***********************************************************************************************************************
I have read of somnambulism in Macbeth and Tess but never actually seen a person sleepwalk.
But I am very familiar with sleeptalk which can be called, say, somnaudiovision.
My sister, V, a decade younger to me did her M Sc in Physics in AP and was hanging loose for a year before her Service Commission interviews were to be held. So, I asked her to come over to IIT KGP and do a one-year PG Diploma in Physics, which she did. I then shifted from the Faculty Hostel to Qrs C1-97 since she refused to stay in the S N (Ladies) Hall. And we were cooking and walking to the Institute together.
During that year I became familiar with 'continuous sleeptalk'. As soon as she hit the pillow and crashed, she would start talking in her sleep with what I could gather was either one of her many sisters or hostelmates in her University. It was precisely like overhearing a telephone talk from one end. She would speak a very coherent sentence like, "KGP is ok but is a jungle" and fall silent...she would then be listening to the reply. And then the next sentence she spoke would be like, say, "Our teachers are so so except one who is a fool" (she did mention his name, but I better not blog it since he is still around). And it went on the whole night, with interruptions when she woke up and drank a glass of water, and fell asleep to continue the dream-phone-talk where she left it.
And when I confronted her the next morning about that teacher on whom she passed disparaging comments, she fell eloquently silent.
One cloudy Saturday afternoon she had her post-lunch siesta and woke up while I was writing up the next chapter of my Ph D thesis in our backyard sitting on a sofa-chair with a plank tucked in front of me. She went to the bathroom and brought her toothbrush and paste and started brushing her teeth. I thought that she must have had a bad post-lunch sambar taste lingering in her mouth, and kept quiet. Then she made a cup of coffee for herself and drank it at leisure. After a good hour during which she sat still, woolgathering, she asked me why the milkman hasn't arrived yet...thinking it was already Sunday morning.
My Father was well-known for his nightmares. And most of them were of burglars although there was never anything a decent burglar would filch from our house...the joke was that the burglar would leave his chappals before he left as a mark of philanthropy. But Father's nightmares were never silent and he would shout: "Chor! Chor!! Chor!!" till one of us would wake him up, give him a glass of water to drink and put him to bed and sleep for an hour or so when he would take up his chor-shor slogan once again.
The night he was transferred to Gudur, the story went, he rented a house right across the 1 Town Police Station and was sleeping as usual in our front-yard. And within an hour he started his burglar-alarm shouts and apparently the two constables on night duty ran in, and were duly sent away by my mom with due apologies...
He had another habit. Since he had a platoon of kids, he would lie down on his cot after dinner and ask the two youngest ones to share his two legs and knead his calf muscles, with the sweetener that he would tell them a story, mostly an episode from Raamaayan. And within minutes he would fall silent and start snoring. The two kids would try to slip away from their filial kneading duty. And as soon as they relaxed their grip on his calf muscles, he would take up his story where it halted and go:
"And then Hanuman's tail grew longer and longer and longer...grhhh!"
When he grew old the kneading duty was taken up by his grandkids who were always suckers for his Raamaayan stories. One on them, Ashwath, related to me how he tried to slip away as soon as his granpa's breathing became heavy, but as soon as he stopped kneading, Father apparently sat up in his sleep and started beating up Ashwath saying:
"And then Vaali pummeled his brother Sugriv like this...and this..."
I must say this is to be termed 'somnambushing'...
My mom used to have a pretty deep sleep except that within minutes of her sinking into her slumber we would hear sounds like an electrical mixer in its grinding mode. When we traced the sounds we found that they emanated from my mom grinding her teeth, upper against the lower, and also sidewise. Believe me, that is how she lost all her teeth, none of which ever broke or gave her any trouble, but ground themselves away little by little, bit by bit...the rule being the Darwinian Survival of the Fittest...till the last one ground itself away, maybe...
My wife was always a deep sleeper and never had a dream, she claimed, except once. That night she woke me up frightfully and I asked her what happened and she said, with sweat poring all over her: "I had a dream," and when I asked her what was it all about, she said: "I forgot," and sank back into her slumber, leaving me to guess what could have rattled her so...I concluded after much churning that it must be that DB was promoted and I was not...for she told me frankly when she was awake that if DB got promoted and I was not, she would stop talking to Mita...
One can have many grouses about ladies but hypocrisy is not one of them....
...Posted by Ishani
***********************************************************************************************
I have read of somnambulism in Macbeth and Tess but never actually seen a person sleepwalk.
But I am very familiar with sleeptalk which can be called, say, somnaudiovision.
My sister, V, a decade younger to me did her M Sc in Physics in AP and was hanging loose for a year before her Service Commission interviews were to be held. So, I asked her to come over to IIT KGP and do a one-year PG Diploma in Physics, which she did. I then shifted from the Faculty Hostel to Qrs C1-97 since she refused to stay in the S N (Ladies) Hall. And we were cooking and walking to the Institute together.
During that year I became familiar with 'continuous sleeptalk'. As soon as she hit the pillow and crashed, she would start talking in her sleep with what I could gather was either one of her many sisters or hostelmates in her University. It was precisely like overhearing a telephone talk from one end. She would speak a very coherent sentence like, "KGP is ok but is a jungle" and fall silent...she would then be listening to the reply. And then the next sentence she spoke would be like, say, "Our teachers are so so except one who is a fool" (she did mention his name, but I better not blog it since he is still around). And it went on the whole night, with interruptions when she woke up and drank a glass of water, and fell asleep to continue the dream-phone-talk where she left it.
And when I confronted her the next morning about that teacher on whom she passed disparaging comments, she fell eloquently silent.
One cloudy Saturday afternoon she had her post-lunch siesta and woke up while I was writing up the next chapter of my Ph D thesis in our backyard sitting on a sofa-chair with a plank tucked in front of me. She went to the bathroom and brought her toothbrush and paste and started brushing her teeth. I thought that she must have had a bad post-lunch sambar taste lingering in her mouth, and kept quiet. Then she made a cup of coffee for herself and drank it at leisure. After a good hour during which she sat still, woolgathering, she asked me why the milkman hasn't arrived yet...thinking it was already Sunday morning.
My Father was well-known for his nightmares. And most of them were of burglars although there was never anything a decent burglar would filch from our house...the joke was that the burglar would leave his chappals before he left as a mark of philanthropy. But Father's nightmares were never silent and he would shout: "Chor! Chor!! Chor!!" till one of us would wake him up, give him a glass of water to drink and put him to bed and sleep for an hour or so when he would take up his chor-shor slogan once again.
The night he was transferred to Gudur, the story went, he rented a house right across the 1 Town Police Station and was sleeping as usual in our front-yard. And within an hour he started his burglar-alarm shouts and apparently the two constables on night duty ran in, and were duly sent away by my mom with due apologies...
He had another habit. Since he had a platoon of kids, he would lie down on his cot after dinner and ask the two youngest ones to share his two legs and knead his calf muscles, with the sweetener that he would tell them a story, mostly an episode from Raamaayan. And within minutes he would fall silent and start snoring. The two kids would try to slip away from their filial kneading duty. And as soon as they relaxed their grip on his calf muscles, he would take up his story where it halted and go:
"And then Hanuman's tail grew longer and longer and longer...grhhh!"
When he grew old the kneading duty was taken up by his grandkids who were always suckers for his Raamaayan stories. One on them, Ashwath, related to me how he tried to slip away as soon as his granpa's breathing became heavy, but as soon as he stopped kneading, Father apparently sat up in his sleep and started beating up Ashwath saying:
"And then Vaali pummeled his brother Sugriv like this...and this..."
I must say this is to be termed 'somnambushing'...
My mom used to have a pretty deep sleep except that within minutes of her sinking into her slumber we would hear sounds like an electrical mixer in its grinding mode. When we traced the sounds we found that they emanated from my mom grinding her teeth, upper against the lower, and also sidewise. Believe me, that is how she lost all her teeth, none of which ever broke or gave her any trouble, but ground themselves away little by little, bit by bit...the rule being the Darwinian Survival of the Fittest...till the last one ground itself away, maybe...
My wife was always a deep sleeper and never had a dream, she claimed, except once. That night she woke me up frightfully and I asked her what happened and she said, with sweat poring all over her: "I had a dream," and when I asked her what was it all about, she said: "I forgot," and sank back into her slumber, leaving me to guess what could have rattled her so...I concluded after much churning that it must be that DB was promoted and I was not...for she told me frankly when she was awake that if DB got promoted and I was not, she would stop talking to Mita...
One can have many grouses about ladies but hypocrisy is not one of them....
...Posted by Ishani
***********************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment