Sssssh! Quiet please, politicians at work

In any case, the PM’s message had clearly reached his high-powered audience, whether they were listening or not, and it was this: As You Snore, So Shall You Reap.

Media personnel, being the chronic misanthropes they are, had quite a field day playing up these pictures and making nasty wisecracks in cold print about how the guardians of our country’s political destiny are actually asleep at the wheel, 24X7. This is not done. I mean, just because we term them as public servants doesn’t give us the liberty to capture them at their most vulnerable.

Also, I believe, it is patently unfair to conclude from these photographs that the protagonists are inherently inactive, genetically quiescent and quite incapable of purposive action. That for them, dropping off, at the drop of a hat, is something they can do with their eyes shut.

The fact that they fall asleep before our very eyes testifies — I would say — to their long hours of ceaseless activity for us, yes us, the eternally ungrateful. To explain this a little better, I may have to stray a bit. Work stress — it could range from proposing flyovers to fly over ambitious colleagues snapping at one’s heels as in the case of Sheila Dikshit, to totting up box-office collections of Bunty aur Babli for Amitabh-bhai, which happens to be Mulayam Singh’s chief priority these days, I’m told — can result in the reduced production of orexin in the brain, which is the protein known to keep animals awake. At any rate, sleeping as an activity is no waste of time. It is temporary brain dissociation which is physiologically necessary for the rejuvenation necessary for high-preformance activity. Total sleep deprivation, which is often part of a politician’s life, can lead to psycho-functional deterioration and who wants political leaders who are barking mad?

This, if you would remember, was H.D. Deve Gowda’s passionate pliant as prime minister. When he was caught napping on a public podium before the startled gaze of the then chief justice of India, or when he extended a meeting with a Naga leader by several hours because he shut-down half way into the conversation, he always reminded us that his habit of nodding off at awkward moments testified to the 24 honest hours he put into his working day to deliver on his prime ministerial responsibilities. He also made an additional moral point about sleep and sleepers. All those who sleep the natural sleep of the guileless are open to correction, but you can never hope to wake up a man who pretends to sleep, he warns.

So let us no longer lose any sleep over our sleeping politicians. In fact, I dare say, we are better off with them switched off, than with them switched on. In any case, it is preferable that they sleep quietly in a corner, rather than sleepwalk their way through the corridors of power.