Sleeper sells

Not getting a good night’s sleep is a wake-up call. Only 15% of Mumbaikars manage the adult requirement of seven to nine hours. This alarm rang off from a local hospital survey. Is anyone surprised? Proud boast of ‘city that never sleeps’ is now irritably ‘city that can’t sleep’ – across urban India. Not mosquitoes, but Net is to blame. Insomnia is clinically proven side-effect of this obsessive compulsive disorder. If your eyes are glued to the screen, it’s physically impossible to shut them. Which – unless you are dolphin, penguin, snake or giraffe – is a primary essential for falling asleep.

Chronic connectivitis often adds voluntary stress to the unavoidable work/ family-related kind. Minimising aids are available for the latter. Alas there are none for stress inflicted by chronic constructionitis. Yes, Viksit Bharat is giving us too much clang for our buck.

Self-styled ‘sleep evangelist’ Arianna Huffington passionately preached her (non) rousing sermon at our 2014 TOI litfest. Sadly, that 15% statistic suggests Mumbai didn’t nod off in agreement. But I was already a believer. As Bombay Times editor, obligatory late-night partying left me metaphorically prone, and I had to get physically ditto if I were not to wander through days in a daze. So a small settee, ostensibly for meetings, was a fixture in my cabin. With secretary as human Do Not Disturb sign, I managed to thieve forty winks – without getting caught sleeping on the job.

Catnap has since been elevated to ‘power nap’. Its longform version is an executive perk-er. Clocking-up flyer miles pays havoc with body tick-tock. So the swag of ‘hitting the ground running’ has led to airlines advertising their ergonomic flat beds as much as their Michelin-grade flat breads. Hotels offer ‘pillow menus’ and the promise of ‘sleep like a baby’. Which, as any bleary-eyed new mother knows, is an out-and-out lie.

The importance of getting the full nine hours finds reminders in strange places. During Calcutta’s ultra-leftist times, a wall slogan commanded: ‘Revolutionaries, Awake!Arise!’ Alongside a wag had scrawled the idiomatic caution against waking up someone who’d just gone to bed: ‘Kaancha ghoom bhangio na’. Sleeping dogs and dragons are prematurely disturbed at your peril.
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Alec Smart said: “Diamantaires Are Not Forever .”