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The next 'No-No-No' would be that I shouldn't turn to my right during my beauty sleep for a week or two after my right eye surgery.
That I thought would be a punishment at my age.
When I was 14, I was living for a year in my Shakespeare Uncle's home doing my Pre-University. Except my Uncle, all of us were sleeping on floor-mats. And watching me for a few months, my cousin (sister) told me that I was doing Shavasan every night for all those 8 hours of sleep. I asked her what it was. And she said that it entailed lying down supine on my back like an unmoving corpse from the time I hit the bed till I woke up.
I forgot about it till last year when I went with my son to consult our GP for my unusually high blood pressure. On our third visit I told him that my BP was because I was unable to sleep for even 2 consecutive hours then (my wife was in the last stages of her cervical cancer).
And the good old doc asked me to practice what amounted to Shavasan...something he practices every night before he goes to bed. He described it nicely...lie down supine and start twiddling your organs from toe to head one by one asking them to relax.
This corpse posture came naturally to me till I turned 60 and felt old. Then on I couldn't go to bed without one of my PGWs in my hands. Ed Taylor of MIT (a decade older to me) had told me that he goes to bed with a book in his hands till his eyes swim and then he tosses the book, switches off the light, and sleeeeeps. With me it is somewhat different...my eyes don't swim. I have this habit of reading my PGW aloud in my mind. And when sleep overtakes, the symptom is that I hear myself reading trash that is not on the page...then I toss my book aside and switch off the lights and lie supine for a minute...then I automatically turn to my left and then right and then left and then right...
My MD (physiology) friend used to tell me why we shiver in the cold. Apparently it is a reflex action. Our body has a thermostat in the hypothalamus which keeps us at an optimal 37 deg C...we are warmblooded. When it gets colder than that, it asks us to shiver so that the heat generated in the mechanical process assists its task. I guess something similar happens in old age too. We turn to one side and huddle, folding our legs in, so that the exposed area through which heat escapes us is minimized...I don't know...my friend is no more available for me to consult.
I guess there are as many sleeping postures as there are men and kids.
Sleep is a funny thing.
During the Christmas of 1992 while at KGP, I wanted to give my wife and kid-son a proper holiday that I couldn't give them earlier. We decided that we would spend 3 days and nights in Calcutta enjoying its famed X-mas season. Since I had never spent a night in Cal except in the retiring room of the Howrah Station, I asked DB to help arrange a decent and non-posh hotel accommodation for us. His F-i-L was a retired judge settled in South Calcutta and he gladly booked a nice hotel for us at one end of Rashbehari Avenue, just beside his residence.
And for all of those 3 nights I couldn't sleep a wink. At that time there was a tram terminus right there and the clanging and banging and quanging of trams continued till 2 AM and restarted at 4 AM...it didn't trouble my wife and son who slept soundly after the day's outings to various picnic and shopping spots in Cal.
A month after that, DB's F-i-L wanted to take his first holiday after his retirement at his daughter's bungalow near the Tech Market at IIT KGP.
He returned to his Rashbehari Tram Terminus residence after a couple of nights complaining that he couldn't sleep a wink in the silent and holy nights of KGP.
Here is PGW on the theme:
That I thought would be a punishment at my age.
When I was 14, I was living for a year in my Shakespeare Uncle's home doing my Pre-University. Except my Uncle, all of us were sleeping on floor-mats. And watching me for a few months, my cousin (sister) told me that I was doing Shavasan every night for all those 8 hours of sleep. I asked her what it was. And she said that it entailed lying down supine on my back like an unmoving corpse from the time I hit the bed till I woke up.
I forgot about it till last year when I went with my son to consult our GP for my unusually high blood pressure. On our third visit I told him that my BP was because I was unable to sleep for even 2 consecutive hours then (my wife was in the last stages of her cervical cancer).
And the good old doc asked me to practice what amounted to Shavasan...something he practices every night before he goes to bed. He described it nicely...lie down supine and start twiddling your organs from toe to head one by one asking them to relax.
This corpse posture came naturally to me till I turned 60 and felt old. Then on I couldn't go to bed without one of my PGWs in my hands. Ed Taylor of MIT (a decade older to me) had told me that he goes to bed with a book in his hands till his eyes swim and then he tosses the book, switches off the light, and sleeeeeps. With me it is somewhat different...my eyes don't swim. I have this habit of reading my PGW aloud in my mind. And when sleep overtakes, the symptom is that I hear myself reading trash that is not on the page...then I toss my book aside and switch off the lights and lie supine for a minute...then I automatically turn to my left and then right and then left and then right...
My MD (physiology) friend used to tell me why we shiver in the cold. Apparently it is a reflex action. Our body has a thermostat in the hypothalamus which keeps us at an optimal 37 deg C...we are warmblooded. When it gets colder than that, it asks us to shiver so that the heat generated in the mechanical process assists its task. I guess something similar happens in old age too. We turn to one side and huddle, folding our legs in, so that the exposed area through which heat escapes us is minimized...I don't know...my friend is no more available for me to consult.
I guess there are as many sleeping postures as there are men and kids.
Sleep is a funny thing.
During the Christmas of 1992 while at KGP, I wanted to give my wife and kid-son a proper holiday that I couldn't give them earlier. We decided that we would spend 3 days and nights in Calcutta enjoying its famed X-mas season. Since I had never spent a night in Cal except in the retiring room of the Howrah Station, I asked DB to help arrange a decent and non-posh hotel accommodation for us. His F-i-L was a retired judge settled in South Calcutta and he gladly booked a nice hotel for us at one end of Rashbehari Avenue, just beside his residence.
And for all of those 3 nights I couldn't sleep a wink. At that time there was a tram terminus right there and the clanging and banging and quanging of trams continued till 2 AM and restarted at 4 AM...it didn't trouble my wife and son who slept soundly after the day's outings to various picnic and shopping spots in Cal.
A month after that, DB's F-i-L wanted to take his first holiday after his retirement at his daughter's bungalow near the Tech Market at IIT KGP.
He returned to his Rashbehari Tram Terminus residence after a couple of nights complaining that he couldn't sleep a wink in the silent and holy nights of KGP.
Here is PGW on the theme:
"Fruity (Biffen) was down here. Not staying at the (Blandings) Castle -- he can't stand my sister Connie, and I don't blame him. I got him to take a little house along the Shrewsbury road not far from here because I met him in London and he seemed a bit run down and I thought a breath of country air would do him good. But he couldn't stick it out. Too much noise. He said there was a bunch of assorted bugs and insects in his front garden which seemed to be seeing the new year in all night, and he went back to Piccadilly, where he said a man could get a bit of peace."
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