Not too long back, there was an attempt to forge an alliance between two families by a matrimonial agent. Like the usual customs of a Hindu family, the ladke-waale ventured out to meet the ladki-waale with their huge band wagon of friends and family. I strongly believe that even the IIM-A selections don’t follow such fine screening processes like we do for marriages here.
First the boy’s family meets the girl’s family, while the boy’s eyes keep scouring for the girl and the boy’s friends look for the girl’s friends and sisters. The boy’s family speaks to the girl who more often than not, gives an impression of cooking for the entire household and the colony as well. The boy’s family now makes way for the boy and his friends to meet the lady who comes along with her cousins and friends.
Like a film-maker would say, cut to the lawn, the evening is slowly slipping into the darkness with the lamps being switched on.
Boy and his friends: What’s your hobby?
Girl: Listening to music, cooking, umm...
Girl’s friends: What do you guys do on Sundays? You people drink, right?
Boy’s friends: Not just drink, in fact drink like a fish, sleep till noon, laze around and go pubbing the entire evening.
Girls’ friends: Sleep till noon ?? Gawd!
Boy’s friends: Yeah only if Raj (the prospective groom) doesn’t snore to death.
Breaking of glass! Lightning! Thunder!
Cut to the main-gate; The boy’s friends and family are seen walking out, the alliance broke.
Snoring can break marriages! That is how hazardous it can be!
As per the dictionary, ‘snore’ means to breathe during sleep with hoarse or harsh sounds caused by the vibration of the soft palate. Wonder how a harsh and intolerable sound is produced by something called a soft palate, what’s so soft if it comes out with such a hard hitting noise? But sometimes, words fail to describe the actual meaning of something; such is the case with snoring.
On being asked how snoring has affected him, a school-goer replied that every time he heard the sound of snoring coming through from the other room, he felt confident enough to surf through TV channels he wasn’t allowed to watch. To this a college goer replied that he made it a point to slowly sneak out a fag from his dad’s packet to enjoy the joys of doing something which he is restricted to.
We shall decide later whether snoring is a crime or not, but that it promotes crime is something we are sure of, after knowing the above mentioned reactions.
For a few wives, snoring of her husband confirms that it’s not yet time to rise from the bed to get going with her daily household chores in the morning. If this is how things would pan out to be, snoring might just go on to remove alarm clocks out of our lives forever.
Snoring is the Loot Lo offer that comes during the Puja vacations for the thieves in the town. While a thief goes patrolling across the households, he keeps a keen ear on the snoring that comes through the windows. Snoring confirms the existence of sleepaholics, hence easy shop- lifting, err.. house lifting!
“Where there is a snore, there’s certainly a confident chor!”
Meandering away from all the humor now, we take a look at a more serious incident. Not too long back, in fact only back in 2009, a man living in south-west Russia had been put behind the bars for murdering a woman who had this habit of snoring. Victor Rudakov had been invited over to the woman’s house for a drink along with his friends. By the time, the guys finished their drink and were about to go to sleep, this woman made terrible noise with her act of snoring. After failing to wake her up, Victor hit her with a plank of wood on the head for close to 30 times before she succumbed to death due to the injuries. Now that’s one serious offence. Isn’t it? Seven years of imprisonment for a snore-murder case, that’s something one wouldn’t imagine in the wildest of dreams.
Snoring and divorces aren’t surprising anymore. There have been many such occurrences in the past and there’s no stopping it seems. In some foreign countries, snoring is considered to be a crime as much as spitting on the roadside is. However, it doesn’t apply to India though, i.e both the crimes.
Snoring is certainly not a petty matter anymore, especially after having known the repercussions. Although there are a lot of exercises that can be adopted to get rid of snoring and hence divorces and murders, it seems people have started to live with it. If you have a snorer around, make sure you don’t use a wooden plank to avoid it.
Rather, remember this, “Two cotton balls a day keeps the snoring away!”
This article was written in the month of May, 2011 for the English monthly, P3.. Not Just Page 3.
This article was written in the month of May, 2011 for the English monthly, P3.. Not Just Page 3.
