The Art of Snoring

Dr Swaraj talks about snoring, replete with scholarship, wit, and humour – exclusively for Different Truths.  

We had a hearty talk about the idiosyncrasies of some of our relatives. Finally, around midnight, we decided to call it a day. The late November chill made us crawl under our blankets. After a few minutes of soporific silence, a soft sound started emanating from the bed next to mine. Initially, it was like a muted whistle. But soon, the volume shot up. I knew if this went on, sleep would elude me. I started tossing in my bed. Like me, my youngest cousin was also tossing in his. The snorer and two others had slipped into slumber. They were already embarked upon the journey into their inner selves. The undulating notes of the whistle elicited a spontaneous response from the youngest: “Brother, see how tunefully he snores! His art can give a koel (cuckoo) a good run for its money. What a talent indeed!” I couldn’t help smiling despite the irritation the koel was causing.   

We were up in our beds, mindful of our inability to silence the koel. We tried to keep away our irritation by joking about our predicament. The youngest was adept at lightening up the burden. He started forgetting the film songs the whistle appeared to be mimicking. The nightly koel’s was an undisciplined art. 

When something else drew our challenge, we were not yet done with this difficult task. We heard the sound of heavy breathing as if through congested nostrils, coming from another bed. The initial snort was like the push-start button that brought a Harley Davidson to life. Starting as low volume ‘potato-potato’, it soon turned into an ear-splitting vroom. The sound at times resembled the snarl of a predator. Our surroundings suddenly seemed to be populated with wild beasts. It drowned the koel’s song in the high-volume vroom and snarls. I asked the youngest, “What do you say about this art?” He didn’t utter a word. My poor youngest and equally poor me!

When we had nothing to laugh at, the youngest came out with medical explanations.  He observed, “Perhaps, there’s some problem with his deviated nasal septum.” I wasn’t convinced. To me, it couldn’t have so badly deviated as to accommodate a 50-horsepower motorbike! Or a wild beast, for that matter! The youngest then suggested it could be sleep apnea. This, too, was beyond me. Why should his apnea-shapnea trouble others? Why couldn’t he suffer in silence, like a stoic, if he had such an issue?

The youngest then gave a very general explanation. The problem is definitely with his nose, whatever it might be. I was amenable to this all-encompassing, omnibus diagnosis. However, I agreed with him for reasons which are cultural more than medical. Isn’t our nose only leading to so many problems we experience every day? Our noses often become curious and start poking themselves into others’ affairs. And then the Hindi idiom ‘naak katna’ – cutting off a nose – means loss of face. In Ramayana, Surpanakha, the demon King Ravana’s sister’s nose was sliced by Lakshmana. Her only fault was that she was smitten first by Lord Rama, who rejected her advances. Then she approached Lakshmana, who also dismissed her. Infuriated by her humiliation, she attacked Sita, and Lakshmana cut her nose. Her disgrace provoked her brother Ravana to kidnap Sita. Many people believe that Surpanakha’s cut nose had led to the Battle of Lanka. Hence, think twice before cutting someone’s nose! Otherwise, you’ll have to arrange at least ‘Y’ security for yours. Such is the value of our noses for us Indians!

The nose is certainly a big issue in our lives. Someone can lead us around by the nose. If we wish to learn something, we need to have a nose for it. We are told to follow our nose when logic doesn’t work. We can smell a rat only through the nose. As it is, the nose is the most important organ for intuiting the world around us. It is, after all, in the service of olfaction. And in evolutionary terms, olfaction is the oldest sense in the world. Incidentally, any talk of nose reminds me of Saleem Sinai, the hero of Rushdie’s Midnights Children. Saleem’s big nose resembling India’s map gave him the powers of telepathy.

Innocent of what was in store for us, I was still occupied with matters of the nose that night. Just then, the third sleeper also joined the atonal extravaganza. He began with what sounded like a gentle ‘alap’ in the beginning. The slow drawl didn’t take much time to rise like an eddy. It seemed swirling, rising, and transforming into a tornado. But the tornado subsided without causing much damage. Except dashing whatever hopes we had of falling asleep. It reminded me of what Georges Bataille says about plants: “Plants rise in the direction of the sun and then collapse in the direction of the ground.” But there was one big difference here. Unlike Bataille’s plants, the tornado repeated the up and down cycle endlessly. Apart from this, the tornado was going horizontally in every-which direction, like a supernatural being expanding and contracting vertically and horizontally. And the high-decibel frenzy was disconcerting.

The youngest, who had played a lot of cricket, observed: “Brother, this guy is a master of swing bowling and googlies. Just listen; here comes a googly, this is a bouncer, this one is an in-swinger …” To this cricket aficionado, the chaotically moving high-decibel tornado was just a cricket ball!

Back then, I had no idea why we snore, except by way of medical aetiology. But much later, in Gregory David Roberts’s novel Shantaram, I came across this explanation:

“There’s a theory that snoring at night in sleep is a subconscious defence reflex-a warning sound that frightened potential predators away from the mouth of the cave when our lower-palaeolithic ancestors huddled in vulnerable sleep. That group of nomads, cameleers, sheep and goat herders, farmers, and guerrilla fighters lent credibility to the idea, for they snored so thunderously and with such persistent ferocity through the long, cold night that they would’ve frightened a pride of ravenous lions into scattering like startled mice,”

This observation made me understand the loud frenzy of the tornado retrospectively. The snorer sending the tornado must have been frightened by the Harley Davidson vroom.

Finally, it was around 2 AM that the continuous loud noise acquired the quality of a lullaby. Our bodies, weighed down by weariness, gave in to the force of gravity. We slumped on our beds, unheedful of the gravity-defying snores levitating towards the sky, just like dreams unmoored from reality soar skyward.

That we were able to get some sleep amid all the noise is no wonder. After all, Urdu poet Khamosh Ghaziputri is correct in saying: “Neend to dard ke bister pe bhi aa sakti hai / Uski agosh mein sar ho yeh zaroori to nahin.” (One can sleep on a bed of thorns also / one’s head doesn’t need to be in their beloved’s lap). The sleep enfolded us in its comforting embrace amid the cacophony.

At 5 in the morning, the nightly koel pulled my leg violently: “Get up! Can’t you sleep quietly? I woke up at four and found you two snoring like mad!”

I woke up and looked at the youngest, rubbing his eyes. Once done with eye-rubbing, our eyes met, and we laughed. I never knew that I had this gift! Nobody had told me about it. It was intriguing how my talent manifested itself. Was it because of induction or the price of sleeping in a new place?

We narrated the night’s happenings to everyone the following day. Everyone laughed. Only our wives smiled. Their smiles showed the mirror to us. I knew about people in the West seeking divorce because of their partners’ snores. Thank God we are not born in the West. Marriages here tend to last “till death do(es) us part.” Otherwise, there would’ve been no one to hold a smiling mirror to us!

My wife often tells me that my vocal cords sometimes stretch full scale in sleep. Not always, but just once in a while. And it is when she says I remember that historic night the most.     

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths