Wake up call…!

Be it exams or vacations, an alarm clock has its own duties to perform.

Since my childhood I always shared a love-hate relationship with the alarm clock. Many prefer to set an alarm on their mobile phones; but the alarm clock has still managed to retain its dominant identity. Sound emitting from the alarm clock has no match to any of the melodious tunes mobile phones offer nowadays. And like many others they too have their specific months to make their presence felt, ringing at almost similar time in several houses at wee hours.

Yes! I’m referring to March and April, the months most of us are gripped by the ‘exam fever’ as a student or as a parent. Many believe that during board or final exams, waking up early in the morning (even before sunrise) helps an individual grasp faster. And that’s the time, if you are staying in a colony with large number of buildings close to each other; you hear the alarm clocks ring one after the other with a gap of a minute or two during these ‘exam fever’ days.

During our schooling days, with no existence of mobiles, the only partner to wake us up was the alarm clock. Parents would deliberately keep the alarm clock at a distance from our bed as they feared that we may put off the alarm and go back to sleep if we were not forced to be out of the bed to put it off. At times we woke up even earlier then the set time on the ring from neighbour’s alarm clock. Honestly, I used to curse the alarm clock for breaking my slumber.

Vacations and the same alarm clock was my dearest companion. Just like many who make resolutions during New Year, we, the boys used to make a few on the last day of our final exams. Waking up early in the morning for a game of badminton or cycling was every year’s vacation agenda. Some more adventurous than us would plan going to nearest pond for fishing or for a swim. And for all this, what we needed to do was wake up as early as possible in the morning. This was the exact time when our parents wanted us to sleep a little longer, but we would wait for the alarm clock to wake us up.

Anybody who would wake-up late would be left behind by the rest of the gang after a certain cut-off time was crossed. On a particular day when the alarm would fail to ring (parents would quietly turn it off when I would be fast asleep) or my sleep was deeper than the loud sound of alarm clock, I would not really know whom to blame. But most often, the alarm clock gave me ample reasons to thank the clock for all the childhood vacation joys I had.

The good deeds of my alarm clock during vacations overpowered my curse during exams; that even after so many years it still wakes me up announcing the dawn of a new day. I hope your alarm clock is either far away from your bed or adjacent to your pillow…after all it is March and April will soon follow!