Eaters Coma

Do you sleep in the afternoon or do you feel heavy-eyed once you have your lunch? Well, I don’t know about you but this is me. The guy who sleeps or literally dies for 2-3 hours in the afternoon (especially summer’s) and exit into an oblivion. You can label me as a miscreant according to Chacha Nehru’s notion that “Aaraam Haraam Hai” or my parents comment on me—“is umar mai to aadmi lohe ke chane chabaa leta hai” (though I am only 21 and my Colgate teeth can’t afford to taste sugarcane properly what about iron pellets) but what should I do? The moment I eat my lunch I feel as if somebody has pull down my power plug. Others might sell horses when they sleep but I trade the whole of Race Course when I do it. It is as if I am the most relaxed person on this earth, done all his deeds, fulfill all his duties and taken retirement and enjoying his pension.

This is just the preface; I shall describe you the process. Being a foodie I enjoy my delicious diet t0 the fullest. In fact I think that my constant demands and crying needs for “Swadisht Khaana” have forced my mother to learn cook better. So now when she serves cuisines like Rajma Chawal, Kadi Chawal, Chole-Bhature, Puri-kheer, Dosa, Dum aalo, Naan-makhani daal, Fried Rice-curd etc I actually overeat it because I am helpless in front of my tasting buds. After some time of the consumption I feel like a magnet is straining all my muscles, there is a sense of laziness in the body as if blood vessels have formed a union and went on a strike so that their appeal for the rest can be incorporated. The brain stopped the calculation, the eyes shutter is getting to shut with every passing second, the mouth tries to open its gates as wide as possible with every yawn and buckets of water is thrown from inside the body through the eyes. Now if I switch on the water cooler in this war ilk situation, the air coming from the fans push me, in fact throws me on the bed. There have been situations when I tried so much but in the end capitulated, left everything I was doing and raced to sleep. I don’t know why but I can even prostrate on the cool floor in this situation. I think I can relate this to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. In his basic needs, once your stomach is full, next might the sleep/rest, so ultimately you eat-sleep, eat-sleep.

If I observe myself in the last 10 years (which I can remember properly) I have felt sleepy, lazy and almost slept whenever and wherever I have been, during the afternoon hours. During school days, I tend to eat Parantha-sabzi, rice, sandwich etc and then we used to play till the last bell of recess. After the recess, when the sun was on the top, body was producing tones of sweat and stomach was digesting the food from the crop fields, teacher used to enter the class and teach subjects like ugly History, dimwit Geography, scary Biology and insane Math. At that point of time I tried my best not to lie on the desk because then I would have been caught but was forced to sleep with almost 90% of my eyes shutter closed and both the eyeballs giving me the picture of my nose (that’s what they see when you sleep with your eyes open, a little). Even my other classmates were following me for the reason that those teachers were ennui and taught without body and soul.

During college life, when I was doing an internship in Delhi, the office staff used to lunch between 1 pm-2 pm. Post lunch I never left any opportunity to sleep whether in bus whether in metro or even on the table where I used to work. After my battery was charged then only human machine allowed me to resume work. In fact recently I was doing a theatre workshop. After the lunch, we always used to watch a documentary on theatre or videos of past plays. In the big auditorium when darkness looms and two big Air Conditioners were making the atmosphere chilling even the scintillating voice of Naseeruddin Shah and classic plays by the legendary Habib Tanveer couldn’t stop me from taking the advantage of zero visibility and selling the Race course once again as if it is my fundamental right. And this time too some of my colleagues joined in but our shutters were completely locked.

So this is me, the proud individual who is yawning and sleeping for almost 20 years and that too without a break. When I introspect on why this happens that once you are over with your lunch you feel lethargic; the answer comes that the nature has made humans like this. Even we sleep after the dinner so why not lunch. So better leave it the way it is.

There have been a few key observations; you feel like sleepy more in summer than in winter, boredom will dig out the sleep from any corner of your body, you will literally want to sleep more after lunch and a heavy lunch is a friend of sleep. Even I am not the only one who is doing this crime, if you watch out carefully you will find that most of the shopkeepers prefer taking rest or a nap after lunch, even rickshawwallahs can be seen lying and adjusting their body size in their rickshaw during afternoon. Some of the relatives cannot be reached after the lunch because they have the habit of sleeping.

So now as the life gets busy and my inner “JawaharLal” (soul) has started saying “aaarm haraam hai”, to combat this addiction I have pasted an A-4 sheet on my room wall which declares “those who sleep after the lunch live less” and I try to watch a movie after the lunch (if at home) because the UV rays of the machine which don’t sleep don’t allow my shutters to go down!!!!

EATERS COMA is a new addition to dictionary. It means a condition characterized by sluggishness, sleepiness, and often a lack of motivation to do anything but rest/relax or sleep; a condition whose onset occurs shortly after a meal.

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