Let the birds sleep

It is a practice to keep serial lights glowing on streets. But who does this please, really?

There is no hope for a civilisation which starts each day to the sound of the alarm clock - Anonymous

I  start my day to a tune my cell phone plays at quarter to five each morning. This alarm is my hope for a civilised day.

Walking at 6 am in the park one day, I observed a grey leaf tumble from a tree and roll uncertainly. It rose again and settled shakily on the tree where a small grey owl sat, his big eyes open, unseeing in the morning light. I stared for a while as it confusedly searched for its perch to get back to bed.

With the morning growing brighter, the voices of the walkers interspersed with holy chants and music from their phones that was filling the park, I pitied the little owl and all those creatures still asleep because of their nocturnal habits.

Once, in Jaipur, we waited by the pool side of a many starred hotel for the party to begin. Serial lights draped on trees and bushes reflected in the water like jewels. Soft music was being played and the guests stood around with drinks in their hands talking in low voices. The whole place looked like a scene from a Bollywood movie sans the prancing hero and heroine.

I stood with the shawl pulled tightly around me looking up into the short trees. I choked on my cold drink when I saw amidst the leaves closed for the night, hundreds of little sparrows sitting on the branches, their heads bent in sleep, their eyes opening now and then disturbed by the lights and music. I moved my disbelieving eyes and saw similar scenes on other trees.
I called a passing waiter and ordered him to switch off the lights. He predictably disappeared and I felt a revulsion at all that we human beings do in the name of ‘ambience’. The party was only beginning and their stuck-up sense of ‘atmosphere’ could not be damaged by a silly woman’s complaint.

I remember the quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“Macbeth does murder sleep – the innocent sleep / Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care / The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.”

Most of us love to sleep in quiet dark bedrooms we slip into as our right, cursing the howling dogs, drunken brawls, loud television and drag racing bikes that threaten the restful unconsciousness. Yet we murder another’s sleep uncaringly?
“I know,” I reply to Ernest Hemmingway’s: “I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake. You know?”

Doctors sternly warn workaholics that less than six hours of sleep everyday could cause premature death due to sleep deprivation. While we change habits to rest and live longer, it takes a little thoughtfulness to let other creatures get their ‘sore labor’s bath’.
Remember, our lives will fall apart with the disappearing birds. Really, it’s time to wake up.