We have this sofa that has soporific powers. I lay there and I'm gone, sleeping that is. I tried reading a sonnet there and I couldn't get past the 4th line as I was rhyming with snores. I’ve tried reading any book and as soon as I get past the 1st page, my ZZZ’s are all over our apartment. Anytime I'm hyper and I want to lowdown, this is where I go. Quinta-espresso or Yerba maté cannot break this sofa's powers, nor Red Bull.

When we have guests and they sleep over, they find that they sleep past their normal wake up times, even with the train noise outside and the light coming from our living room windows – we have light curtains, which let the sun's rays. To be fair, we face the west, so the sunrise doesn't cook anybody's feet or heads, but the light of the sun, ever present can be felt, but with mushroom wood underneath them, that’s just not enough to awaken the toughest early bird – the worm will get away.

The soporiferous power lies in the mushroom wood of which the sofa is made. Although you would not tell it has any wood – for it has the softest cover – there is a material underneath all the softness that gives it structure, and most importantly, its sleep-inducing qualities.  This wood was cultivated in Indonesia, timbered with splashes of anti-caffeine agents, little dashes of sarsaparilla, half-wormwood and plenty of owlapiccitus, a stimulant-chemical-based plant only native to that part of the world. Treatment of the wood was done at night when only the owls and other creatures abound freely hunting or escaping the chase, like some cute and furry rodents. It was thought that night-cultivating would have the effect of creating awake-inducing wood, but the opposite happened. When the Indonesians figured this out, they no longer produced this wood because they were looking for the most work-inducing sofa that ever existed, but by this point in time, about 167* sofas had been made. What else to do but sell them. They distributed them all over the world. The distribution went as follows: 21 to Europe; 14 to Africa; 15 to Australia; 28 to India; 39 to Los Angeles; 30 to Chile; 17 to Saudi Arabia and 3 to New York. The distributors discovered that Gotham did not want its workers to spend too much time sleeping, since it is supposed to be the City that never does it, hence the low sales numbers there. L.A. was no surprise, being so laid back, got the highest numbers. Though they were surprised that Europe had awakened from the work to live (not live to work) comma; yes it was surprising, but then again, this happened in the wake of the EU, and we did see the high Euro low Dollar effect. The Chileans, it was said, loved to drink their wine while sitting on sofas, so they bought as much as they could; the effect was, of course, that their next door competitors, the Argentineans, were now producing more wine (they did create Yerba maté, it was said). As for the Chinese, who did not want to be left out of the action, ended up buying some from the Indians, and they were both happy.

All of this may seem displaced or scarcely unbelievable, but it is the truth.

PS: Our sofa was a gift from a friend of of a friend of an acquaintance who was traveling from Madagascar, on her way to Melbourne, after having spent sometime in Bombay.

* Add 000 to this figure, i.e., 167 = 167 thousand