Dreamtime

Dreams.

We consciously wish, work, and slog for some, achieve them and celebrate. And start on a new dream. Again.

The real interesting ones are those that happen we are asleep.

Actually, there is a particular sleep situation when these happen. Its not what you have when you are in deep sleep, totally relaxed in body, when your body is kind of in a low energy "standby" mode. It seems dreams happen when you are in what is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.

While this is is no way related to fluttering your eyelashes, turns out that in REM sleep, certain parts of your brain are actively consolidating memories in a fairly active energy situation; there are no impulses falling on your retina (eyes) because your eyes are closed, but the visual pathways linking the eyes to the brain are all alight in activity, and we call them dreams.

When I was a child, my grandmother downstairs, would gather all us cousins together after dinner, and tell us stories from the scriptures. I would often visualize everything happening in our house as it existed then, in the sense, that if Lord Krishna was about to leave for someplace , I would imagine it happening at our house gate. If his mother Yashoda asked him to open his mouth, I would imagine him sitting at the dining table and doing "Aaaa".

All things that happened at the court of King Dashrath were visualized by me as happening in the big living room, with the King sitting in my late grandfather's armchair. Folks arriving in chariots and stuff always entered through the garage gate.

And so my early childhood dreams essentially had a huge storybook quality to them

Slowly, these days passed by, and life was more school and sports oriented. At some point in the 9th grade, I came home one day with high fever, which stayed that way for 4 days, despite our family doctor's medicines, several concerned visits, several tepid water spongings, and ice strips on the forehead, and a hugely worried mother , as I appeared to be in my own world and hot and unresponsive.

My late mother used to tell the story of how one morning they decided along with our family doctor, to finally consult a specialist if I didn't come out of it that morning.

About an hour later, I seemed to be muttering something, shaking my head a lot, I broke into a sweat, and opened my eyes, saying "I'm saved ! I'm saved !".

Despite the relief at my awakening, my mother wanted to know what was going on, and it seems I told them of a dream , which was continuously happening. There were two hills on two sides of a valley. The entire valley floor was populated by crocodiles and alligators wandering about in a "lunch" mode. For some reason I was doing continuous desperate jumps from one hill top to the other, across the valley.

I must have been at it for a longish period and gotten complacent. Because during one such jump, I missed out and started descending into the valley, heart in my mouth, terrified, and shaking my head wordlessly screaming NO, NO! .....I could see the greedy alligators below , maybe licking their lips , and suddenly, something held me in a big hand, and stopped the fall. The entire shock must have been too much for the fever, because that's the point at which I opened my eyes, saying"I'm saved! I'm saved !".

There was a time when it was considered very brave to listen to ghost stories at night. Or you were considered "not part of the group". Certain cousins were very good at the gory detailing, and making strange sounds when it was "lights out" at night. I think I was so stressed out with getting truly frightened and pretending in the group that I was not, that it all came alive in my dreams. It wasn't unknown for me to cry out and shout for help in my dreams, and the whole bunch of kids lying on mattresses in the living room, had a wonderful time.

I soon got over this. And the dreams became more ordinary, yet sometimes repetitive.

There is a dream that I have got often over the years, where its dark, and I am, along with a whole bunch of folks in different cars, trying to drive up a mountain or hill, where we are supposed to stay . For some reason we keep going round and round the mountain, with hairpin bends and stuff, the folks with me keep commenting how they think we are on the wrong road (not that there is a choice :-)), and when we finally reach a totally unimpressive place at the top, the fellows there say, everything is full, and I am welcome to put up in the lobby. Its not clear what happens after this in the dream, but driving takes up most of the time. The interesting thing is, that I have had this dream many times.

While random dangerous and exciting things figured in my dreams in my younger days, these days things are different.

I wondered why.

You see, we have a thing called the hippocampus in our brain, that controls our emotions. Lest we live our lives solely based on the hippocampic behaviour, we also have a thing called a frontal cortex in our brain, that acts as a sort of decent control thing , by applying reason to things. And so ,if you are really mad at someone and feel (hippocampically) like whacking them one, you don't do that, and think the smart thing to do is move away from there, keep your mouth shut, or simply concentrate on food or something.

I think something similar happens to dreams. I haven't had an alarming sensational dream in a long time. Occasionally , one has dreamt about an intruder entering the house, and watched him stealthily approach your cupboard or something. I've worried in my dreams about where my children were then. Often this has resulted in some shouts of warning from me (in my dream), except that the shouts are real, and I am told in no uncertain terms to snap out of the dream , stop disturbing everyone, and let people sleep .

These days, one dreams less, because, I guess , one sleeps less. Sleep is spread out more widely, and sometimes a short nap in the afternoon happens. I have even managed to dream there.

This week, I dreamt during one such nap, that we were going somewhere, I was driving, and there was this older lady around 85-86 sitting next to me in the front. Suddenly we entered a tunnel , and the road went up a steep incline like 60 degrees. I had entered the tunnel at great speed, and I kept pressing the accelerator for dear life, till I couldn't push further, I could sense gravity acting, but the car kept proceeding in the dark, and the lady next to me kept saying loud invocations to God, when all of a sudden, there was a semicircle of light as the tunnel emerged onto a plateau, and I stopped out of sheer fright, trying to catch a breath. Suddenly a short official of some sort comes rushing by, taps on the window, and tells me, that this entire tunnel had been replaced by a short-cut diversion , and I should have used that. Stupid me.

I don't know what to make of this, though it simply emphasizes my belief that we in India need to get our signage correct. Otherwise, I continue climbing those steep tunnels in the dark, I guess....

But there has been an exception, when I thought I had a dream that sent me a real message.

Ten years ago, my mother, then in her eighties, returned from a family trip to the US to attend a grandson's graduation. She stayed with me for a some days in Mumbai before planning to leave for her home in Pune. Which she never did. On her 3rd day with us, she suddenly collapsed in the evening, had to be hospitalized in the ICCU, and after two days of putting up a brave fight, finally gave in. She never did reach her own house this time.

My father soon insisted on returning to his house despite our entreaties to stay on, and I made several trips over the next several months, getting things organized for someone who insisted on staying alone, in the ancestral house. My frequency of visits soon reduced, and on one of my last visits, I had a very strange dream.

The house is on the first floor, reachable by an old style wide staircase, which has railings to help elderly folks climb. In my dream, I was rushing down one morning, on some errand for my father, when I saw someone sitting on the last step. The entire staircase was lit in a bright white light , which was not normally the case, even though there were windows on a landing in between. I reached the bottom of the stairs and found my mother sitting there.

"Why are you sitting here ? Come up ! " I said

"You know, I tried and tried. But I cannot go beyond this step. My legs just don't move. So I just decided to sit and rest hoping someone would come down. And you did !" she said.

" Oh! Come with me, I'll take you home . " I said, and I lifted her in both my arms. She was totally light, almost weightless. I went up the stairs and opened the door, and pushed it with my foot. When I wanted to put my mother down, there was "NOTHING" in my arms.

I was her only child in India , was still coming to terms with what had happened in Mumbai , and worrying about my father when he decided to return to Pune.

Maybe she was, too. And so she returned , with my help, to her own house.

Don't know whether the hippocampus or the frontal cortex had anything to do with this dream.

But my mother certainly did.

And she has never appeared in a dream for me after that.

I ain't sleeping. I'm just taking a good look at the insides of my eyelid...

Tina's just back from work. At 3:30 am. So are 15 of her friends, and they all work at the call center newly set up in the suburbs of Mumbai. The nice part, is , that she gets transport to and from her residence every single day, and so her folks are not really worried; though her mother doesnt really relax till she hears the sound of a jeep driving into the building compound, and the beep of the elevator as her daughter takes her time getting out of it.

The pay is fantastic by Indian standards and a pittance by US standards. And so today, all kinds of outsourcing call center jobs are getting filled up as soon as they are advertised.

So are doctors clinics.

Time was when you did a decent day job, left around 7;30 am , occasionally bypassing breakfast to arrive early at the office. You returned at around 7:30 pm, to eternal cribs about how late you were coming everyday. You met up with your old friends for coffee on occasional weekday evenings, and everyone had a grand time cursing whoever was the reigning ogre at the office. Sleep would relax you, and tomorrow was another day.

Ever since the world, specifically the English speaking section, discovered India as a huge storehouse of cheap,well-educated,trainable,computer-savvy youth, the information industry has never been the same. Thanks to the weird and persistent drifting of continents millions of years ago, India is at work when America sleeps; what is worse, is, that it is also at work, while the US is at work.


This has given rise to a veritable flood of call centers, with almost all big companies jumping on to the bandwagon. Special training is given to Venkats and Nandini's so they can function as Dave and Sue, complete with American jargon and attitude. Saying "have a nice day" with a cyber smile at 2 am is the norm, there are supervisors functioning with a hawks eye to ensure that there is no verbal abuse on both sides, and for a girl, who looked forward to a secretary's job, where she brought her own packed lunch from home to save money, and travelled packed as one of the "sardines" in Mumbai's suburban trains, its a brave new world, where she is provided company transport to and from work, and an interesting pantry and cafetaria, where she gets midnight meals on the house, everyday.

After the first flush of euphoria, prosperity, and a sense that you have come up in the world, the little niggles begin.

Someimes it's lethargy; you lie down, count sheep, cows, goats, friends, even enemies, but sleep evades you. So you try to relax with a book, but it gets so difficult to concentrate. TV is the next thing you try. Its fairly a waste to watch, as nothing registers much.

Your Mom, worried, tries to tempt you with some freshly cooked stuff, and you try to hide the fact that your digestion is no longer the sturdy thing it was. You have joined the ranks of those with acidity. When guests come, you feel like disappearing into your room. Stress is the order of the day, and you realise that you really dont know your body anymore.....

The BPO industry , has given rise to an entire generation of young people, who have messed up their health, physically and mentally. Research indicates, that depression is a common finding among these troubled youths. Loss of hair, headaches, fatigue, sleepiness at the wrong time, reduction in body reflexes --- all these are terrible things to affect folks at so young an age. The body is being abused as never before, in pursuit of lucre.

Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and a postdoctoral fellow in sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School is the author of a study, that seeks to find out the relation between sleep and learning. The American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Boston, will have learnt about their findings during a meeting on May 2, 2007.

48 people between 18, and 30 were asked to learn 20 words. Folks were divided into groups, that stayed awake after learning the words, and also those that were allowed to sleep after learning the words. They were also given a second set of 20 words to learn. The findings, indicated that those who slept after learning these words, had a noticeably better recall, compared to those who were kept awake (76 percent for the sleep group vs. 32 percent for the wake group). This was more, than that anticipated by the researchers, based on their scientific initial conditions and parameters.

This has clearly proved that good sleep is essential for memory consolidation, given that our educational learning systems require excellent declarative memories (memory for facts and events and time). It turns out that good sleep also leads to good physical and cognitive functioning, an improved immune function, and a mental control over moods.

Prehistoric man, woke up with the suns rays dappling across him through the canopy of green, as he stretched and got up in his forest abode. He spent his time playing, hunting, climbing, fighting, and at some point, eating , probably the freshest of meats and forest produce, freshly processed over the latest discovery , fire. The setting sun, brought a natural end to the days activities, and he sank back into a comfortable sleep, unconcerned about gas prices, inflation, whether the insurance would cover the latest medical test, whteher he was going to be laid off at work, etc etc.

Although fire did generate some light, it wasnt enough to give people unneccesary ideas. It was not till Edison got into his act and discovered the light bulb, that folks got greedy, and messed up their sleep patterns, and energy patterns.

Before the advent of the BPO industry, sleep related health problems, were the domain of the elderly. Today the patients at sleep clinics are getting younger and younger , often suffereing from sleep apnea, which if ignored and left untreated, would predispose one towards hypertension and strokes.

Burning of calories is something that we do less of when we sleep. So one would conclude that if you slept less, you were expending more calories, and so there would be more weight control.

Turns out, that this too , is untrue. In 2004, Columbia University scientists conducted a study and proved that those who slept less actually tended to be more obese, thanks to the effect of lack of sleep on the appetite hormones.

Thee are two hormones, leptin and grehlin, in our bodies, along with a huge orchestra of other hormones, that maintain the body in a decent balance. Leptin , is responsible for controlling appetite and weight, and telling our body the energy available to it. Grehlin simply encourages people to feel like they should eat.

As can be expected, when you dont sleep well, the leptin levels reduce and grehlin levels increase, leading to an optimum situation for piling on weight.

A quarter of your lifetime of working odd hours, and abusing sleep patterns, and you have a great chance of predisposing yourself, and collecting most risk factors for all kinds of deadly things such as heart disease, liver diseease, angina, osteoporosis, and at some point, depression and dementia.

We need to worry. An entire generation of young people , in the pursuit of the lucre, is "marching into the valley of sickness", inspite of the "charge of the health brigade" , as Alfred Lord Tennyson would have said, had he been composing his poems in 2007. It forebodes ill , for an entire future generation, that is already having to face other problems, like pollution, harmful food additives, lesser green spaces and so on.

Unless attention is paid to the health aspects of the BPO industry, there is a danger of the youth of the future, losing out on the learning capabilities, and abilities, that make todays workers so valuable. There will be an entire generation of physically unfit parents, leading to problem progeny, , and over a period of time, one stands to lose ability to learn , that has brought the BPO industry where it is today .

Reminds me of what is supposed to have happened to T-Rex and his other dinosaur friends, long time ago.

The earth is supposd to have experienced huge climatic changes towards the end of the era of the dinosaurs. Unlike mammals and birds, reptiles have a problem with the type of sleep (slow wave sleep) required to boost memories, particularly those related to learning new skills. Slow wave sleep enhances learning and also physical performance. Reptiles , (because of their messed up slow wave sleep system) , are much more limited in the type of complex behaviour they can experience than other animals such as mammals and birds.

It appears, that subsequent to the tumultous climatic changes , reptiles proved incapable of deveoping skills, required to emerge from them. This slowly led to the extinction of the lot, while birds and other mammals , kind of sailed through.

Lest you think that I am making this up, this is actually research carried out by Dr. Niels Rattenborg, of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany.

Unfortunately, we humans have a great capacity NOT to learn from our mistakes till its too late.