Reborn Morning

Few people on this planet can afford the regal luxury of sleeping till ten in the morning, getting up, giving a thoughtful look to the illuminated world around, deciding that the morning is still too young to deserve honest attention and blissfully falling back asleep again. This has been my fortunate routine every single morning for the last few mornings. I cannot make an exhaustive list of all the people who can get away with this act of audacious laze. But I am certain of one thing, as certain as Keats was about his nightingale, that I do not deserve to be a member of this exclusive club.

I am a student on vacation with three months on hand to do whatever I have always wanted to do, playing the guitar, writing a book, learning a Latin dance form, work in some place but genuine retrospection has informed me that what I have always desired has been sleep. It is not that I have not slept particularly well in college. (I stay in a hostel). True; that there have been occasions when we have done nothing remotely significant or indeed, done anything at all and still managed to stay up till two in the morning. It is this ability of killing time without doing anything at all that most hostellers have achieved excellence in. Much later, time does have its way and kill us via impossible to complete assignments, sheets and exams.

What I am trying to say is that we are a responsible breed who take our health and education very seriously. Whenever we are up into the early hours of the morning, doing whatever we had set out to do and more often, doing the exact opposite, we do not shun away our academic responsibility and not attend the next day’s lectures. But if you are assuming that our health is suffering badly in the process, you are horribly mistaken. Health is the primary prerogative in life. What is wealth without health? How can there be any happiness for the unhealthy? How then do we succeed in sleeping for our daily quota of eight hours, in spite of attending the nine ‘o clock class? The answer is fantastic in its simplicity. We sleep in class.

Some professors recognise the need of the human mind to switch into standby mode and elegantly create patterns of sublime imagination which would be impossible for our conscious minds to concoct. Others though, are not so kind. Hence, we resort to ridiculous mechanisms of faking attention which are not only embarrassing for us but also our innocent neighbours who genuinely desire to hang on to every word of the respected professor. The point remains that most of us pay as much attention in class as much as the number of times Tintin attempts to strangle Snowy. (If I recall correctly, he does try it in some book, thus proving that we do manage to hang on to some words, if not all.)

The most important part of the lecture is the attendance. This is that moment in the lecture when every single person is up and about and would put Daffodils to shame with expressions of evergreen freshness. Usually, this exercise is at the end of the lecture. The class becomes an appreciative theatre audience, which applauds at the end of the play, irrespective of how it was, to appreciate the efforts of the actors. The sets do not change and almost immediately, another performance by yet another professor begins and we are miraculously teleported back to the land of dreams, where anything is possible.

Although I take very good care of my sleep in college, along with my buddies (note the importance of the commas), there are moments when you wake up and desire nothing more than to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, this is not possible. If this calamity were to happen, I would have to skip the morning lecture. Principles are important only when they are difficult to stand for. Hence, grudgingly, unwillingly and sleepily, I force myself out of bed in my hostel. This sad act, which sinks the ship of human spirit better than an iceberg, need not be done at home. I know I am young and spirited and a lot of other interesting things but I love re-sleeping in the morning. I might as well re-sleep as much as I can, while I can; because soon, it will all just be a dream and life will make me do what Rabindranath Tagore asked us to do, “Treat every morning like an unborn, unnamed child”.