Snooze mode

The great art of catching one8217;s forty winks

Many great people owe their success to catnapping. Jefferson, da Vinci and Churchill, to name just a few. Napoleon had this great ability of sleeping whenever he wished. That he could sleep on the back of a horse is common knowledge. What is less known is that he could catch up on his forty winks inside a tent even as a battle raged without.

Sleeping at will came naturally to me after I joined the police, because we are a perennially sleep-deprived lot. Overwork and odd duty hours give us the capacity to snooze at the first opportunity. My favourite nook was the car, while touring the district. As soon as the driver set it into motion, I would be lulled into a cosy snooze.

One learnt to catnap during one8217;s training. At the Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, after a strenuous morning jog and breakfast, one looked forward to a long lecture at the auditorium, Sardar Patel Hall SPH. It provided just the right atmosphere for a doze. To us it was the Sleeping Probationers8217; Hall SPH.

At the Police Academy, if the morning outdoor session was killing, the breakfast that followed was kingly. Take it together and you have the perfect prescription for a quick nap. Unfortunately, the size of the class here was far too small to allow one to snooze without being noticed. But once in a while we used to have lectures by guest speakers in the auditorium. That was the place to cop some z8217;s. Indeed some speakers made one wonder why they were wasting their talent on us when they could earn millions by curing people of insomnia with their lectures.

The other way to catch up on sleep was to report sick. One winter morning while I was there, it seemed utterly foolish to leave one8217;s bed. I bunked the morning session and was deep in sleep when there was a sharp knock on the door. I woke up with a start and opened it. It was the assistant director. Seeing me in my pyjamas, he asked sharply, 8220;Pray, what are you doing in your room at this hour?8221; Unable to conjure up a credible excuse, I blurted out, 8220;Sleeping, sir!8221;

He was furious but lost none of his wry humour and said, 8220;You had better learn to do that in the classroom.8221;