight-missing asshole, this guy is a figment of my imagination. He bears no living or dead resemblance to my freaked-out personality. I own this guy; he does what I want and not what I do.

“Let us be lazy in everything, except for in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.” For several centuries, men have enjoyed the pleasure of sleeping, it’s not that women were behind, but with the advent of malls and hair salons their sleeping habits reached extinction. Sleeping is a door to self-realization; it’s a ride to orgasmic pleasure; it’s an instrument to strum the subconscious; it’s a diffuser of stress. William C. Dement and hundred others tried understanding it, but fell terribly short. Few women who dress-up as men and enjoy drinking beer right after getting out of bed and enjoy peeing in the shower would agree with me that the purpose of living is not to have sex, all day, but to sleep, all day. Taking a dump, all day, comes close to sleeping for the walk-away prize of the biggest inspiration in a man’s life, but not enough to cause any upsets, all day.

Somewhere in the history of blood and gore, of world wars and homosexual rights, a voice rose from behind the crowd of sleeping men and overwhelmed them as no methamphetamine had ever done. They were found with their pants down, scratching their heads, trying to find an excuse to sleep-in, when this dude named Benjamin Franklin said, ‘excuse me,’ and wreaked havoc on them. “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” The international uproar that followed broke all records of madness and swept away the sanity of human-race in one stroke. Sleepers were tagged as pariahs. They were outcast as aliens and stoned to death if they were found rubbing their groggy eyes. The biggest fall-out was the school children. The following is the excerpt from a newspaper article which appeared soon after Mr. Franklin bullied people to work instead of sleeping at work.

There goes the wisdom of ‘sleep until you die, and die until you sleep’ down the drain. I am not happy with how the words of Mr. Franklin are used to torture the kids. Every kid is made to realize that if he gets up early, does his chores and homework, and behaves himself, he has a good shot of becoming Franklin or some other political dude. I ask, “Seriously?” and parents reply, “Did you see that alarm-clock? Let’s buy twenty of them.” I just cannot believe what I am hearing and seeing. The truth cannot be any further. These propagandists of early to bed and early to rise are advocating some sort of a machine world, which the human-race will witness some day in the movie Matrix, if not in reality. The world is slowly slipping into the hands of the people who will someday be called the Nazis. These enemies of sleeping should each be given a heavy dose of the medicine that will some day be known as Rozerem and shaken from their painful awakened state. I want justice served right now. I want my sleep back. I am pretty sure that things will work out just fine. We all went through the travails of getting up early for school, and we all worked up in our heads the shortest way of traveling in space and time to reach school before the last bell rang. We all were smart and we all were sleepy. The only problem which I see being aggravated by the words of Mr. Franklin is that we didn’t fully realize the uselessness of the alarm-clock until we had grown beards and moustaches or boobs for the other few.

I have been a sleeper all my life. Drawing inspiration from the dark-ages, I muscled my way into the history of mankind. I didn’t require any extraneous elements to influence me to understand the benefits of sleeping-in like a lot of people who listen to commercials and spend their life’s savings on Ambien, Lunestra, Rozerem, and Sonata. I was born with it. It all started when the alarm-clock showed up early in the morning, trying to wake me up, and I out-classed it by my devious schemes. The ear-splitting ringing of the alarm clock, set by my dad of course, would wrench me from the fantasy world where the wisp of fading dreams made everything blurry, but only to the point that I would get up, look around, not find my dad lurking behind the book-cabinet, and go back to sleep. And then the huge water-drops would land on my face poisoning my sleep, commissioned by my dad of course, telling me to get up and go to school—a cold-blooded way of waking a kid up right before he was about to kiss that girl. This is what he had to say:

Ullu ke pathe utho (son of an owl, get up)
School tumhara baap jayega kya? (Your dad will go to school or what?)

And I would say:

That would be great. Can you?
How about making a deal? You go to school and keep my pocket-money. Deal?

Then he would say with a smile on his face:

You will go a long way, beta (son). I would be surprised if you didn’t, one day, run this country.

I would wink and give him a hug and then plod ahead for getting ready for school.

Through adolescence to puberty, I attracted a herd of non-sleepers just as hot women attract socially handicapped guys—open drooling mouth, M-sealed thoughts, stoned eyes, and a lump in their pants. People always wanted to how to unlock their misery of not being able to sleep. I was the new Deepak Chopra for people who wanted enlightenment on how getting into bed from the right side of the bed was different from the left side, or what color of clothes ameliorated sleeping habits, or how the nightingale and the dove intensified the mood, or what order of peeing, brushing teeth, changing clothes, and masturbating, was effective, or some other life-changing question that needed urgent treatment.

My popularity wasn’t as heart-warming as Kafka’s hunger-artist, but it was at least inspirational for a lot of people. I hadn’t committed suicide like the hunger-artist, so I could understand the difference in popularity, and, also, I wasn’t pissed at my life like him. Occasionally, when I was ill, I spent time out of my bed. I visited friends, restaurants, and bars. Surprisingly, people knew about me wherever I went. They knew that I was a sleeper. They knew I was cool. I didn’t know what they did for a living, but they all looked up to me for inspiration. I was their guru. I dispensed the wisdom of sleeping-in inasmuch as I left people crying after my monologue was over. I was the cult-leader. I showed them the way to nirvana.

I listen to “I’m sleepy,” I’m so tired,” and “Watching the wheels run forever.” These are the sleepy melodies endowed on the world by John Lennon.—an idler, a praiser of sloth, a friend of mine, and a soul of hope.

I usually don’t read anything, being a sleeper. But whenever I’m taking a dump, I try not to sleep by reading Wilde and the magazine “the idler.”

Wilde said: “What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.” So I argued: “What are we doing by lying all day in bed?—we are rising above the level of machines. Robots do not ponder, and I don’t do anything but ponder. And for pondering what could be better than the mushy expanse of warmth, lying just for you to embrace it in a supine position? —nothing. Thus I concluded: I lie in bed thinking, therefore I am. So I read Wilde.

Invest in ear-buds, blindfolds, and the darkest Venetian-blinds. Throw away all the alarm-clocks. Forbid coffee in the house. Get the photos of sleeping babies and fix them up in your living room.

Buy a carton of the cheapest Vodka. Drink it till you feel like puking. Puke. The feeling that follows right after you’ve puked will help you fight your insomnia.

And the crowd broke into in an ever-extending spell of sobbing. And on this very incident, I asked the waitress to bring me a chair, and I sat down and witnessed them break into hysteria of blubbering until I fell asleep. I don’t know what happened to the pack of hyenas, but they looked terrified, at least before I fell asleep. Following my popularity, I directed a play named Gods must not be crazy which opened with the following first scene:

Curtains recede.

God Videsi (looking around): Hey, what are you doing tonight? You want some wine?

God Desi (eyes closed): sleeping.

God Videsi (with a smile on his face): Don’t be a girl now. Tell me, you want some wine?

God Desi (in a casual tone): Nirvana, I am so close to achieving it. Silence. I want to go back to Earth. More silence.

God Videsi (stunned; Kal ho naa ho’s instrumental playing back): Look into my eyes; ignore the halo. You want some wine? I want you to live every moment. Earth, no Earth, nirvana, party, who cares? You got to live the moment; look into my eyes and ignore the halo. I want to talk to you about Madeline. You want some wine?

God Desi (in a nirvana-seeking tone; angry): Earth. I want to go back there. And for that I need to sleep. I got to sleep. You said you’re not receiving enough e-mails from your followers these days; you know why?—because you don’t sleep that much. People these days like sleeping gods. Moreover, Sleeping is meditation, and meditation brings you closer to your inner self. And put down that wine glass. Go talk to Madeline and sleep. Tell her if you guys sleep more, you will be able to take her to Earth for a vacation. And why are you drunk at noon?

God Videsi (in a flirty tone): Look at that Angel. Hey angel, you want some wine?

Curtains slide back.


Once I thought how it would be if I were not a sleeper. If I also got up everyday before the sun showed up and tried understanding the mechanics of living. Would I be happier? Would I be richer? Would I be more prosperous? And through my research driving, on my way to buy toilet-paper and milk, through the roads of many major metropolitans of the world I realized that the people who were ‘up-and-running’ before 6 AM were waiting for public transportation to arrive. I never saw the Gates and Jobs and Ambanis of the world wear their expensive suits and stomp the world so early in the morning. Rather they stayed in their beds and ruled the world from there. They made others get up and work for them. They made people not enjoy what they had within their grasps—sleep. So I concluded if I ever wanted to become rich, the only thing I would have to master would be to stay in bed all-day and feel accomplished, not that I don’t feel like that now, but feel accomplished enough to crack open the windows by the squeal of accomplishment.

I have been sleeping since I was born. I don’t know how I found time to write this. I am not sure if I was as dramatic as I used to be in my glory days, so I would like to reiterate: sleep as if there were no tomorrow; sleep as if you were a new-born; sleep as if you didn’t know what else to do; sleep, sleep, sleep my friend; let the fairy of sleep kiss you, moisten your lips, and make your head dizzy; let her take you through the clouds; drift you through the white mist; climb up with you the ladder to heaven; o’ friend, let her take you in her arms and kiss you, let her take you in her arms and kiss you.