Quiet, Democracy is Not Sleeping !

Quiet, Democracy is Not Sleeping !

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"O sleep ,O gentle sleep ,Nature's soft nurse......." Henry IV

Alas ! Not for our Rip Van Winkles the Nature's nurse inside 
Parliament. Manohar Parrikar today, Rahul Gandhi yesterday ,Narendra Modi the day before and so on (not necessarily in the same time sequence ), the sanctimonious media lamblasts parliamentarians caught in the perfectly 'natural ' act of dozing off in "
parliament .The dread of the stalking lens is about as great as the terror Gau Rakshak  Dals  strike in the hearts of Dalits and Muslims. Can we then really blame our star MPs like Sachin Tendulkar, Rekha if they elect not to visit the Houses or on the rare occasion they do ,to 'sleep walk' to their seat and snooze with starry unseeing open eyes and ears plugged ? 

Menacing our somnolent MPs is an attack on the inalienable rights of man. And denying it to the ones who enforce those rights is downright bunkum .One eats and drinks as per bodily needs, why not sleep too whenever Hypnos comes calling ."what has night to do with sleep"  John Milton rightly said . And aren't slumbering parliamentarians a tribe straddling democracies across the world ? Cleve Palmer, MP from Gold Coast caught napping said "I apologise for that ,but it's liable to happen again.I am a human being" Why then single out ours ? I say, leave the sleeping beauties alone so long as they don't SLEEP OVER THINGS.

   

My admiration for H D Devegowda ,ex-PM ,instantly went up a notch when he said "I may be a sleeping politician.But one should know that a sleeping politician is always awake about national politics. I am not like politicians who sleep on national issues though they may awake physically" ,echoing Ernest Hemingway "I love sleep, my life has the tendency to fall apart when I am awake". Right, Sirs, keep sleeping, after all " Sleep is God , Go worship" .

Though some  MPs do genuinely suffer sleep deprivation. Lots of travel ,loads of meetings and weighed down by care of their distressed constituents leave them sleep starved . Sleep Council of UK found that British parliamentarians sleep ,on an average ,only 5 hours against the prescribed minimum of 7 hour. These 'sleeping beauties' need our utmost empathy, not censure, when they take their forty winks in parliament to catch up on lost sleep.

Some of the supposed culprits 'caught' ,figuratively, with pants down, and literally, with dropped eyelids ,may not even be in repose.'Eye Rest ' or chewing on words being spoken, deep thought, meditation are all perfectly legit. Closing eyes shuts vision not ,necessarily, hearing or the mental faculties. Mashbane caught supplicating Hypnos hit the nail on  the coffin "I was praying ,do you not close your eyes while praying " Right, madam ,had all the MPs in South Africa done likewise, the nation would be radiating divine bliss now.

Possibly, our MPs too may be praying .Only there is a twist in the tale, a 'criminal conspiracy' 
angle to their somnolence.Deep in penance supplicating Lord Brahma for bestowing the political 
Indrasan ,PM's chair, other Gods intervene to deny them. Mata  Saraswati does a repeat Kumbhkarna act. They desire of the Lord, Indrasan but their tongue somehow says Nidrasan and sleep overtakes them. That's cruel, cruel indeed ! Especially for Rahul Gandhi ,being worsted in the  game twice in as many years. Maybe ,third time lucky ,the tongue may indeed blurt Indrasan.

The culprit though is melatonin ,the sleep hormone. It builds up during the day to peak in the afternoon , just when parliamentary debates are building upto a cresendo. The urge to catnap becomes mirresistible. As it is the lengthy,monotonic, monologues that characterise parliamentary speeches are soporific enough. So what's the big deal if a few cut corners in their parliamentary existence and give themselves upto melatonin. And it isn't  a bad idea. 

Recent researches confirm that a 30 minute afternoon catnap ,which the White Sahib in India never missed ,reinvigourates the body and mind ,enhances mental alertness and cognitive skills,lowers blood pressure and stress .Done  3 times a week risk of health related death is lowered by as much as 37%.The brain uses the recess to transfer short term memory to long term storage ,thereby freeing up mental space whereby there is a sharpening of memory and mental agility. lets not therefore condemn our Hypnos lovers.

Corporate Houses  go with working lunches where Meeting and Eating continue uninterruptedly . Why can't our parliamentary debates also proceed apace with 'working sleep' ! folks think hard . I would go a step further .As a nation which put Yoga Day on UN calendar, we shoulder the humongous burden of  demonstrating to the world it's immense potential for human wellness .What better way than a power nap session of 30 minutes for parliamentarians inside the House in an appropriate Nidrasana ! If it clicks , the whole nation can follow  suit at their work stations  , a true parading of our soft yoga power 365 days in a year. That's what the world expects from a yogic nation.

"A day without a nap is like a cupcake without frosting."