Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by selecting the correct/most appropriate options.

Let's face it. We are a sleep-starved nation. Except for infants and the retired elderly, few of us ever get our eight-hour quota. By now, we ought to have been protesting this deprivation, burning effigies of the gods of sleep, and Kumbhakarna too. The reason we haven't been driven to such extremes is because we've all along had a love-hate relationship with the activity, or more precisely, inactivity called sleep.

I think it all stems from a negative brand image. As opposed to wakefulness, slumber is seen as a sign of lazy indifference to responsibility which, as everyone knows, is the first step on the slippery slope to becoming an absolute good-for-nothing. The fact that some of the world's most revered personalities have pitched in to provide endorsement has not helped matters. Shakespeare had waxed eloquent, calling sleep the "balm of hurt minds..... and chief nourisher in life's feast". For all the bard's eloquence, what prevails is something as yucky as "the early bird catches the worm". Right from our school days, the child who rose up bright and early was held up as a role model for the sleepyheads on the back bench.

Of the two evils, sleeping at night vis-a-vis dozing in the afternoon, the latter is paradoxically seen as more inexcusable though it is much shorter. I concede that one of the things going against afternoon nappers is the aesthetics. We certainly do not look our best when we slip into the land of Nod while seated. Of the many poses we unconsciously adopt, the most ungainly is the one where sometimes our mouth is agape. Seeing such a spectacle at the front office can be bad for business.

Recently an Indian company put a stamp of approval on the afternoon nap. Employees get up to 30 minutes to sleep every afternoon. This 'daily dose' has been touted as the biggest boon the working classes have been able to wrest from the management since the invention of the casual leave.