November 20, 2011
Since the second half of 2009, I haven't had memories of my dreams. I am sure I might be having a few dreams every night, but I usually wake up with not only no recollection of any content but also without any awareness of having had them.
The situation has been different during this week of recovery. I don't know if being under general anesthesia, having heavy doses of antibiotics injected inside me or in general, having foreign objects inside me have anything to do with the return of the memorable dreams into my life.
On Monday night, which was the first one back home from hospital, I had a dream whose images I could re-imagine after waking up. I think, by default, dreams are supposed to be weird. This one certainly was.
Here is the gist: Ace Indian spinner, R. Ashwin wanted to rent a part of our house. By our house, I mean the house in which my family stayed in the dream. It looked nothing like our real house, but was more like the set of a British period drama. Ashwin wanted the space because he was pursuing some degree. Providing him the lodging meant sealing off a particular corridor in the house.
While I walk through the other corridor in this house, carefully avoiding Ashwin's quarters, I hear gun shots.
Coming out to the backyard...well more like a back estate, I see a couple of hunters with shotguns shooting at a tree. Hunters, I am guessing from then Stetsons and camouflage-jackets.
The tree was completely leafless but looked choke-full of bulbous fruit hanging from every inch of every twisted and spread out branch. As I get closer to the hunters, I realize it is not fruits that hang but condors which have assumed the upside down position characteristic of bats.
One by one, the hunters are knocking them down dead. With each hit, the birds drop with the precision of a violent video game. Unfortunately, both of the men finish off the bird-fruits on a particularly extensive branch to the left. This imbalances the entire tree and it begins to sway and come uprooted.
But lo and behold, we realize that the trunk of the tree is no trunk at all, it is a twisted mass of pythons and anacondas!
"Chaya idatte?" (Shall I make tea?) Achan asked waking me up just as the anacondas were untwisting themselves.
The second dream was more of an experience. Happened just this morning. Owing to the two fiber tablets that I have been prescribed to have before bed, like clockwork, after 5 hours of sleep, nature gives me a rather forceful call. After I answer the call, I usually sit around checking email, facebook and news for an hour before dozing off again.
Today, I went back to bed this way around 4am. After a while, I dreamt that I answered a phone call. Amma came to the room to complain about the long hours I spent answering phones.
"Ellam oru kali kali kali" (Everything is child's play for you) she grumbled. I explained to her that I had used the word 'kali' (play/game etc) in the phone conversation to mean management strategy/ game theory etc. At this point, she vanished from the room by stooping under the headboard of my bed.
And from that spot jumped up a massive figure, rather amorphous. I couldn't even be sure if it was human. It was just a large cloud of great force.
"Nee padikilla alle?" (Will you never learn?) It snarled while pouncing on to my chest.
Sitting there firmly, its sheer heaviness restrained both my arms. This was a very physical feeling. I saw what appeared like hands of this apparition bring up a curved operating scissor with a bit of cotton at its end. I tried to shake it off violently and was partly successful. The pressure moved entirely to my left upper body. "Ammaaaa" I screamed loudly in terror. I thought I heard the neighbors open their window (the vacant home next door now has the owners back for December vacation, more on them later) and I was sure I woke Amma and Achan up.
But now I was awake. I was alone in the room. Only the sound of the ceiling fan. In the blue light of the cellphone's tiny screen, black numerals read 5:10am.
My scream was loud only in the dream.
Those of you with a Freudian bent (of the mind, I mean) please enjoy interpreting these! I remember an episode of BBC's QI quiz show in which Stephen Fry volunteered to do dream analysis for all the four contestants. His interpretation invariably being that the subject wanted to sleep with his mother.
I wonder if Indians here have any version of the native American dream-catchers.
Among the various discussions that visitors of the past week have had here at home, two reports of marriage frauds stand out.
One story was narrated by Rajan uncle. He had come last Tuesday to check on me and to invite us to his daughter's wedding in December. Her best friend was arranged to be married in the first week of November. The "arrangements" had all been perfect. Except, as was learnt later, the necessary background checks on the groom.
On the morning of the wedding, which also happened to be a day of general vehicle strike in the state, instead of the groom, at the time of reception, came the news of his arrest. He was behind bars for 'marriage fraud'. He had married two other girls in northern Kerala and escaped with their jewelry.
The bride sat heartbroken.
Because of the strike, there were not many guests to aggravate the situation. Small mercies. Indians are known for their to derive a despicable pleasure under the guise of sympathizing with another's misery.
One of the relatives of the girl, an eligible bachelor, stepped up to marry her and save the day. I hope it ends up being a good relationship. Food that was prepared for one thousand guests had to be thrown away.
The other story: The groom worked in the 'gelf' as any Malayalee worth the coconut oil in his hair is bound to do. He got arranged married to this BTech degree holder girl who was working for some small company in Kerala. His plan was to take her to the middle east within a year. So as he was pulling strings to get her a job there, he asked for her degree certificate. Then came the revelation that she never had a BTech degree. No so bad, he thought. He can manage to find her something with just her graduate degree whatever it be in. Turns out she never graduated in any course.
At this point, the fishy smell managed to cross the Arabian sea and got the young man flying back to Kerala to get the facts straight. He went to the town where his young wife lived and worked. It was a Sunday so he proceeded straight to her residence.
It was a two-storey house with the owners living downstairs and upstairs rented out, presumably to this girl. Without knowing this he knocked on the ground floor door and asked for her.
"She lives upstairs, but we just saw her go outside," said the landlords who answered the door.
"I will wait," said the young man.
"Oh there won't be any need of that," the owners replied, "her husband is upstairs!!! You can go wait there!"
She has been living with this local 'husband' for the past six months. Divorce papers have been filed.
Some real lives are more nightmarish than our ephemeral incubuses
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