Dream Before Dawn
I was in my teens, riding a 1990-moped, speeding down an unlit hilly road while its headlight malfunctioned and only periodically cast a beam on the heavy shrubbery around, acacia and babuls on both sides. I had a child pillion-riding. She was probably a sister, and my mind was busy wondering if the child’s grip was strong enough because she was so little, so light-weight. If I didn’t pay constant attention, she’d be thrown off without me knowing. The tension didn’t last very long, but I distinctly remember I feared the worse: any moment I’d hurl both of us across the steep sides of the hilly terrain.
Between my fear of darkness, my ingrained sense of big-Sister responsibility, being extraprotective towards people younger than me, and my need to reach ‘home’ somewhere in the valley, I woke up shivering. A troubled dream, just before dawn, said to be closest to a possible misshapen.
Ferocious
I don’t know why my waking mind caught this word immediately thereafter: Ferocious. And like a gurgling fountain, came its rhyming words —precocious, obnoxious, ridiculous — knocking the sides of my skull. Since I speak so little, and live so secluded a life, sometimes my mind plays up with itself, quite similar to a volley match. With words. Seeing things with eyes closed is also like a game, the images banging against each other like utensils, clamouring to be heard. And, echoing permanently.
Hoel
Hoel, who published a paper on the theory of dreams, thinks our brains are breaking the cycle of repetitive daily tasks—filling out spreadsheets, delivering mail, tightening pipe fittings—with an infusion of discord, keeping our brains fit.
Some or the other Google search landed me to this study that morning.
Mother
As a child, and even as a young person, I shared every tiny happening with my mother,except things that might make her angry, in which case I wrote them out in a notebook- journal taking no special care to hide the notebook.
The notebook was conspicuous by its placement, on the desk or somewhere in my bedroom, where it could be easily read if she wanted. In fact I wanted her to read it, or anyone else who might be interested, with the rather flamboyant desire to be discovered layer by layer, in an oblique tragi-heroine-like meta way.
As a grown-up too, I feel the urge to share every bit of what seems significant with my mother, even if it’s the neighbor’s dog being ill, or the new cutlery I bought. I make it a point to call her every day, even if it’s to provide her a distraction from her arthritis- induced pain. But I’m mindful of the time we talk because I hate those invisible e-waves coming from the metal-and-steel box causing her or me a migraine. So things are sometimes left unsaid, like this dream. It felt frustrating to keep it to myself so I shared it with my husband. The vivid details — including a passing State transport bus I could easily have boarded with the kid, abandoning the moped should better sense have prevailed — struck me on recounting the dream. I indexed a subconscious fear of strangers; the unreliability of a public bus, particularly if the time is after dark. And what about abandoning the vehicle? Was I particularly attached to this moped that was Dad’s gift when I turned fifteen?
Protoconsciousness
By dreaming in utero, some studies suggest, the fetal brain is experiencing a sort of learning that will help it become fully conscious later on. It’s usually a nasty generative botheration they’ve no perception of. Children don't begin having dreams with story lines until about age 5, when their waking brains have learned to tell stories.
Road, Rebel, Red Riding Hood
I kept wondering about siblings and cousins, and who was the child pillion-riding? As a teen, I have mostly travelled alone, often on treacherous and potholed roads, without maps or road signs, but more out of necessity than as an act of rebellion. A search for dreams involving roads tells me it may be a reminder that your real life is under strain, and has a lot of turns and bends and you might need to take rapid decisions, steering yourself judiciously on such a path.
The road of my dream was dusty, the light had shone upon a gravel path here and there, on the left and right, diverting away from the road into the thick of the surrounding vegetation. Why was I interested in those diversions? Like Little Red Riding Hood?
Sunday, Sweaty
The day after, was a Sunday. Unlike popular opinion, Sundays have never held a special place for me the way it does to the world. I’ve always viewed it as preparation for the week ahead. Maybe it symbolizes the cyclical order of things? I imagine it as a water-wheel, the pitcher rises to the top, water is poured out entirely, begins the cycle again.
I cleaned, purchased and stored okras, tomatoes, brinjals and prawns, put some of them in zipped-bags and some in boxes, neatly shelved in different compartments in the fridge. I don’t think the vivid dream was something I sat down to ponder over but it did return to me in flashes all through that balmy Sunday. Just before bed, I scrolled the internet and there it was --- a quote: The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. Indeed I was sweating, so I switched the ceiling fan on.
Water
It came back with solid purpose when I was watering the garden. I remembered I hadn’t been to the sea in a long time, never pillion rode with my husband the way it is shown in movies, wind in my hair, a bluish-green silk scarf trailing. I remembered how much I longed to be free, the freedom from being me. I remembered how much I have nightmares of turbulent water bodies, tsunamis in particular, often floods inundating my home, just stopping short of drowning me. Freudian studies point to a subconscious need for anchorage, and a life full of challenges in the real.
X
If one dreams X, one is hoping for Christmas says a google search. Why not unchecking something? Like it was wrong, crossed out? What did I strike out of the dream in spite of the detailed recall? I think it was a male, a close relative, whose permission I waited to seek before I turned to ride downhill. Who was he? I didn’t recognize in the dream, but it was definitely someone gender identified. In my world, growing-up, he’d be someone like an uncle or a brother, responsible for my movements and safety outside of home, and therefore, subjugated, even as a young adult in the dream, his permission was necessary. I don’t know why I felt writing the entire dream out on paper and crossing it out with red ink.
Zeppelin
Leaving house on Monday morning, I couldn’t help but notice everything along the way, except the road. Traffic was thicker than usual. Schoolchildren and office goers jostled on public buses. Hawkers yelled. Local trains whistled past.
For no apparent reason, I imagined a disjointed scene: busy news reporters, an intense fire, people carrying charred bodies onto stretchers, after a huge rocket-shaped pod was noticed burning so brilliantly that it was described as a “false sunrise”. Dream is like that: Huge, expensive, incomprehensibly off-track, but leaves a burning trail. A Zeppelin at dawn.