We were at the cusp of a windy monsoon. Something about the sunlight today was different, not the usual weak and filtered kind rather a radiant glow, like the kind that would make you want to sunbathe. I sat there feeling the light warm up my skin, thinking about Vitamin-D.
Vitamin-D? I begin to recall the day when I had sat in the sun for hours baking my skin; thinking it would help fix my eye-sight, all the while having confused it with Vitamin-A. I giggled and picked the newspaper on the porch. It doesn’t matter how much we leap in technology, books and papers will forever remain a meditative trance to all of us who know them… it’s almost supernatural.
One of the lovely things about a warm summer day in the midst of monsoon is the ease with which you can walk out. After months of boots, coats, umbrellas and checking the weather report every five hours it is a joy to step out airy, without any planning.
I walk past the flowers and shrubs along the wet wayside. I hear a splash and turn around to see a little kid in a puddle of water and run to help only to hear “C’est bon, Je vais bien”, we share a smile and depart. As I continue to walk down the path, I sense the clouds hovering above. I can’t help but ridicule at all the time I had just spent admiring the weather. Wow!
After reconsidering my thoughts on the mundane, humdrum existence of mine, I resolved to get wet in the rain if I had to. I spent the rest of the walk complaining to Zeus, Freyr, Indra, Varuna and even Kuraokami. Of course, being aware that I was only following suit with the habits of being a human. I’ll confess, complaining feels good.
What happened after this was just crazy… the chill rang from my body and I felt a momentary wave of goosebumps on my arm and all through my shoulders. I hadn’t paid much attention to where I was walking as it didn’t matter to me. I knew this place even before I learnt my ABCs but turning the corner I spotted a painting. Not only was it not normal considering why it was there in the first place? But the painting itself was intriguing. There was a feeling, like the sudden jerk that wakes you up from sleep? That kind!
The layers of paint and every stroke of the brush on it seemed to amalgamate into one another. I felt like I saw a ‘giant calm’ coral pop out of the water from the painting. To begin with, it didn’t even strike me at that moment to question how I even knew its name. I was too involved, drawn by its uncanny appearance. I always thought that in life if I ever encounter something unnatural unlike all the horror movies I would not go for the trouble rather gear up and run away as fast as I could, I regarded that as smart thinking but here I was staring at a painting totally out of the way yet something peculiar about it kept drawing me towards it.
I can’t remember for sure but rain probably had made its way by then. It had not mattered I went for it… I touched the painting.
Splat!
The very next second there was watering flooding into my nostrils. I struggled to find air as the pressure of water had begun to thrust into my eyes, ears and even my lungs. I was in a different world altogether. There is no way a human can try to not panic and think in such instances, with my body hurting everywhere I began to realise I was going to die. A realisation that made me give up on battling the force with which the water kept gushing into my lungs. It was beautiful really, I had a glimpse of the grace with which nature had won and I was going right into the unfathomable depths of water.
It had all happened so suddenly I never got the chance to question how it had all happened… and I kept thinking why and what had caused all of this but wait a minute!
I WAS STILL SINKING!
Out of nowhere, I was now in a crowd, I recognised this place. It was my college. Something was wrong and I was living all of it as if it was just a routine.
The insanity of the situation began to proliferate further now. I saw familiar faces and one of them was a friend who had become the President of Scotland. Period.
The world was innocent contrary to its existing self… a terrorist was someone who lied about stealing and a thief only stole chocolates. Nope, still wasn’t questioning, not even doubting it. I looked up at the sky, there was a mass of land levitating in thin air. Gravity had no say here because all the land up there listened only to a rope. A rope – so strong that a part of the earth (about one-fourth of it) that had drifted away was attached to the rest of the planet through it. Glass elevators connected these worlds together and I travelled on one to get to that part of the earth that had blown me away. Once I got there I was scared to go to the edge, frightened that I would fall off the sides. I looked up again, this time to a horizon filled with stars and swans. Swans? Well, as if that wasn’t enough I heard the musical number of Swan Lake play into my ears too.
I felt someone yank me… this time it was physical, very real.
I was coming back into the real world after a time spent alone. My little brother had woken me up “I’m cold!” he said. He was asking for the blanket I had stolen. I gave him the blanket and began what one does after it hits that something somewhere didn’t go right. I felt stripped of the alone time I had spent and at the same time was amusing at the world I had created in my dreams. It was almost early in the morning and I was pondering over so many nuances of this dream so I did what you do when things feel absurd.
I went back to sleep.
The last thought was ‘Oh! Some words can indeed change your life’. My brother saying “I’m cold” had transformed the chasm between a life and a dream.
SliceAndDice 