Running away from home; "Independence Day"...

He had always been an insomniac. We have known each other since our early childhood days, and from as far back as I can remember, sleep was something that would often elude him.
Most stay-at-home or work-from-home moms find it really hard to "contain" their kids during the summer vacations. The kids want to play out all the time, and Moms generally have a tough time ensuring that the kids don't play outdoors at least during noon times. The hot sun, in their collective opinion, harm the kids. Be that argument as it may, he was not one who would be happy playing indoor games as a kid. Not on all days at least! If he felt like playing outdoors, he would find a way out..Whether or not he had any likelihood of finding good or bad company to play, he would run away from home.
His mom would ensure that he and his Little Sister had a heavy meal every afternoon during those summer holidays. The heavy meal, she thought would be sleep-inducing enough. She would then try and put them to sleep, so she could do some work or get some rest herself. She would even threaten him (his Little Sister would only be too happy to sleep you see) with the black thick rubber gasket that actually rightly belongs to the pressure cooker...
With due respect to the electric cooker gasket and his mom, he would pretend a semblance of sleep...Waiting for his mom to fall for his pretence...He would only have to wait for an opportune moment later, and then..
Run away from home ;-)
Teenage was no different; afternoon naps were unknown to him. Even if he did nothing else or nothing useful, he just could not bring himself around to sleeping!
Sleeping, as he would say is a very healthy thing to do, and why, one must sleep for a minimum of 6 hours each night to stay healthy.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to fool you or anyone else into believing that he never slept beyond 6 hours.
The only point I am trying to make here is that he would never sleep unless he needed sleep; and that if he didn't feel the need to sleep, he would even run away...
Running away from home is what really brought back memories of his sleeplessness to me now...And the fact that his sleeplessness persists even till this date, and even so these days, is the other reason that "sleeplessness" and "running away from home" can be inter-related.
And as luck would have it, he has kinda run away from home now, and continues to have sleepless days and nights...
As he was speaking to his Mom this evening, he related to her about how he felt being away from home. Only that this time, he convinced her that this running away from home was justified in more ways than one...
He is out there now, playing in the sun...He had to play this game..So what if he was a grown up now? A "fully grown man" that he may be, this running away from home was the best thing that could have ever happened to him...
He has had many "Independence Days" as a result of this running away...There will be many more "Independence Days" in Delhi. Yes, May through November, including the 15th of August.
All in Delhi, "Independent" in the truest sense of the term...

And then finally he remembered that, apart from summer holidays, he used to run away from home even on August 15th every year ;-)