Kishore Singh: The powers of insomnia

It had been a late night but because I needed to complete some urgent work, I told my wife I would set the alarm for five in the morning. “I’ll just put these things away,” she said, hanging up the party clothes, “you go right to sleep,” not realising that it’s difficult to nod off when one half of a couple is an occasional insomniac and not particularly sympathetic about how it affects the household.

If I would curl up on one side of the bed, she suggested, she’d be able to put away things in storage that she’d been intending to for a month but hadn’t got around to until now. Since this required pulling a heavy mattress off the bed and holding up the dividers while she wondered whether mothballs would tarnish the silver, and whether cotton dresses needed to be aired before being put away, it was some while later before she declared herself satisfied and ready for a cup of coffee, if I’d care to join her.

 

After we’d sipped our brews, she wanted to catch up “with just the headlines”, then read the newspapers noisily with all the lights on because she disliked shadows, before deciding she was bored and wanted to cook something nice for breakfast — what would I want to eat? “What I would like is to sleep,” I groaned, looking at the clock “so I can wake up two hours later to meet my deadline.” “I know just the thing to help you sleep,” she said, which was hardly the issue, and though I’d managed to nod off, she shook me awake again a few minutes later to coax me into drinking a cup of warm milk, following which I could not sleep at all, and so, resentfully, got down to complete my assignment while my wife, tired after her troubles, descended into slumber.

In the morning we had intended to head downtown together, but because she’d slept little (and even though I hadn’t slept at all), she asked for the car to be sent back to fetch her. “I have meetings outside office and will require the driver,” I reminded her. “He’ll be with you in an hour,” she promised, which was fine since I didn’t require his services till lunchtime anyway.

First, she went to meet her sister, who’d come all the way from Jaipur to Delhi for a medical check-up, following which she was free for a spot of shopping in the city. “I can’t just send her back from the doctor’s clinic,” my wife pleaded with me, “can I keep the driver for just another hour?” I cancelled my lunch appointment. An hour later, my wife said they were having lunch, would I care to join them, but that it wasn’t possible to send the car to fetch me since she intended to catch up with an old friend, seeing how she was in the same neighbourhood as her. The old friend took her to meet another acquaintance, and together they decided to go grocery shopping before heading off to a Café Coffee Day for gossip, following which, well, her tailor just happened to be a small detour away, and she wanted to check out the new range of boots at a mall, and surely now that it was getting late, I could hardly be expected to show up at meetings when the sane thing would be to head for home.

Hoping to get at least to bed in time, I discovered my wife had other plans for the evening. “I hardly get to meet anyone while you’re out the whole day,” she said, “so I’ve accepted dinner with our friends — now hurry up and get ready, you don’t want to be late, do you?”