What happens to someone, particularly kids, when they refuse to eat a
particular brand of bread? They fall off to sleep. Why is this so bad? I'm
still trying to figure out. Khayega nahi to soyega -- if you don't eat,
you'll fall off to sleep.
Reminds me of the threat usually handed out to delinquent infants by
role-playing mothers: chupchap khalo nahin to bhoot utha ke le jayega. Or
Gabbar's boast that mothers in villages tell their kids: soja beta nahin to
Gabbar aa jayega. There are things worse than shitting in one's pants than
can happen to a child: abduction by ghosts, the spectre of Gabbar, and in our
times, falling off to sleep.
There comes a time in the history of man (and women and children) when
cultural drives become more powerful than physiological ones. (That's a
pompous statement to make, very modern critic-like, but I dearly felt like
making it.) This particular advertisement for a particular brand of bread,
prominently visible on hoardings mounted on city bus-stops, makes a point
which struck me as weird, to say the least. One would think that the most
natural reaction to a good meal would precisely be falling off to sleep. The
connection is axiomatic. Lunch in the afternoon is traditionally followed by
a snooze or a siesta. A heavy meal is likely to make you sleepy no matter
when you have it. One sleeps better in the night on a full stomach than on an
empty or a half-filled one. Besides, what's so bad about sleeping anyway?
The answer seems fairly simple. Sleep, in our times, is so much time consumed
without any productive results (at least none that are 'visible', according
to our lights). When you have too much to do and lack enough time to do it,
what is the most 'natural' thing to do? Cut down on your sleep-time. Sleep is
no more sacred in our age. An ode to sleep a la Macbeth would be ridiculous.
What the hell are you talking about, would say the managers, work through the
night, if you have to, to achieve your targets. Maybe trainee hoteliers or
call-centre professionals working occasionally up to three consecutive shifts
a day (24 hours or more by my calculations) would identify with such an ode,
but sorry they don't have the time to read it. More and more time can always
be manufactured (or produced and consumed to facilitate further production)
by sleeping less and less. Excess of sleep is a capital crime, excess of work
a wonder to behold. The CEOs of big companies work up to 16-20 hours a day.
Bless my soul! Really! No wonder they're so stinking rich.
So this ad hits us (and more specifically the parents of the poor kids) right
where it hurts. Not the groin, not even the stomach. It's the eyes that need
to be open and the mind that needs to be working all the time. It is taboo
for kids to be asleep in class or even in the school-bus as they are
transported back home (the two situations this ad depicts). In the first
instance, you miss out on the opportunities of work and so get left behind;
in the second, you miss out on the opportunities of play and so get left
behind. But behind is where you will be if you sleep (all sorts of puns not
intended).

So let me quickly conclude (I'm already dozing since I ate a different brand
of bread this morning): the wonders of this bread exceed the wonders of our
bodies. All physiology -- hunger, thirst, sleep, sex, excretion -- can be
completely altered, or at least held in abeyance till important work is
accomplished, by the marvels of our technology. I for one am in reverence and
awe of this whole systematus, as I call it. It makes us the people we are and
keeps us going, giving us the drives we need for this culture to survive.
©Vipul Rikhi.