Wednesday, January 1, 2014

The sound of music


Two things are a pretty sure shot indication that you have reached ‘middle age’ – grey hair and snoring. I am proud to say that I have already progressed pretty well on the grey hair front. What was until a few years ago a few isolated sad looking white hairs, has now progressed to a slow but steady march to cover the contours of my aging scalp. I try to convince myself that it looks dignified and all that stuff, but in the back of my mind I wouldn’t mind a wee bit less of dignity actually. Anyway more about my experiments with grey hair later. This little bit is about the other interesting habit.

So I get up one day groggy as usual, yawn and a scratch here and there at unmentionable places, when I see my dear bitter half and the byproduct of our union staring at me with menacing looks.

“So did you sleep well darling” my wife says …honey dripping on every word (menacing look + sweet talk = calm before the storm…… just a little bit before landfall. Incidentally I am sure that all those exotic names for cyclones and hurricanes would be based on the wives or girlfriends of the guy who named it…otherwise why the heck would ominous storms have names like Katrina and Helen?!)

“Duh” Intelligent answer as usual. I do notice that the wife and kid seem a wee-bit sleep deprived.

“DID YOU KNOW YOUR SNORING KEPT US AWAKE THE WHOLE NIGHT??” This was like a mother and daughter chorus in their  highest shrilly octaves.

Oh that. No I didn’t of course. I mean it was a stupid question really. If I was snoring, then I was literally into ‘sound’ sleep, so I wouldn’t have a clue whether people around me where sleeping or doing hoola-hoops or whatever. All the same I realized that I had to go into denial mode like our respected politicians would do.

“Snore? Me? Me? Snore?” Palindromic defence, just for the heck of it.

This was around the time when our ‘pyar ki nishani’ took out my mobile phone, went to the gallery and pressed play….then pushed the screen a few inches in front of my nose. It took me a while to figure out that I was seeing my own distorted facies on the screen  with a background score like a Walrus with third degree hemorrohoids sitting on a pot.

OK. So it was a sting operation. Et tu wife, et tu daughter?

Now if I was a politician by now I would be in the NDTV studio saying “Barkha, the content of the tapes cannot be verified. This is a huge conspiracy by some very jealous people who want to ensure that I am not given my due sleep”, but this is the season of AAM AADMI and stuff, so I humbly accept moral responsibility for my actions and apologize.

Come night, I make it a point to go to sleep after the good wife and daughter are in dream land. I try to keep myself half awake with the histopathology of some itchy skin condition (not all skin conditions are itchy by the way….i am not an ‘itch doctor’ as some uncharitable idiots would like to put it).

All of a sudden I hear a train rumble, with occasional whistles….no maybe that was Navjot Siddhu laughing ….no…..actually it seemed to be an odd symphony all kinds of rumbling, grumbling and whistling noises. I tip-toe into the bedroom and voila…the source of the creaking and croaking is her Excellency, Mrs Feroze! And even more interesting there is  a miniature version of the same running simultaneously as a side-show….Ms Nadia Feroze. The lil one seemed to be following in the footsteps of her illustrious forefathers…….

 Aha! I know leap to reach my phone and record the incriminating evidence and happily snore off to dream land. I actually wanted to wake up both the ladies right away and press the evidence to their noses…..but then revenge is a dish best served cold…..especially after a good night’s sleep.

The next day morning as I wake up,the good lady and the kid are up already and again seem a bit unhappy with the way things went in the sleep department. The good lady starts to give me the “You got to do something about your snoring” thing, when I calmly take my phone and play THE video. The good lady’s eye undergo a slow but steady dilation to about double the original size and then she stomps away in protest, slamming the bed room door and  mentioning something about insensitive husbands and such. “Mera snore, snore or tumhara snore tho bandh hua door??”

Things calmed down of course after some time…and now we are into the “snore and let snore” mode. We have got so used to each others’ nightly jamming sessions that  I am sure that over the course of time we would find it difficult to sleep without this jarring background score. As they say ‘A family that snores together, sleeps together’!