Yet Untitled 061 - Waking Up

A reflection on the dread of facing the morning

Dearest Yet Untitler,

Even though I thoroughly qualify as a morning person - for me, waking up from sleep has more often than not been accompanied by a shudder; a familiar wave of dread that I’m acutely aware of. As I talk about it, I wonder how familiar this feeling is to others.

All is good. But…

Sunrise, Greece, c. 2005

Even as I enjoy my life, in good health with no immediate threats to my or my family’s being, I still wake up experiencing this little “oh no!” feeling as my eyes open, my heavy eyelids almost fluttering out “WHY” in morse code. Maybe it’s the existentialist dread that Philip Glass belts out in his music. Maybe it’s my life responding to living on a warming planet, raising two kids. I can’t put my finger on it…but it’s there.

Those who know me well may find this confession strange. But perhaps some of you make hear this and nod. If this feeling’s familiar to you, drop me a line.

I sleep relatively well.

But my dentist told me that I may be grinding my teeth during sleep and asked me to wear a dental tray. This was a surprise. It makes me wonder - what horrors am I churning in my sleep that my jaws are responding to? It’s all a bit puzzling, but it’s there and I thought I’d reflect on it a little.

After deciding that this was what I wanted to write about, I thought I’d try something new on these pages. Following from the experience of trying my hand at ‘Songing’ in an earlier edition of YU, I thought I’d experiment with stream of consciousness to decode the place of this ‘morning trauma’ in my life.

It turned out that I’ve felt it ever since I was a child. School! To interrupt slumber to go learn…at one level, this just didn’t seem to fit in with life. But I got with the rhythm, imbibed it and followed it all my life.

But there seems to be some lingering attachment to staying back in the comfort of a blanket (or womb!) that stretches all the way back to school.

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Boarding school. A bell used to ring in the distance - a loud bell filling a dark courtyard with clamor. It was still pitch black - you’d think the alarm was wrongly set, except that it’s a human ringing that bell with the intent of rousing a hostel full of tired boys in deep sleep.

A sadistic senior was waiting to take you through idiotic PE drills, punishing you for your lack of coordination. That one slice of bread with the spread of rancid butter sprinkled with dust was not enough to get you through PE+2 hours of morning classes before breakfast. It was too cold to bathe. Your clothes smelled.

Another day.

Morning PT, The Doon School, c. 1992

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There was a time when I used to run to lose weight. It used to be torture, and waking up in the morning to go for a run (not anymore; now running is divine) used to be an ordeal. It kind of felt something like this:

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Half an eye open. I see my shoes, still caked with dust. My chest suddenly throbs with pain, my ribs still hurt from the heaving breaths that carried me through the last run. Memories of the debilitating headache at the end of the day, and despair at having to go through it all again today.

One step off the bed. Then the next. Just get to the bathroom and splash water on your face. You know that none of this will stand once you’ve stepped out onto the road. The rest of it - dealing with the short breath, the flat feet, the stiff neck from your clumsy nodding head. We’ll deal with all that later.

For now just get to the bathroom. Another day. Another run.

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There it is again!

Thinking about it, this ‘morning dread’ has keept surfacing in my life in one form or another. Perhaps it’s the same dread surfacing in different forms, triggered by different things. Now, as I’m going in to direct an OTT show for the first time, it’s surfacing again.

Over time, I’ve learned to manage it. Here are a few ways in which I do:

Not to picking up my phone first thing in the morning is one way in which I deal with this. I satisfy the impulse to engage with the world by deliberately reading 3 pages of Buddhist study rather than going through emails, social media or pending messages first. Austin Kelon says - “Deal with problems in daylight”. My mornings are early, and it’s nice to let a little light in before dealing with the world.

I also chant. I also do yoga. I also run. Thinking about each, they’re all a processes of realignment. Perhaps I have been born into a world that is attuned to hammering at us everyday - bending us, chipping us, dislocating our essential parts. A bit of fixing every day is necessary. Were it not for doing my forward bends correctly, continuing through life with a misaligned limb over a prolonged time would lead to further problems; leave alone a misaligned heart.

Yoga-ing, Mumbai, c.2005

However, I dug out this old piece of writing in which, I remember that I had addressed this very thing - the place of the dark night in my life. At the time of writing, I had been assessing the effect of a prolonged incapacitation caused by a slipped disc, wondering what it all had meant.

I was surprised to see that almost 17 years ago, when the following piece was written, I had already known that the place of this dread in my life was in some way important:

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We used to begin our treks into the Garhwal Himalayas before dawn. Our guides would knock on our door at 5 AM and we’d force ourselves out of warm sleeping bags into the block of ice that was the air around. By candlelight inside the cold walls of some forsaken guesthouse at the foot of a hill, we’d check our equipment, don our gear and step into an even colder outside.

With our laden rucksacks, we’d begin walking with flashlights, out of the village and into the darkest of night before dawn. There were stars. There was silence.

Stiff, hurting feet would clamber over rocks. Sleep laden eyes would struggle to keep to the broken path. But when we’d reach the top of the first ridge, something magical would happen. In the distance, a single flurry like cloud would tell on a coming sun. The night, so beautiful in her many diamonds would begin to blush. And with the arrival of the sun. she’d disappear into him. He’d grow brighter as he took her in. Birds would grow sonorous in the trees we walked under. (Our trudge was by now a walk!) The purest air would make our cheeks as red as apples and dissolve any sleep still clinging to our eyes. In the valley below, smoke would rise from breakfast fires and become one with the mist. The smell of hay, the sick sweet pungency of cow dung, the musk of animals hidden from sight, the distinguishable fragrances of so many trees would come to our nostrils and seep into our deepest sense memories.

In my immediate vicinity I’d look at my companions who walked with me those 20 odd miles. Bathed in the golden sun, they looked awakened. None of us spoke much through the experience of such mornings, perhaps knowing intuitively how they’d bind us.

To know the beauty of such a morning one had to know the night. And as the day’s inevitable end is the night not once but repeatedly for all time, one had to experience the oncoming of the dark repeatedly.

But I remember the night with her stars. Its cold had made me want the warmth of the sun, but only by banishing sleep was I able to gaze at its many stars.

Because the night was dark did its stars shine so.

Because the night was dark, I partook of the treasures of the morning.

So beautiful…that one of many mornings.

I didn’t know back then how much comfort these words would bring me one day, 17 years later.

Thanks for listening, dearest Yet Untitler. I’m very happy to send you another slice of my mind. Until next week…

Lots of love

V