In Praise Of Day Dozing

S.M.Singru

At long last, the elusive Saddam Hussain was caught by the Americans. And how? Can you believe, he was caught napping? Now this is an age of the media. They launch new thought waves, and can prevent powerful existing ones from making the rounds. Remember how cholesterol was painted as the rogue element in our blood for a long time? A lot of people kept rushing about in search of cholesterol-free food, and the sales of drugs claiming to lower cholesterol levels enjoyed a boom for quite some time. Well, not any more, it appears. Recently, the media has come out with a “scientific revelation” that the whole thing was not quite right. We are now informed that actually it is Omega 3 and Omega 6 in our blood, which are the real culprits. To rub the point further, they have debunked all the nice foods we have been relishing, and exhorted us to cook food in unfiltered linseed oil, forgetting that the direct consequence would be the ruining of many happy marriages, thanks to the body odour which linseed oil creates. Although, at the time of his capture, Saddam was having a nap very legitimately at night, I apprehend a clear, real and present danger of a general media backlash against naps, the nightly ones as also the popular daytime ones, making out as if having a nap is an all-time evil. “Don’t”, they will urge, “Why, even Saddam could be caught because he took a nap!” Therefore, it is about time that the day dozers stand up and put the record straight.

What are the arguments of these enemies of the daytime nap? They claim that it makes you put on weight; that it promotes laziness among people; that it is a criminal waste of the taxpayer’s money; that it makes government officers “unapproachable” during working hours; and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it tends to promote insomnia at night.

Except for the last argument, I regard the others as being fallacious and betraying a fascist attitude. We know that the latest research says, “It’s all in your genes.” Actually, obesity is a well-established genetic trait, and all that you can do is to reduce its extent, it cannot be eliminated. If you are destined to be a little or more “plus”, so shall you be, so why miss an innocuous and major pleasure of life? And if you are all that worried about weight increase, you should rather concentrate on diet control. (In all fairness, however, it has to be remembered that, a good lunch is a distinctly conducive factor for a good afternoon nap.) Just look around yourself, and you will find quite a few thin people enjoying naps in government offices, and yet remaining thin. So I should dismiss weight increase as a likely side effect, and label it as an unnecessary doubt planted by people who are thin and wish to make a virtue out of it.

Does daytime napping promote laziness among people? Believing this presupposes that work is always fascinating. Let us not forget what a great man like Jerome K. Jerome said: “I simply love work. I am fascinated by work. I can keep on looking at it for hours. The idea of completing it and thus parting with it breaks my heart. So, when I do feel the urge to work, I lie down, and let that urge pass.” Social scientists who have studied work culture say laziness is a part of a larger syndrome, with complex underlying variables, not all of which are controllable. Do wise men not advise us to accept the inevitable? Moreover, lazy people are unlikely to be able to catch a good daytime nap-- you see, it can be earned only after a spell of hard work. What better feeling to enjoy a nice nap, except after a job well done? Realising this, the devoted day dozer first completes a good, hard piece of work, and then turns to enjoy the fruits of it. How unfair to dub him as a work shirker!

Is daytime napping a criminal waste of the taxpayer’s money? Firstly, it is nobody’s argument that a taxpayer pays taxes on the condition that the people living off these taxes should not steal a few winks during the day. Actually a taxpayer pays tax because he has to, and this has nothing to do with anybody taking naps. In fact, it is because there are people in the Income Tax department who take regular daytime naps that the taxpayer is spared from coughing up more taxes. Secondly, even if the taxpayer were to be given a statutory warning, “Your tax contributions might be utilized towards daytime naps”, he is likely to shrug his shoulders and say, “Well, at least some human welfare is getting generated!” knowing that, the way governments work, his taxes rarely bring any human welfare as an end utilisation. Lastly, since government servants are wasting taxpayer’s money all the time, at least during the time that they are taking daytime naps, this wastage ceases.

Let us now examine another of the sinister charges against the day dozers. It is alleged that officers remain “unapproachable” during the time that they are enjoying a nap. I do not know what has created this serious misunderstanding. Government officers are generally and notoriously unapproachable at all times of the day for reasons, which have nothing to do with taking naps. And what has been the experience of those who were, in fact, approachable? During my career, hardly a day passed when I was not rudely awakened from my afternoon siesta by my PA who barged in, saying that so-and–so was on the long distance phone line, and please, will I take his urgent call. I had then understood why our early astute rulers in Delhi had resisted the idea of having two or three time zones within the country. Even with a single time zone, people find it fit to deprive a person of his well-earned nap by making phone calls at unearthly daytime hours, and with more time zones, there would have been mayhem, the working day becoming one long, interminable, napless, and insufferable drudgery. .

Even if it is true in some cases that people cannot sleep at night if they take a nap during the day, this is no reason for avoiding a day nap. It is like saying you should not have a heavy lunch because then you cannot have a proper dinner. The right approach is to find out how you can have both. For getting sleep at night as well, you can drink some hot milk before you go to bed, or you can count a hundred (or a thousand), or you can read the speeches of leaders. And, if nothing seems to work, you can always view the slow moving, unending tearjerker family serials, which clutter up the TV screens these days at night.

There is one eminent advantage of day dozing for the people who have to get sanctions or approvals from the day dozers. A street-smart junior colleague of mine confirmed this. In an unguarded moment, he confided to me that, in his experience, the best time of the day to obtain the approval of one’s boss on an inconvenient noting, or on one’s leave application was the moment just a few minutes after the boss had his lunch, and just before he had embarked upon his post lunch nap. Even a bright boss’ sensibilities are the dullest at that time. That is the time when the boss will happily sign away his own death warrant, and would do anything to get rid of the intruding junior who stands like a villain between him and his sweet siesta.

And the rewards for taking regular naps during the day are for anyone to see. A bureaucrat friend of mine says he comprehended the real meaning of Nishkam Karmayog, i.e. working without expecting the fruits of work, when he accidentally dozed off during a long and monotonous progress review meeting chaired by his boss. Later, he came to know that what he had missed was only a lot of criticism of his performance, which, anyway the boss never appreciated. If you still have doubts about the efficacy of the daytime nap, just stand outside a government office and watch the faces and the gait of the people who come out at the close of the office hours. Some will stride out, their faces radiant and eager to face the remaining part of the day. These are the blessed ones, the day dozers. And there will be those who totter out with stooping shoulders, their heads sunk in worry and despair. Make no mistake: these are the wretched abstainers who can only look forward to their night sleep. The choice is yours.