Picture perfect bedroom vs Sound sleep

Cool blue colored walls
Soft carpet to match the ceiling color
Dark colored drapes on the windows
A/C
Fan
Room freshener
Cozy bed
Cozy blankets
Spongy pillows
Teddy Bears
Soft music
Pleasant Wall painting
Night lamp
Bedside Table with a bright table lamp
A nice book

These days people have all these, but they are unable to sleep. This whole picture-painted bed room flashed in front of me, when i was held up last evening in the bridge at Kodambakkam High Road ( one of the renowned places in Chennai for traffic jam and prolonged 'Red' light on the Traffic signal post.).

For those of you who are unable to imagine what Kodambakkam high road looks like in the evenings, i will try my best to picture paint this place here.

A bridge that connects one busy cross road with the other. Both the signals have at least hundred vehicles waiting for the 'Red' light to turn to 'Green'. A hundred other vehicles cross the bridge. It is a two way traffic. This means there are two hundred vehicles approximately ,crossing the bridge at a time.

There are shops and office buildings on the roads parallel to the bridge. So if you are on the bridge you can see the first floor of shops and offices. The evening sun on July day, may not be as soothing to your skin as you want it to be. Chennai does not fall in the list of those cool climatic zones you know of....There is a mosque, college,wedding card shops and all shops that you can practically think of. Then there is the perennial cell phone buzz, the vehicle horns, the constant yell of the people, and the cool chatter of the kids in autos coming back from school.

You cannot miss one or two jam-packed Pallavan buses (City transport is named Pallavan) where typically every waiting minute( is it 'hanging minute'? , because you don't really get to find place to stand upright. Almost always, you will stand over some one else's foot or if you are short, you have the luxury of hanging onto the holders on the bus's ceiling.) So, every minute inside the bus is spent yelling over each other, or grumbling about the news of the day - ' Chennai is bad, Climate is hot, People are ridiculous, watch your language' and other such NOISY stuff. There is lots more that you can possibly hear, but I have not mentioned the exhaustive list here.. :).

There is the 'one -stop-shop' Shekar Emporium in this prime zone which is flooded almost always with people. I have never stopped wondering about the shopping spree of people.. That is a separate avenue altogether.

That is a view of Kodambakkam High Road for you on a July evening. Now, tell me, is this place a picture-perfect bed room? Definitely not.. But, I saw a man sleeping
peacefully on the terrace of one of the buildings .. (God knows if he was drunk, but then since I am not too sure, let's just say 'He was sleeping peacefully')... which is why I could not stop thinking about the picture-painted room that most people seem to have and still are not able to get a sound sleep.

So, the next time you think you are not able to sleep, think of Kodambakkam High road, the next second you will go off to sleep.
:)