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Dhruv Saxena
My mother wakes up at 5:47am.
Not 5:45. Not 6:00. 5:47, with the consistency of something that has been calibrated over decades and has stopped requiring an alarm. I know this because I have been waking up to the sounds of her being awake at 5:47am my entire life. The specific sounds of the morning beginning in the other room. Water running. Something being moved in the kitchen. The particular quality of a house that was quiet becoming a house that is not quiet, in increments, starting at 5:47.
She goes to sleep at approximately 11:30pm.
This means she sleeps for roughly six hours and fifteen minutes a night. She has done this for as long as I can remember. She does not consider this insufficient. She considers this the correct amount. The correct amount is the amount that allows her to be up at 5:47 and functional and she is always up at 5:47 and always functional, so the system works.
When I am home I go to sleep later than 11:30. I wake up later than 5:47. She does not say anything about either of these things directly. What she does is note them. My sleeping patterns are logged and cross-referenced against what she considers optimal and the gap between my patterns and the optimal is stored in a file she returns to periodically.
I was home last month. I came out of my room at 9:15am. She was already three hours into her day. She looked at me with the expression she reserves for things that are technically my choice and also not ideal. She said good morning. She put out chai and Mom's Magic biscuits. She did not say anything about the 9:15.
She mentioned it four days later, in the context of a conversation about something else, that I seemed to sleep quite late when I was home. I said I was on a different schedule in Bangalore. She said what kind of schedule involves sleeping until 9:15. I said a Bangalore schedule. She nodded in the way that means she has heard me and does not consider what she has heard to be an acceptable answer but is choosing not to pursue it further at this time.
Her Sleep
My mother's sleep is treated as the least important sleep in the household.
This is not something she complains about. It is not something she has decided. It is simply the configuration that emerged over decades of being the person who was responsible for everyone else's sleep and fitted her own sleep around the edges.
When I was a child she stayed up until I was asleep. When I was a teenager she stayed up until I was home. When I was home from college she stayed up until she had heard me come in and confirmed I was safely in the building. These are not things she announced. They are things she did, quietly, because she had decided that her sleep was conditional on mine.
She sleeps at 11:30 now because 11:30 is when she is satisfied that everyone who needs to be accounted for has been accounted for. My father is home. My sister has checked in. I have sent a message or been spoken to. The accounting is complete and she can sleep.
My friend Nikhil's mother operates the same system. He lives in Mumbai. She lives in Delhi. He is thirty-three years old. She does not fully sleep until he has messaged her goodnight. He knows this. He sends the message every night without fail, not because she has asked him to, but because he figured out the system at some point and has decided to honour it.
He said it takes him four seconds to send the message. He said he cannot imagine not sending it now that he knows what it does.
Your Sleep
My mother has opinions about my sleep that she has been developing and refining since I was born.
The opinions cover quantity, timing, conditions, and consistency. I should be sleeping enough, which is a number she has in her head that is higher than what I am actually sleeping. I should be sleeping at a reasonable hour, which is earlier than when I actually sleep. I should be sleeping in appropriate conditions, which means not with the AC too cold, not with the fan on full speed, not with my phone in my hand.
The phone in bed is a recent addition to the opinion portfolio. She has read something about screens and sleep and has formed a view and the view has been communicated to me on multiple occasions in the gentle but persistent way she communicates things she considers important.
I sleep with my phone. She knows I sleep with my phone. She has said what she has to say about it. The phone remains.
My friend Karan's mother has taken the sleep opinions further. She tracks his sleep indirectly through the timing of his messages. If his good morning message arrives later than usual, she knows he slept late. If it arrives very early, she worries he did not sleep at all. The message timing is a proxy for sleep data and she reads it the way you read a report.
He said she once called him at 11:45am because his good morning message had not arrived and she wanted to confirm he was alive. He had simply forgotten to send it. He was alive. He now sends it without fail, for the same reason Nikhil sends his goodnight message, which is that the system exists and it costs nothing to honour it.
Everyone Else's Sleep
My mother's sleep opinions are not limited to herself and her children.
She has opinions about my father's sleep, which she monitors closely and manages actively. He sleeps too little or too much depending on the period. She adjusts his schedule through a combination of suggestion, the strategic timing of tea, and the management of household noise levels that ensure he wakes at the time she considers appropriate.
She has opinions about the sleep of people she knows. Her friend's daughter is not sleeping enough, she can tell from the WhatsApp messages arriving at 2am. The neighbour's son clearly does not have a sleep schedule. Someone at the kitty party mentioned being tired and my mother has been thinking about it since and has concluded the tiredness is sleep-related and has a recommendation.
She would like everyone to sleep better. She would like this with the same steady conviction with which she would like everyone to eat better and dress appropriately for the weather. Sleep is health. Health is her domain. The domain extends, naturally, to everyone she loves and several people she has met recently.
The Thing About 5:47
I have thought about the 5:47 a lot.
She does not need to be up at 5:47. There is no external requirement. My father does not need to leave early. The household does not need managing before 6am. The 5:47 is entirely self-generated.
I think it is this. The morning is hers. The only time in the day that is reliably, completely hers before it belongs to everyone else. Three hours between 5:47 and whenever the household becomes a household with other people in it. Three hours of the house being quiet in the way she likes it quiet, of doing things at her own pace, of being a person rather than a mother.
She wakes up at 5:47 because 5:47 is when she gets to be herself before the day asks her to be everything else.
I have never been awake at 5:47 to see what she does in those three hours. I am almost certain it is something good.
I am going to be awake at 5:47 next time I am home.
I will not tell her. I will just watch.
