How much sleep does a human being need? I have often thought about this question precisely because I don't have an answer to it. I know how many hours I need to sleep to be at my best the next day, but I find that there is no one fixed quota for everybody. There are some people who look like a wilting rose if they have not spent at least eight hours in dreamland. There are others who seem to be able to look enviably fresh with only a few hours, and sometimes not even that.
Suhel Seth, my dear friend in Delhi, who is universally described as the 'ad-man', seems to do very well with only two or three hours a night. He is able to combine partying till the wee hours of the morning with being on his desk by 7:30 in the morning without feeling the worst for it. He does not need to sleep any more, he says, and feels absolutely refreshed in just the hour or two he gets.
I need seven to eight hours of sleep. If I don't have that I am not at my optimum. Some of my friends could, I recall, study till very late at night during the examination season. I never could. I find it very difficult to keep awake after my bedtime, which is usually between eleven and midnight. My mind is freshest in the morning, after a good nights' sleep, and it is in the morning hours, when all is quiet and the world has not fully woken up that I am able to work most productively.
Does going to bed early and springing out of it at the crack of dawn really make you, as the old adage says, happy, healthy and wise? Again, I don't know. I know a lot of very talented people who don't sleep until dawn. But then they don't get up until afternoon. They sleep just like normal people do, except at different hours. The structure of their day is different, and they are at their most active when lesser (or less adventurous) mortals are happily snoring in bed.
{{/usCountry}}Does going to bed early and springing out of it at the crack of dawn really make you, as the old adage says, happy, healthy and wise? Again, I don't know. I know a lot of very talented people who don't sleep until dawn. But then they don't get up until afternoon. They sleep just like normal people do, except at different hours. The structure of their day is different, and they are at their most active when lesser (or less adventurous) mortals are happily snoring in bed.
{{/usCountry}}Many successful writers write only at night, when they are done with the distractions of the day and can be with themselves fully. Others, such as Khushwant Singh, are fast asleep by about 9:30 pm. For years now, Khushwant has shooed off his guests by eight in the evening, eaten a quiet dinner by nine, and retired to bed soon thereafter. But he wakes up at four in the morning. This is when he is with himself undisturbed. He makes a cup of tea for himself, puts out a saucer of milk for the stray cats, listens to the radio, reads the newspapers, writes, and until recently, would walk in the Lodhi gardens or play a round of tennis at the Gymkhana Club.
For me the quality of sleep is as important as the quantity. It is well known that alcohol in excess makes one fall asleep but the sleep is far from peaceful. Some people find coffee keeps them up, while to some it makes no difference. Doctors say that one should not sleep immediately after a heavy meal. I think this advice is correct but in urban India a great many people eat dinner late dinner and then collapse straight into bed. My wife does not sleep in the afternoon because she says this prevents her from falling to sleep at night. I, on the contrary, have allowed myself a short lie-down after lunch ever since I can remember. I don't really sleep but I find that a shut eye for about twenty minutes breaks my day and refreshes me.
Whatever the variations, sleep is nature's way of renewing us. I don't sleep too badly, but I envy those who fall into deep slumber the moment they hit the sack. To be able to effortlessly shut off the often futile cacophony of this world, and drift off into a world which lies between wakefulness and unconsciousness, is a great gift of God. Lin Yutang, the great Chinese writer and philosopher, once wrote that for him the truly happy moment is 'when I get up in the morning after a night of perfect sleep, and sniff the morning air and there is an expansiveness in the lungs, when I feel inclined to inhale deeply and there is a fine sensation of movement around the skin and muscles of the chest, and when, therefore, I am fit for work'
(A Stephanian, Pavan Kumar Varma is a senior Indian diplomat and presently Minister of Culture and Director of the Nehru Centre in London. Author of several widely acclaimed books likeGhalib: the Man, the Times and the recently released Being Indian, he will be writing the column Hyde Park Corner, exclusively for HindustanTimes.com)