Skip to main content

Alarming Tones

Every time I watch a cliché romantic Bollywood flick, I find myself wishing I could be one of those diligent, sound-sensitive, got-no-time-to-waste NRI people they always end up showing. The ones who wake up bang in sync with the alarm clock’s first bell, get right on their feet and robotically rush into the bathroom. Get dressed, do their morning pooja with long wet hair neatly pulled over one shoulder and eyes brimming with shraddha, and then slip into the busy streets on New York, striding happily, with a Starbucks Coffee to complete the look.  And even after all the morning propaganda manage to be one of the earliest people to reach the office and gain a promotion. I wish, I wish!
However, over all these years of my being, I’ve only managed to figure out that I have some sort of an inbuilt anti-alarm mechanism in me—and as much as I may try, alarms are never very successful in shaking me out of my sleep. Consequently, I’m more of the ‘oh shit phir late!’ people than the ‘perfect early morning Starbucks sippers’. All this, much to the annoyance to my mother.
The problem is quite simple and quite weird actually. It so happens that when the alarm in my phone goes off with a song, I somehow end up singing the song in my mind (complete with the right lyrics), and once it’s over, I end my mental crooning and get back to sleep. That’s about it.
And I’ve tried all sorts of songs. I mean ALL kinds of them. I’ve been through slow romantic numbers to wake me up slowly and peacefully (I sing, go all aww, and snuggle into the blanket to sleep again once it’s over). I’ve tried loud, hitting songs to wake me up all at once (I get bugged, switch off the alarm, set one for a later time, change the alarm tone to a softer, romantic number, sing along, go all aww, and snuggle into the blanket to sleep once again). I’ve tried simple melodies with no lyrics so that I don’t end up singing along and wake up (major failure, I begin to mentally waltz instead.)
And so, unlike most normal people, I don’t wake up to my alarm going off, I wake up to my irritated half-asleep brother kicking and shouting at me to put the damned thing off. Basically, my alarm’s never there to wake me up, it’s there to wake HIM up so that he can wake ME up. Pretty smooth system in place, eh?
Unfortunately, in all this effort to put myself out of Kumbhkaran inspired deep slumber, I don’t know just how many songs I’ve put my brother off. I know for one that he used to love Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie. Now all I get for playing it is a murderous look.
Now that he has put his foot down, I’ve realised the dire need for an alarm clock of Richie Rich stature, one that will wake you up, pull you out of your bed and drag you to the bathroom all by itself. And while I wait for an early diligent Starbucks sipper to invent that for me, I’ll just go snuggle up and catch up on my sleep.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To A Colourful Life

Sitting by the roadside, Hira intently watched cars speed by. Tears welled up in his eyes—he would do this often, and it would make him break down every time. He could’ve been in one of those big cars. He could’ve made it big. He could’ve studied hard and married and had beautiful children of his own. He could have. Had God not decided to play around with him. Had his father not taken offence and thrown Hira and his mother out of his little house. Had his mother, his own mother, not have left him in a dump yard to die. Hira was abandoned as a child, unwanted and kicked out of his own parents’ lives. Left to fend for himself in a garbage dump, he was discovered by a group of people—people just like him, who slowly, gradually, taught him about the norms of the cruel world. The world was a sad place for Hira. Because the world didn’t look at him for what he had tried to make of himself—a breadwinner, a diligent worker, a good person, no. The world looked at him for what HE had had no ...
1 comment
Read more

Loving Vir

Have you ever felt real reverence, true-mad-deep reverence that it almost reached a point of worship? Where the other person could never be wrong, simply because it was HIM? I, for one, have known this sheer devotion. And it happened to be for the man I’ve idolised since I don’t even remember when. I fell in love with Vir Sanghvi. For those of you who don’t know, Vir Sanghvi is an advisor with Hindustan Times, and used to write a weekend column in the paper by the name of Counterpoint. I don’t remember who made me read my first Counterpoint in Sunday’s Hindustan Times, but my Sundays were never the same again. At first glance, Sanghvi impressed. At a second look, he left me in awe. The man was a genius. I hadn’t known anyone like him before—I’d never read a newspaper so unfailingly before. Then came the Sunday Brunch, and Sanghvi shocked me yet again. What in the world did he NOT know about?! All this time I’d spent thinking of him as a purely political writer, and Rude Food gave me a...
5 comments
Read more

The Bucket List

  Stupid Mayans holding us all in suspense. For all we know, it was some loony prehistoric guy who simply got bored midway through his calendar making and decided to leave it at that. Or a sadist, maybe, who thought it would be creepily hilarious to leave his descendents awaiting the ultimate apocalypse—eyes shut, fists clenched, sighing, and all okay bye-byes done and settled, only to find they still had college at 8:59:59 the next day. If its true, though, what a waste of a brilliant life would that be, a December 2012 end would mean I’d have spent all my (conscious) life slogging it off at some padhai centre or the other. Sad. Calls for immediate salvage attempts, running to a four month deadline. 1.        Background Clearance. In the little time that I have on earth, and before the next set of inhabitants arrive, it is essential to wipe off all traces of embarrassing pictures of yours truly, and other textual details. Thus, all the diaries, t...
2 comments
Read more