Infinite Ink

The Double Nap Trap

It was when I got admission in college that I discovered the trend of the double nap among my generation. The double-nappers do not sleep in one go at night. Neither do they take the sunnah 15-45 minutes nap between Zuhr and Asr prayers. This is because they get home by 4-5pm, by which time it's already Asr time, and you should have prayed Zuhr in college. (People like me nap in college, but more on that some other time.) What they do is: they come home and go into crash mode, landing on the bed and going out like a light for any time from 3-6 hours. That means they wake up again at 8-11pm. (Where did Maghrib prayer go, eh? Not to be judgmental, but it's one of the biggest flaws in this nap schedule.) Anyway...they then proceed to do their thing until 3-5am, after which they go back into crash mode. Predictably, they wake up at the last minute to go to college, and the whole day they are almost sleepwalking.

Some days college is so tough that you go home, crash and wake up the next morning. Not commendable, but OK, understandable for certain situations. Following the double-nap system every day...? Houston, we have a problem.

It's actually because most people are night owls on days they don't have to go anywhere. They sleep until noon. (The higher the commitment, the longer the sleep. Some overachievers wake up at nightfall.) Throw these people into a college routine, and this sleep pattern emerges.

I'm not going to go into whether or not this should work for your body or not, but really, this lifestyle causes at least two prayers to be missed, the commonest being Fajr. Get a Fajr buddy, put the #TeamFajr hashtag in your Twitter bio, I don't care, just make sure you haul yourself out of bed before sunrise and pray.

OK, it's not like I never prayed Fajr late in my life, but I sleep in one go at night. That said, in the month of Ramadan it's easy to catch Fajr and moreover, even slip in Tahajjud between the pre-dawn meal and Fajr. One really shouldn't miss the opportunity to pray Tahajjud in Ramadan.

So, who's #TeamFajr? What about #WitrWarriors? #TeamSC? (Sunnah Challenge.)

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