My Recent Dreams

I saw eyes looking at me from each leaf of a tree that stood across the window of my studio. They were looking at me intently as if each eye was trying to tell me something. Astonished I got up and walked up to the window and opened it. A gentle breeze came and shook the eyes but regained their position in a moment. First, all of them looked at the left and I turned my eyes to that direction. I saw a white cat arguing with a white bearded man with a lot of balloons tied around his fingers. Then they turned their eyes from left to right and my eyes followed them. There I saw a peacock with all its feathers spread about to break into a dance. Then the eyes looked up to show me black clouds in the sky. Their downward look revealed a parched earth, which was absolutely unfamiliar to me. One by one the eyes closed. They became leaves once again. I woke up when the first drop of rain fell on my face.

I was in a metro coach. A young mother with three children entered. Seeing her and the mischief of the kids someone gave her seat. She sat. I saw her diminutive figure draped in a glittering cheap sari. The red lipstick on her lips was cheap. Everything about her was cheap except for her motherhood. She held it very proudly. Kids were making a lot of noise and moving around a steel pole. When their noise became unbearable she gave a tight slap to one of the kids. They froze in time. I averted my eyes only to see a long empty train lit in white light. Shivering I turned to see the mother and children. They were not there.

She had two faces; one over her neck and one over her belly. The faces looked identical. She was dressed up in an immaculate white sari. She spoke to me in a language which was absolutely unfamiliar to me yet I understood everything she spoke. She told me that one of my friends was on his death bed and he wanted to see me before he died. I walked behind her. I entered a hospital room where the man was breathing his last. To my shock I found he was an absolute stranger. I looked at her for misguiding me to this wretched place of disease and death. Then the belly face told me, ‘Look at him again. Can’t you see, it is you.’ And I did see myself there on the bed. I turned around to see the woman. She was gone and I was lying in the bed unable to get up.

A silent procession was coming to me. I was alone in the street. From a distance I could not see who were all in the crowd. Slowly I could see them one by one passing in front of me. They were all great people. Gandhiji, Tagore, Charlie Chaplin, Che Guvera, Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosowa, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Raja Ravi Varma, Marx, Engles, Bruce Lee, Malcolm X, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Lord Shiva and many more great personalities. Then I saw people; just people. And by the end of the procession I saw a man walking and weeping. He was my father. I went to him, held his hands and joined the procession, silently.

A deserted hill in the middle of nowhere. I saw the silhouette of a man standing alone. I climbed the hill to see who he was. He was standing against the setting sun at the horizon. I walked around to see his face. He was me.