Dream on

Dreams can be pleasant or not. The latter, referred to as nightmares, usually refer to frightening experiences. But I have experienced a number of unpleasant dreams that cannot be categorized as frightening. Funnily, I have never thought of pinching myself to check if I am living through a dream. I drudge through these dreams hoping that its only a dream. These dreams take me from one embarrassing experience to another and many I end up going  through an extremely boring and irrelevant process that never ends. I am usually desperate for it to end and for me to escape the situation but it never ends. Allow me to explain through an example.

I was standing at a counter. It was probably a ticket counter. It did not seem like a counter in an airport. It seemed more like a bank with a piece of glass, like the ones seen in the teller counters, separating me from the lady behind the counter. I seem to be waiting for her to do something. She is looking down at something and not at me. At that moment, I felt an urgent urge to urinate. When I say “felt” I do not mean a normal feeling. I mean the I-have-to-do-it-now kind of feeling. So I decided to act on the feeling. One has to remember that the I of the “I decided” is not me; it is “the I” in my dreams who never listens to me. At that moment, I was actually saying “What! What! What! ...” but the dreamy I did not listen. So I urinated right there; on the board below the glass.  I felt relieved. I looked up and found the lady continuing to stare at something below the counter. I continued to wait for a few minutes. I did not say anything to the lady behind the counter and she did not bother to look at me. I waited patiently. 

To my utter shock, within a few minutes I felt like urinating again. By now it my next step should be obvious.  I urinated once again right under the counter. Once again I felt relieved. But my relief soon turned to horror when I noticed the disgusted expression on the face of the lady behind the counter. I realized that she was looking at a monitor on her side of the counter. An uneasy suspicion crept into my head. I started feeling, with my hands, under the glass on my side of the counter. I felt a small ring with something smooth inside. It felt like glass. I realized it was the lens of a camera. The camera underneath the counter was focused exactly at the spot I had used to urinate. I looked up and realized that the disgust on her face had increased. She did not look at me but started typing something. I was sure she was informing the police (not the security) about my behaviour. I knew I was in trouble and had to leave immediately. But I could not do so because I had to complete the record I was writing. The counter had disappeared and I was sitting on the floor and filling up the pages of a science record. I wanted to get up and leave but I could not do so till I finished writing. I continued writing thinking "I have to leave now." I woke up!

Why on earth would I have such a dream! As gross as I am, I now understand that my brain has the ability to reach grosser depths. Thankfully, it has not done so in my waking life. I am amazed at my brain’s ability to seamlessly change the scenario as the dream continues. I mean the thread of the dream remains the same but the scene and situation changes. I recount a snippet from another of my dreams to elucidate this point.

A woman and her mother are walking with two men. The mother is walking with the woman’s lover. It starts raining and the lover opens an umbrella. The mother asks the love to walk under the umbrella with her daughter. he agrees and walks towards her. Instantly, the scene shifts to the insides of the car and the mother and her daughter's lover are sitting in the front seat of the car talking. The funny thing is that the mother has now become the lover of the lover and the daughter is forgotten. It continues to rain outside. I woke up. I tried to go back to the dream but as is usually the case, the dream had ended and another dream commenced.

Many years ago, I dreamt that I was sleeping in my then home. It was the ground floor of an apartment close to the sea. As I slept in my sleep I felt that the water flow into the bedroom. Soon I woke up and was shocked to find that the water level was rising. I felt panic grow within me. The next moment, I found myself on the terrace of a tall building. It seemed like a lighthouse but I thought that it was the LIC building, which during my growing days was considered the tallest building in Madras. The city was swamped in water and the sea was pouring more water into the sea. It was a terrifying and yet fantastic sight and I was living through it.

As weird as the dreams are, I love the feeling of relief that flows through me when I realize that it was only a dream.