Sleepless Beauty

There are some things in life that afflict you every now and then. They go as mysteriously as they come.. One such thing that has been a part of my life is sleeplessness. There are times which garner significance when I look back, but which innocently clothe themselves as ordinary days and nights when they occur. Uncannily these times in my life have unfailingly been characterized by one malady..Insomnia.. It’s when forty winks seem formidable.

Counting up to 1000 and backwards, cooking up racy romantic novels in your head, humming your favorite tunes, chanting, cursing your nemesis under your breath, watching utterly mindless late night shows on TV, listening to Mannade,S.D Burman and other lullabying numbers, trying to snuff yourself up with a pillow pressed on to your face, tossing and turning enough to cause a tectonic imbalance, trying to plan for the next day, working out sudoku and the daily crosswords, meditating… nothing seems to help.
By the time you’re barely asleep, the Sun shines through your window and the hum drum of another day tearing into your blissful state.
Days pass in this manner. Eyes burn, bleary and tired. A chance siesta in the day, can never make up for the lost sleep in the soothing caress of nocturnal darkness. This goes on till you reach a stage where you would start whining like a kid, kicking your limbs around.
And then it all stops..
Yesterday was one such blessed day. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, peering through the dark, blocking all thought from the mind, mesmerized by the whirring sound of the decades old fan, the heavy curtains above my windows to the outside world come down, palling my consciousness, fantastic figures forming inside my mind’s eye…

An eagle, a talisman, an eagle in a talisman, Nnno.. Not an eagle, a pigeon, No.. Not a pigeon a dove.. a dove that flaps its wings and takes off, tearing open the tablet…. Skies.. Blue, white, crimson, beige and mauve… Gold brocade fluttering around the landscape… A hole in the firmament, and me falling upwards, defying terrestrial laws of gravity.
Free wheeling vertically…..

And I woke up at 12.00 noon today.