Mundane thoughts on Sleep

(I know! I know! You're just reading my opening line as a Mutual Fund ad. I read this article, and it read it again. I would not jump into how good this article is. This is rather rhetorical. I'm just enjoying the editor privileges between the title and the first word of the article.

-Rohit)

As I start writing this piece, I promise myself that I won’t stretch it out like a bubble gum and keep it till when it is sweet.

This, unlike any of my other pieces, is a moving incident. Not because of its profundity but it's that it happened on a car journey. Few confessions that I have got to make. I am 25 and I still don’t know how to drive a car. While it is not a matter of mockery but somewhere in India this remains a hallmark of your entry into adulthood. Somehow I have not been able to pass the test ( both literally and figuratively :D) so I always end up beside the driver seat.

I recall this particular hot Sunday afternoon, we were driving back after a long journey. I was lost in the train of thoughts and was disturbed by a thud when dad accidentally sped on a bump. Nothing serious happened but my mother was shell shocked. In front of her eyes she started seeing all the headlines of accidents floating around. The moment she opened her mouth to shower some praises than my father stopped her, admitted his mistake and offered his apologies. Smart chap, saved the wrath with least collateral damage. As we rode ahead, my distant aunt sitting behind offered a piece of advice , “You should have been talking with your father. So that he doesn’t drift off”. The statement went by like the various objects that I was glancing through in the rear view mirror.

'Do you drift off?' When I reached home that I gave serious thought to it. Amidst all the rat race that we are running each day, how much of the conversation are we doing with our own self. To put it into perspective, after a certain point of time every act of ours becomes a routine, something that we can do even unconsciously. Right from our work, to the personal relations , to our daily chore all of it goes on like a tape which gets rewound every night to be played back the next day. This goes on until we hit a big bump in our life scaring the shit out of us. For instance take the pandemic for that matter, it made us feel weak mentally and physically. It made us realize that life is short or as Seneca puts it , “You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”. And from then we started having the conversation with ourselves. In the pandemic most of us discovered ourselves within the four walls of the home. Some drowned in the melancholy of the discovery and some gained perspective. The second lot amended their life. In it they discovered themselves bit by bit. You need to keep the conversation going on.

I ask finally the reader ,

Do you wish to drift off like the driver in the car of life?

Do you wish to be lost in yourself looking at the rear-view mirror?

Do you wish to miss the exciting conversation with the driver?

Well, I wanted to go ahead, but somehow I want to keep my promise in the opening lines and leave you with the sweet lingering of the bubblegum.

Hope you blow a big bubble out of the gum!

(Hey! Unni, sorry but not so sorry about the cover photo.)