So late in the night

“What do you do so late in the night?”

This is one question that always bugs me. Yes, it is a perfectly decent thing to ask. But I find myself retorting- why should things be any different because it is late in the night? I do the same things I do in the evening. I don’t think, “Hey it’s 11pm, I better start doing strange things now”. I tell them I stay up late cause I wake up late. I get the number of hours everyone else does, just that my timing is a bit off. But they don’t get the message. They keep asking. “Still, what do you do?” I say what everyone else is doing when they are awake. “But are you reading, are you writing, are you browsing?” No, I climb coconut trees in the night.

I seriously hate this timetable that some morning blighter in the prehistoric times cooked up and got the rest of the world following. Yeah yeah, “it is what nature prescribed, it is how the eco system is designed, can’t you see?” Blah. I cant see. I say there is nothing wrong if someone wants to stay awake in the night and sleep in the day. Absolutely nothing odd about taking a bath at 2am and sipping a cup of hot coffee. Doing the chandranamaskaram in place of the sooryanamaskaram. Yawning at the first sign of dawn and curling under the sheets. Wishing the world a good morning and sweet dreams and going to sleep for a good ten hours, emm, eight hours. I say open the offices at 9pm. Let’s live in the nights, for a change now. Oh bummer, there’s no natural light. And being an energy saver, that’s a huge bummer. Alright alright let’s go back to day work. But do not, I repeat, do not ask me what I do so late in the night. I might just throw a coconut at you.