Volume 5 | Issue 1 | April - May
2011 |
Siesta, My Sweet Siesta
Dr. Sarojini Sahu
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A few years back while translating my stories in English, one of my translators, Dr.Satti Khanna, told me that many of my stories contain a midday nap. He asked me whether Oriya people commonly took such midday nap.
Satti is now an associate Professor in Duke University. He is basically a Punjabi but was brought up in Bihar and now is a green card holder in USA. I think perhaps people in America don t have a nap habit during the day hours but I remember growing up in Orissa that this was a common occurrence.
If we believe the BBC, in 2004, a Bangladeshi-American entrepreneur opened a Metronaps business on the 24th floor of the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan. Mr. Arshad Chowdhry, the said entrepreneur, told the BBC that Metronaps is the first place in the U.S. where people can come and take a midday power nap. It keeps busy executives alert and functioning at their best during the day. (See BBC News: Thursday, 9 September, 2004) Now there are at least three commercial Metronaps in New York. You can catch a nap there with the cost being $14 for a single 20-minute session or $64 for a monthly pass.
Later, I read companies like Zappos.com and New York City-based Workman Publishing have incorporated designated sleep areas in their respective workplaces. Also, Yarde Metals, a metal distribution company, designed the Z Lounge for those interested in a midday nap during working hours. This Z Lounge is a meditative retreat featuring a reclining chair which vibrates to music with scenes of a crackling fire displayed on a TV set.
I was surprised to discover that even Shakespearean characters or and Kafkan protagonists also took naps and I then remembered Satti Khanna s remark on my stories. This made me think about what made Satti remark like that on my stories!
In later days during my voracious reading schedule, from time to time, I have had encounters with such examples of midday napping myself. But due to my carelessness, I didn t write these examples down as I never imagined that one day, I would write anything on midday napping.
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Dr. Sarojini Sahu - Born in 1956, Dr Sarojini Sahoo has an MA and PhD degrees in Oriya Literature, and a Bachelor of Law, from Utkal University. She now teaches at a Degree college in Belpahar, Jharsuguda, of Orissa.
A distinguished bilingual South Asian feminist writer, and an associate editor of a feature oriented English journal Indian AGE, she has been conferred with the Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, 1993, the Jhankar Award, 1992, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award and the Prajatantra Award.
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e-mail: sarojinisahoo2003@yahoo.co.in
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