Insomnia

College is just about a week away, and the mourning, as a friend of mine with a very happy gift of expression puts it, has begun. The last two and a half months have come and gone quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I could almost hear them whoosh by. Undoubtedly, I have had fun, and could not have hoped for a better and more carefree set of holidays. But as the day college reopens nears, I can't help but feel a bit dismayed. I've enjoyed a lot, but there is still so much left to do, and so little time to do it in. There are more friends to meet. There are more movies to be watched. And there are so many more needless and insignificant arguments to be won. I feel, to put it in a nutshell, an acute shortage of free time before college reopens. I have therefore, stopped sleeping at night.

I know that many of you would like to express your reservations concerning the appropriateness of the course of action I have planned for myself. Many of you would be thinking it unwise and unhealthy. Many of you would even be going as far as questioning my sanity. I would like to say, therefore, at the very outset of this post, that I am not crazy. I admit that this might not be one of my brightest and most prudent ideas. I daresay it might be one of my most preposterous and absurd ones. But I can't do much about it, simply because it is not a conscious one.

What I mean to say is that there was at no point of time a single moment of inspiration when I suddenly sat up, sweaty and exhausted from mindless thinking, and said to myself, "Manu. You aren't going to sleep tonight. What's more, you aren't going to sleep tomorrow night either. And not the next. And not the next. And so on and so forth." What really happened was that I lay down one night to sleep, and couldn't. So I got up and started watching a movie instead. I lay down to sleep again the next night, and waited for sleep to take me, but it didn't, so I ended up reading all of the newspapers from the month of June instead. The next night, I couldn't sleep either, and re-rated all the songs on my iTunes library twice over to keep me occupied. The fourth night onwards, I gave up trying. It seems that my body, in a state of extreme panic due to the approaching end of the holidays, has simply forgotten how to sleep.

There's obviously nothing very wrong with not sleeping at night, except for the fact that one does tend to feel very tired throughout the day. But that, as far as I am concerned, is but a minor side-effect. The much bigger problem for me is to keep myself occupied at night, when everybody else is asleep. I usually see off my last friend on MSN at about 2:00 AM, and nobody at my place gets up before 5:30 AM. The three hours and thirty minutes that elapse between these two times are the hardest to pass, unless you happen to have an unread Harry Potter book in your hands. However, I have managed to do it for about a week now (6 nights actually, if I don't count the night I did have an unread Harry Potter book in my hands), and I am getting increasingly proficient at it.

So here, ladies and gentlemen, are some things one can do between 2:00 AM and 5:30 AM, and still live (as against die of boredom) to tell the tale.

1. Music. There's nothing better than listening to music at night. Everybody's asleep, which means that there's nobody to disturb you by asking you to clean your shoes or take a bath in the middle of your favorite song. All you need is lots of music, and relatively docile neighbors, and you're ready to go.
Harmful side-effects: Fit-to-burst parents and/or sibling(s), temporary deafness from 5:30 AM to 7:30 AM, and general tendencies exhibited by shoes and by you of getting excessively dirty.

2. SouthPark. If your parents can't stand your music, the next best thing to do is to watch SouthPark episodes. They're perfect for night-time viewing. They're not too mentally taxing and the names of the characters are short and easy to remember. Aseem Suri, a like-minded friend of mine, who also seems to be afflicted with a bad case of insomnia these days, compares watching SouthPark episodes to meditation. I totally agree, except that meditation is never as much fun.
Harmful side-effects: A marked increase in abuses/beeps in one's speech depending upon the extent of censorship in the watched episodes, rapid deterioration in one's sense of humor, and a general inclination towards using the phrase, "Oh my God! They killed Kenny. The bastards." excessively and completely out of context.

3. There's nothing that relieves the tedium at night like a long, winding walk. The weather, obviously, has to be nice. Walks are a complete waste of time when it is hot. A pleasant breeze that runs through your hair is much more desirable. The best weather to take a walk, however, is when it is raining. And at AIIMS, post-midnight rainfall, especially at this time of the year, isn't too much of a rarity. I must, however, make clear at this point of time that any post-midnight attempts to take on the wild outdoors are not entirely free from danger. Any mishaps occurring due to embarking on walks late at night after reading this blog will not be my responsibility. In other words, take walks late at your own risk.
Harmful side-effects: Colds and kidnappings.

4. Playing NFS: Underground. It's fun. It's fast. And you can watch cool cars collide and crash without experiencing any of the pain that is usually associated with such situations.
Harmful side-effects: General urges to drive at 160 mph on city roads, usually leading to undesirable consequences. Frantic searching for arrow keys at turnings, leading to still more undesirable consequences.

5. Reading: Reading is, by far, the best way to spend free time at night. No angry parents/siblings/neighbors, no risks involved, and no irritating withdrawal symptoms. When in doubt, pick up a book.
Harmful side-effects: None.

Of course, if nothing else works, one can always resort to aimless net-surfing. Reading blogs, posting comments and pointlessly taking worthless online tests takes up a lot of time. Which reminds me of this particular online test I took yesterday. Try it. It works well.

That about wraps it up for things to do at night. While none of them sound as good as sleeping, they fill up time just as well.

Before I go, I have another couple of things to write about.

I finished reading the 6th book in the Harry Potter series a couple of days back. It is, in short, an excellent read. As most of you would know by now, Dumbledore dies at the end. I always thought, ever since I was sucked into the Harry Potter phenomenon 4-5 years ago, that Albus Dumbledore was invincible. That come what may, he will be there, a solid rock of support for Harry to fall back on, and an eternal source of wisdom and intelligence that will continue to elucidate and enchant till the end of the series. I was wrong. He was, by far, my favorite character from the series and the fact that he was not as indispensable as I think he was, more than his dying, makes me sad.

Also, my hair has once again reached, as it tends to do every three months or so, the awkward length which lies somewhere between short and long. It is looking, very frankly, quite dreadful, and my mother, like is expected of her every three months or so, has started asking me to get them cut. If any of you reading this have any idea how to convince mothers that long hair is a good idea, kindly let me know. I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life.

Oh my God! They killed Kenny. The bastards.