My relationship with sleep has been like that of an on-off couple who can’t decide whether they are in love or not. We started as great pals. Unlike most friends, sleep was non-judgmental, non-fussy and came whenever I summoned it.
While in school, I could sleep in buses, in cars, during boring lectures on subjects like thermodynamics, or while reading books with long, pretentious words. At night, sleep would approach as soon as my head hit the pillow. In the morning, we would bid each other a mournful goodbye. To the extent that I once engineered the ‘Great Indian Sleep Revolt’ in my school hostel to hold on to it for a while longer.
Every morning, our warden would switch on the light around 5 am to wake us up for morning PT. My dorm-mates and I decided that this was a breach of our fundamental right to sleep, so we decided to rebel. The next morning, we would refuse to wake up, turning a deaf ear to the warden’s entreaties. The problem was, the warden resorted to something slightly stronger than an ‘entreaty’. Ten minutes after we refused to get up, she bellowed, “GET UP RIGHT NOW OR ELSE....” One by one, my dorm-mates got up and meekly got ready for PT. I was the last of the rebels. I managed to hang on to my blanket for a while longer until the warden yanked it off. Sleep and I, like the climax of a tragic romance, were ripped apart from each other.
Until my late 20s, sleep was like that person in your life you take for granted until they leave you. At the age of 28, my mental health took a nosedive. I fell victim to psychosis and depression. Sleep, that traitor, was the first of my lovers to leave me. Our break-up was messy. I pleaded with it to return. I spent long nights looking for it, wandering the corridors of my house like a jobless ghost. I tried to bore myself to sleep by reading books like Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. It didn’t work; now I was bored and sleepless. I tried counting to 100 and, unfortunately, succeeded in doing so, with sleep nowhere in sight.
Only then did I realise the value of sleep. Apparently, in 1894, the Russian physician Marie de Manaceine deprived some puppies of sleep. Soon, their temperatures dropped, blood thickened and reflexes slowed. Their pupils stopped responding to light and within four to five days, all of them died. She concluded that sleep was more important than food, as puppies could survive for 20-25 days without food, but not without sleep. The Guinness Book of World Records no longer accepts entries for the longest time someone can go without sleep, citing the “inherent dangers associated with sleep deprivation”. All this while, I had never known that my great friend was a VIP that the world was desperately wooing. It was like living with a prince and treating him like a pauper.
According to the Sleep Foundation, sleep is essential for nearly every aspect of health, supporting brain function, emotional well-being, physical recovery and immune system function. During sleep, the body carries out important processes involved in memory consolidation, hormone regulation, tissue repair and energy restoration. Not getting sleep can affect mood, concentration, decision-making and reaction time. Of course, I didn’t need the Sleep Foundation to tell me this; I was experiencing it in real-time.
Finally, it wasn’t until I was prescribed medication that sleep returned to me, albeit reluctantly. But like a pouting mistress who knows she holds all the cards in a relationship, sleep set certain conditions and we tentatively established the boundaries of our new relationship. It would no longer come to me unbidden, but rather reserve the right to dictate when it would come and go. There would be a set time for its visitation; for me, being a morning lark and not a night owl, this was from around 9 pm to 5 am.
Even then, there would be nights when it would remain absent, as though to make its presence more valued. I gladly accepted the terms. This time, I had learnt to appreciate sleep in all its glory—the sweet oblivion of escaping my troubles, the drugged wonder of the dreamscape, waking up to a world that seemed like it had been given a fresh coat of paint. Perhaps that was sleep’s greatest gift. It cleared the debris of my past and gave me the one thing that makes life worth living: hope.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
