[Some context for the reader: My name literally means “the end of the night”, which, I always felt was a rather violent and roundabout way to say “dawn”, but after being stuck with it since my birth, I have gotten quite used to it.]
I would like to believe that my insomnia is a recent phenomenon, spurred by the freedom I gained during my college days. But that would be incorrect. Even before I had the luxury to skip my morning lectures and sleep in, I was a night owl. I remember staying awake till late into the night during my school days, texting friends, discussing the latest school scandal, or reading something. They say we all have internal clocks in our body. Mine is certainly broken.
It helped that my parents were kind enough to not wake me up before I had to.
Now, turning 25 this year, an age that sounds a bit too serious than it has any right to be, the effects of my decade-long romance with nightlife are beginning to show effect. Sprinkle in a couple of years of corporate hustle, and you have the perfect recipe for an aching back, graying hair, dark circles, and frequent bouts with existential ponderings. For the first time in my life, it (more than anything, the aching back) made me question my decision and look for the reasons for my sleepless nights.
Ever since I learned about “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination”, it has become the usual suspect. Being the careless soul I am, I have always been terrible at planning. It is of little surprise, therefore, that most of my nights aren’t spent rolling over my bed, but rather furiously typing in my assignments or preparing for a test the next day. This makes revenge bedtime procrastination, a phenomenon in which you angrily claim the time you lost during the day (probably catching up on your lost sleep) during the night, a fantastic first guess.
But I believe this doesn’t paint the complete picture. After all, many of the studies are led by Western societies. As someone who grew up in a two-room service quarter for most of his childhood, my refusal to sleep is at least in equal parts not only an attempt to claim more time but also more space. The living room which served as evening Baithak or gathering place during the evening, turned into a quiet study, suitable for reading fantastic ghost stories by Ruskin Bond, or the tragedies of Premchand. The kitchen which was the domain of my mother, offered its vast and rich resources to me. The fact that I could only use them to make Maggie, doesn’t take away anything from its magnificence. From the cut scenes of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within to watching the Gangs of Wasseypur in parts, the night provided a safe haven for my teenage explorations.
Having spent most of my childhood in Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, the nights were much cooler and gentler in the summers, and not as unforgiving as they are in the north during the winters.
There is ancient wisdom that is our caution to the night. The world our ancestors lived in was a harsh one. It was hard to tell what lurked in the shadows. We had to ensure the kids and the adventurous adults among us didn’t wander into the dangerous night. Hence we imagined ghosts and witches, creatures that were the most active after the sun set on us. The world is full of wonder, and you often can sometimes explain an eerie legend by a natural phenomenon. I wonder how many witches of forests were birds, capable of copying human-like sounds, and how many of the demons were just leopards, dragging people away deep into the jungle to their deaths. Or sometimes just dacoits. The world around us is much safer. Or rather, we have isolated ourselves enough in our concrete jungles to be bothered by these “witches” and “demons”.
I consider myself a man of science and reason. But I must admit, there have been nights when I have been unnaturally spooked. Frequently I visited the roof of our buildings before dawn to gaze at the stars, to see if I could spot any satellites or recognize any patterns in the sky. But on days, my feet stopped halfway through the moonlit stairs, refusing to carry me through the broken wooden door to the roof. On such days I would abandon my solitary bedding, and snuggle close to my parents for security.
Still, I would always return the following night. As Sarah Williams put it in her frequently quoted poem- “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night”.
Despite our caution and fears, the night is too enchanting for us humans to resist. We used to tell stories by the fireside, evident from the fact that some of the cave paintings only reveal their secrets when experienced through the light of a torch. Every civilization in the history of mankind tells the story about the moon and the stars, and we put our hopes and aspirations up there, patterns etched on brilliant balls of gas, alight billions of kilometers away.
For me, the night will always symbolize freedom, solitude, and calmness. The late night conversations with friends, those midnight study sessions with college mates, the gaming nights, those peaceful reading sessions… The night has given me a lot.
And like a fool, I have fallen in love with the foe I was meant to vanquish.
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