Ok Picture the scene. This is the middle of the night, somewhere between two and three in the morning. It was a long empty road deep in the middle of rural Maharashtra. We were two guiz in a car, me and a sonorous friend (moar on that later). Owls, bats, ghosts and other creatures of the night must have stayed safe in their homes that particular night because of the lightning. It was so common that it was liek a cosmic strobe light that turned night into day every now and then. It was a massive storm without rain but frequent flashes of brilliant lightning. The thunder was really far away and was little moar than a low rumbling way down the spectrum. All of this is moastly unrelated but unfortunately real background to the story.
The story was that we had had a long day driving for 800 kilometers in less than 36 hours, and it was only my friend on the wheel, so it is a little understandable that he parked the car at a petrol pump, switched off the engine and went into a sound sleep. With little better to do, my pmps battery drained a long tiem ago, I smoked a cigarette, and went off to sleep. At least, I tried. The lightning wasnt exactly very conducive to the sleep.
In a bit, he started snoring. At first it was a low sound, almost covered up by the distant thunder. At first I wasnt disturbed. I got used to the rhythm of it, and dozed off. Suddenly there was a loud snort. Then the rhythm changed completely, became a little faster. There was also a sound that went something like "grnn hMMpff" and then the rhythm changed again. As fascinating as all of this is, it wasnt really easy to drift off to sleep. Also, it was definitely getting louder.
I really wanted to sleep. I was sleepy. I couldn't sleep because of the snoring. This might seem repetitive, but is necessary to understand my actions that followed. I hit upon the brilliant idea of using cigarette butts as earbuds. Yeah im just getting warmed up here, so I wont even describe how that failed. They were not noise isolating, but they are very difficult to get out once you get em in. Dont try it evar. One important lesson I learnt about acoustics is that you need to have something conforming to the innards of your ear to really block out the sound. I hoped my pinkies were up for the challenge. I stuffed em in as far as they could go. Boom. No sound at all. That was good. Very good. Now, to go to sleep.
Yeah the problem is its pretty difficult to go to sleep with your fingers jammed into your ears. After a bit, the fingers start sliding out, and ears start paining, and wedging your hands against the door and the seat wont help in maintaining the position. I didnt know if that was what that triggered the headache, but I decided that the time was ripe for a fresh approach.
Right now, Im sorry to say I was fucking angry. I gave my friend a big ass elbow in the stomach and he promptly stopped. Only to start again some tiem later. There is an age old technique of breathing in and breathing out to calm yourself down. Well, snoring is basically hearing someone else failing utterly at breathing, so its pretty difficult to maintain your own timing and pace when someone else is off-kilter. Then I thought that it was about tiem I approached the situation liek a Boss.
There was one strategy which has nevar failed me in my life. Be calm and smoke two joints. You know how it is, after smoking a joint ur liek all gone and one with the universe and in a really loving mood. Well that shit just made me paranoid and imagine that I deserve the torture as part of some bad karmic hangover. Eventually I calmed down enough to try my hand at induced lucid dreaming, that is trying to go into a deep dream like state. Easy to do for most people when your sleepy and have smoked two joints, but not with this guy snoring next to you man.
Ok concentrating on the background noises, looking at the cars and the rain, just to drive out the snoring sound. Almost everything I saw, every reflected carlight that crossed the windshield, every insect in the sky that caught the moonlight, was a shooting star, and the only thing I wished for every tiem was for the snoring to stop. In a bit the cars and trucks began to look like airplanes it was a woozy state but I was still irritated by the snoring when I tried the most infallible strategy ever.
Lie fucking still no matter what happens. Yeah I was making really heavy progress in the lie fucking still department, but not so much in the go to sleep department. In fact, not evan a little bit. I realised the importance of having a notebook and pen at all times, I wuz reduced to taking down notes on my mobile phone, which had a dying battery. There were some other deep insights into lief imma sure, but all I wuz doing was somehow keeping myself occupied because I realized that a) this motherfuckers not gonna stop snoring and b) imma not gonna find ana sleep. There is apparently a technique out there for going to sleep that is so cool that everyone in the world uses it and there are television channels to help you along as well. Counting sheep. Yeah I must have gotten bored at around six man, I donno if anyone haz gone any further, but srsly, good for you.
Thens I thinks whats if its not the snoring because of which I cants sleep, but something else entirely. Mebbe its the lightning. The chai tapri nearby opens up, so I head there for a tea and a smoke. THen have another two. I talk to some trucker who advices me to stop at a brothel a little ahead of Vada for a good fuck. He tells me liek its the most obvious thing in the world for anyone to do, and its stupid of me to not do it if im going down that road. I head back to the car to listen to some comfortable snoring. I backtracked a bit and pulled the whole "be calm and smoke two jointsd" stunt.
Eventually the sun rose, the lightning stopped, the birds started chirping and when I woke up we were on the highway.
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