The BEST way to catch forty winks

Picture this: You're standing in a crowded bus, trying your best to hold on to that rail in front of you and not fall right into that poor old lady behind you, when the driver screeches to a halt for the third time in a minute. You're tired, ready to drop dead any second.

Somebody in the back is having a pretty animated discussion on the phone which includes sudden bouts of loud laughter and a whole lot of unnecessary blabbering, causing people to give him dirty looks. Dilwaale Dulhania Le Jayenge is playing loudly in the background. You wish the nightmare ends before it actually starts. Amidst all that chaos, you look to your left to see the man next to you hanging on to the handles with both hands, swaying to the movement of the bus, oblivious to his surroundings, snoring away to glory.

I have but one question. How???

How, in the name of the holy green gumboot, can someone manage to steal a snooze standing up in a BEST stuck in a traffic jam, with music that is indistinguishable from the sound of the blaring horns playing around? How do you manage to nap, when you know that there are at least 10 more people crammed into the same square meter as you are, whose faces are probably an inch away from yours? And don't even get me started on all the aromas one can find in a BEST bus. If everyone had their arms up like that, I'd be wheeling myself away to the hospital in a coma by now.

But just as appalled as you are, you might be prone to envy the guy for this amazing ability of his. I could do with more sleep lately. I mean, who wouldn't want that?

But alas, yeomen, for I have not thy gift of peaceful slumber. So I sigh as I pray that the bus reaches on time, so that I can trudge along home and drag my tired body to bed sooner rather than later...

Marina George is a college student, seeking to express her ambivalent feelings for the city