Sleeping thoughts...

Long long time ago, i used to fall asleep as soon as i hit the bed...then one day, i remember it clearly, when i was in 5th...i just couldn't sleep, these thoughts- random and futile and humungous in number and boring... just kept attacking me... its not as if, anything remarkable happened that day, not that i would remember after all these years... but i do remember how traumatized i was..

you see, my dad always had this plan of sleeping early, so the whole family used to sleep very early, by that i mean 9 o'clock... In fact, we used to have our dinner pretty early too, 7p.m... Till yet, im unaware of any family packing up so early in the night; anyhow i used to feel really happy about it in those days.. i loved to sleep 10 hours and wake up early to just smell the morning freshness.. but then, i got doomed to think...

I hated the continuous and indomitable nature of my thoughts back then...especially during the night... they came when they wanted to, stayed as long and in morphologies they desired... and they almost never left; just when i'd fall asleep they'd assault me with nightmares... it was a lost battle back then... i used to try not to think, but then i'd think that imnt going to think; and then i'd think that im still thinking about not thinking; and then everything would rush back ...imnt exaggerating when i say that i used to punch my pillow in desperation to sleep... i even used to wake up my dad, when everything else would fail, to say that i can't sleep in a tone that people use when they come to know they're dying... and then he'll do some magic, put his hand on my head and i used to fall asleep...

Yes my dad was my magician in those days... we used to live in DDA flats in Palam... there used to be nights without electricity, days without water... things weren't quite that good, money wasn't that good... he used to hand fan me and my brother throughout the night when power failures stayed the night; he never ate before we were done; he still doesn't, no matter what we say... even though there isn't much talking, i always felt that he knows whats going on with me.. he never says anything but the support he gives silently always makes the inside of my heart moist with gratitude and guilt... and i think, i went somewhere else; so coming back to the sleepless nights...(i don't think i'd ever be able to write without digressing)

I tried a lot of things to cure myself of that childhood insomnia...most ideas came from cartoons.. tried that counting sheep method, which was obviously too firang to be effective.. somewhere i heard good fragrance means sound sleep, so i used to steal jasmine flowers from a neighbour's gamla and keep it beside my pillow; however, my condition wasn't that simple and neighbour's gamla had limited flowers :( ..then, read a story about a king who couldn't sleep, so he wandered and met a farmer who always slept good; the king asked his secret to sleep; he said "You do my work for one day, and see how peacefully you'll sleep"... and that story hit my small brain and i did a lot of activities to get really tired before sleep... it worked for some time, before i recalled that i'm a lazy bum...

Slowly, i got used to these thoughts.. even, started manipulating them... channelized them to think about bigger things than how my dinner was getting digested or where would i sit in tomorrows class or should i have bath tomorrow or not or are my nails too big etc. etc... started writing stuff, thinking about events and people and the trance that life is... nightmares changed into dreams or fantasies or interesting nightmares... and i survived, somehow the stubbornness of my thoughts...

Though i still can't switch on/off my thoughts, though my sleep is still reckless and unruly and doesn't follow my commands, though i can still get insomniac at times...but i've learnt to co-exist with my thoughts, learnt to make use of my insomniac time in doing something productive rather than hitting poor pillow, and just realize sleep requirements vary person to person, so im safe as long as i don't have 3 sleepless nights in a row coz that might kill someone... verify the last fact, imnt too sure of that... and now im actually too sleepy to write another sentence, so The End.