Caesarean Rhapsody

A small reminder of that crazy song that the weird banana dances to from the most controversial family in toon land.

Sleep. The one thing we crave at the end of the day. Busy or otherwise. No matter what they say, everyone loves the feeling of being wrapped in a warm quilt on a winter Monday morning. That mood to rebel against everything that comes between you and that handful more minutes of shut eye. Some like the early morning stretch which keeps them going throughout the day like some caffiene abusing, duracell bunny. Some take a short nap in the afternoon (sometimes shamelessly right in front of the bloody computer screen), which even has a term dedicated to it in the dictionary. A Siesta! A colleague of mine had a shock while he was on-site in Japan and found most of his teammates asleep after lunch. So much is the human infatuation with the subject that there actually is a National Sleep Foundation. Thousands of man years of research has gone into this field of science already and God only knows how many more laborious hours will be spent on it.

But glorifying the act isn’t the point I’m trying to bring forth in this post. Au contraire, it is the absolute lack of sleep that I have a crib against. Believe it or not, Morpheus has been giving me the cold shoulder for the past one year or so. I work like a dog and return home expecting to sleep like a log. (Apologies to The Beatles) But what do I get. Hour after hour sleeplessly watching stupid reruns on TV waiting to fall asleep. A normal human being would probably fall asleep if he’s made to listen to the soothing voice of a prima donna crooning a jazz number from the mobster era, as the clock strikes 2 in the morning. Hell just the bassist’s twang should lull him to a slumber. But no sir-ee, not me. I borrowed a mix tape of Ella Fitzgerald, Earth Wind and Fire, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday and even “Blue Eyes” Sinatra. My friend promised it should knock me out even before Billie Holiday started off on “I’m a fool to love you”. I was up as an owl when Sinatra was well into an encore of “It was a very good year”. Recently I spent 3 straight days working, spending only one of those nights at home trotting up and down the balcony and gazing into the night as the ash from the cigarette piled up in a crack in the wall skirting. The fourth day I went pubbing and the guitar riff on “Long train running” drove away my sleep. Blasted @#$!

That was the hate part of my relationship with sleep. Now comes the love. Sweet, mellifluous, undisturbed love. But it comes at a price. Last I checked, it was Rs. 220 inclusive of taxes at Inox. Yes! The only friggin’ place that I fall asleep perfectly on cue is in the movie theatre. I slept through the climax in “Saw 2″. I missed the entire BTN escape scene in “V for Vendetta”, for which I had one of my friends wake me up the second time around. I even drooled all over the final fight in “Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King”. All over my shirt’s collar that is. No sooner does the narrator in “Pyar ke side effects” start ranting out Rahul Bose’s character history, than I am floating on a cloud and running on a beach counting cheerleaders in tight vestments. I take the license to replace dumb sheep with merry teenage girls. I don’t think the censors should have a problem since it’s a very infrequent phenomenon. Anyways, the point is the sandman seems to have some purani dushmani with me. I mean I’ve waited in line to buy tickets to the show. I’ve escaped work early to catch the opening scenes of a movie everyone has been raving about. I’ve even taken a “forceful” leak so as not to miss a moment of the goosebump invoking visual extravaganza. But noooo! That’s not what is meant to be. It’s like an intangible Mickey Finn lodged somewhere in my head that goes off like a time bomb soon as I take my seat in a cinema hall. And it’s as iminent as the rage of a Bengalooru resident at the mention of the words “Dr. Rajkumar” by an outsider.

These days I watch movies in the office or at home and think about work while I’m at the movies. That’s kinda reversed the cycle of the z’s. But I’m still open for creative ideas if you’ve got any.