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’!
