The Dreaming Insomniac

Definitely not my kind of a night. I mean, think about it, after a tiring day of hectic business, you come back to your dwelling with the hope of a nice and sound sleep; however, the wretched night has something else in store for you. The heavenly boon of slumber was simply being denied to the mortal who craved and pleaded for nothing but just eight hours of sleep. Alas! There was none to hear the woes of this hapless soul.

The day was jam packed with work. Attending two exhausting lectures on Biomedical Instrumentation had induced enough sleep in me that I dreaded even looking at anything that was horizontal, flat and measuring six feet in length. Besides, I was tired of yawning and yearned for the freedom. The man did leave us after watching heads fall down, one by one, while he went on rendering his soapbox oration on the intricate details of a CT Scan and MRI scanning machines. I surmise that even he was bored with this portion of the syllabus. However, the bottomline is that he did leave us after two hours of his boring rendition. Just when the fruits of freedom were to be realized, Vinod calls me up to accompany him to a nearby mess house in order to order food for the Mallu junta of the college, which planned to get together on the coming Tuesday to celebrate the harvest festival of Onam. Being a good Samaritan and a responsible Mallu myself, the Mallu in me refused to refuse Vinod's request. Hence complied and walked to this nearby place. The walk wasn't very interesting. Thanks to the scorching heat of the sun coupled with the high humidity, we were boiling on earth, like tomatoes in microwave oven.

Negotiations regarding the rates were followed by a short lunch at the mess house, which Vinod had elaborately while I stuck to the basics of steamed rice and the South Indian lentil dip (read as Sambar), thanks to a tummy that was stubborn on going for a hunger strike. On our way back, I gave everything what I ingested back to Mother Nature. It was, undoubtedly and very much terribly, embarrassing when you are throwing up on the roadside and the entire monde is staring at you. At the end of the ordeal, I finally staggered to my room, gulped down the one litre bottle of water at one go and sat on my bed with hopes of taking a short nap before proceeding with rest of the day's itinerary. Not five minutes passed when my mobile started crying out that it was time to go for practice. A helpless and hapless me, victimized by time, punished for reasons that were known to none, lifted myself up and proceeded to practice for Neil Simon's Barefoot In The Park, which is to be staged on Friday, 23rd September, 2005, in the EEE Auditorium of NIT Trichy at 5:30pm. After the practice session, I accompanied the team going from hostel to hostel canvassing for the same and putting up posters at strategic locations of the campus to attract junta. It must be understood that this group activity is no shorter than a cross country race. Running across 20 acres of the lithospheric portion was no joke. But there was some fun in this obstacle race and the very thought of crashing into the bed for a sound sleep kept me going.

After completing the job at hand, and of course, celebrating the placement of Darshak Parmar and Salem Amrutesh in Sasken Communication Technologies Limited with bumps and a small treat, I finally made it to my room. Without switching on the lights, to ward off some flying pests which were waiting to receive enlightenment to attack my room, I grabbed my lungi (Trivia: The lungi is a garment worn around the waist in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) and quickly changed. The next instant of time I was lying on my bed and sent a 'goodnight' to Feba, who had been messaging me from Banglore. I closed my eyes with the excitement and passion for that leisure of slumber. All I could think of was going into hibernation for the next eight hours, suspending my animation, being dormant all the while. There was this cool breeze that blew into my room which was being effectively circulated by my most valuable possession, my Hitachi Table Fan. Thanks to Physics and convection, the setting of the room was simply apt for the perfect siesta. And slowly.... very slowly.... very very slowly, I could feel I was floating, flying high, soaring higher, traversing the skies to the land of fantasies and dreams, when suddenly that happened. My worst fears had become a reality. What I have been writing off as a minor problem had grown into a major menace. It was getting intolerable, unbearable and unpardonable.

Just when I was at the threshold of attaining temporary oblivion, I have this terrible feeling itch my knee. As if something was there. As if something was... biting me. Before I could think any further, my reflexes got into action and my hand landed heavily on my knee. Next moment I hear a buzz close to my ear. And before I knew what was happening, I was up battling against a battery of bloody blood sucking mosquitoes. All I knew was I was slapping myself everywhere and anywhere. Right from my forehead to my heels. I bet the US Air Forse that raided Iraq and Afghanistan had more mercy.

I remember a small prose piece that I came across in the Reader's Digest. To quote in my own words,

"If you feel that you are too insignificant to make an impact in the world, try being locked up in a small room with absolutely no ventilation and no inmates except a mosquito!"

By now, I knew what the author meant. All my acts of self defense were simple futile because there were always more mosquitoes. In the end, I realized, all I was doing was just slapping myself. Feeling cold and irritated, and of course not to forget, very itchy too, I realized that there was not much of sleep left for me. Rest had become close to a fantasy by then. I decided to venture out in the night for staying in the room would be suicidal. Changing back to my cargoes, I left my room and took a look around, only to find every damn mortal enjoying their sweet forty winks. I set out, weary, tired and irritated, to the Octagon, the computer centre.

On my way, I stopped by the coffee stall which was unusually open though it was past 2 in the night. Well, actually, our man was going to shut the stall down when I approached him. The nice guy that he is, got me 4 cups of coffee. A silly thing to do though, drinking coffee when you are actually yearning for sleep. But one must understand, that I had given up on sleep and staying drowsy would have only spoilt the mood. I continued my walk, reached the Octagon and entered the internet lab to find some really frustrated souls breaking their head to jump firewalls and proxies to get their share of late night fantasies. I was in no mood for such adventures, and hence I chose to simply ping into my MSN Messenger and open The Melting Pot Of ICE, to check for any new comments and my hit counter. To my pleasure, Praveena was online from New Jersy and hence bugged her for the rest of the time and simultaneously started keying down my unfortunate attempts at getting at least a snooze. I had bugged her last night also, around this time only. And the night before last, my victim was Gutgut who was online from Ann Harbor, again around this time. It struck me just now.

And now as I'm tired and feeling the extremes of fatigue, I receive an SMS from Vinod, "Hey, whr r u? coming 4 breakfast?" I guess I better join him now.