Behind the closed curtains
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic dream speech, he wasn’t being poetic. Almost everything he mentioned in that 16-minute speech was pithy but sensational. Expecting people to overlook the colour of the skin and peek within character sounds like a brand new idea except that it wasn’t. That particular notion has been reverberating through history—time and again, like a loop of thoughts that are destined to fail. Humans, by nature, seek the impossible. We don’t know how far the sky is but we want a piece of it for ourselves. Those are the limits of human aspiration.
In other words, we dream a lot. To paraphrase Shakespeare, our mind is a stage and everything is being played out. What else can explain our propensity to watch overdramatic dreams? Most of the events that unfold behind closed eyes can’t possibly be put under the scanner. They are absurd, outrageous, hilarious all at once. Even our nightmares are filled with moments that reek of comedy. It’s safe to suggest that your mind is the greatest filmmaker of all time. Every possible aspect of cinema from script to production is covered inside your skull. Amazing feat, nonetheless.
As any person worth two grey cells should be, I am fascinated by dreams too. I’ve often spoken about it on this blog before, trying to decode what it means to watch dreams and translate them into actions later. Pushing the envelope a bit further, I’ve even attempted to be like Dr. King and tried my fingertips at sound poetry, to terrible effects though. And some years ago, I even decoded a fabulous dream on this very blog. Last year, I went a step further and shared some of the strangest dreams I’ve had the (dis)pleasure to watch and deal with.
All in all, my outlook can be described as dreamy if you aren’t referring to my not-so-pretty dark circles. This age-old obsession with trying to understand what dreams genuinely mean has grown on me to such an extent that I’ve become more and more sleepless with every passing year. Perhaps the root cause of my supposed depression (and obvious insomnia) is my deeper desire to watch dreams that I really wish to but am not able to. Like a rock that Sisyphus doesn’t want to see roll back down the hill.
In this post, I’ll be sharing some sneak peeks straight from my weary brain—DreamsDontWork sounds like a perfect name for this production house—and introduce every single episode out for your understanding and interpretations.
Here we (don’t) go –
There has been a murder in an engineering college hostel and I am supposed to solve the case. All the young students are acting suspicious and to make things worse, the body is missing. It’s difficult to solve a murder mystery without a victim. But in the room that I find myself in, there are blood stains on the floor with footprints on them. I ask a student who was in that room before I entered, he points to the window. Outside, there is a langur looking at me straight in the eyes.
During my childhood, I used to often watch dreams where I was running away from skeletons and flying witches. Waking up with a scream was common for me, but not as common as talking nonsense in my sleep. In fact, the only thing consistent about my life is I talk rubbish asleep as well as awake. In one of my recent sleepness, I was speaking in a made-up language with a ‘businessman’ I was seated next to on a flight that was going to Kentucky. God knows what the purpose of my visit was, given how little I care about KFC.
Recurring dreams are the worst even if they are not the scary type. They are similar to the YouTube ads you can’t skip. One of my least favourite is the one where I am swimming in our village rivulet and the currents pull me away. I am afloat but also worried that I might crash into a rock or something. After being helpless like this for a while, I can see that my peripheral vision is nothing but the sky. I can’t see anything around me. No sight of land anymore, not even the paddy fields. I am basically suspended in time and a (liquid) state of mind.
If you’ve watched Being John Malkovich (1999), you would know exactly how it would feel to exist in a world that revolves around you. As much as you are fond of yourself—something as silly as a good hair day can make or break a person’s spirit—nothing prepares you for your clones. I learned this the hard way in a dream where I am growing impatient outside the elevator; that anxiety you feel when the lift is taking too much time to land. Finally, the door opens and there I see myself inside the elevator. Same-to-same person with that same-to-same piece of shit expression.
We all know that feeling of not being able to come up with a quick rebuttal during an argument. The worst is when you manage to think of a splendid retort but it’s too late now. In my dream, I often revisit those moments from high school days and later hostel days when I could have crushed my opponent with a brilliant sentence but simply couldn’t. In my dreams, I drop these lines and people around me are awed by my presence of mind and Tharoor-esque eloquence. Totally love these sorts of dreams.
When I was going through my first job, I used to work graveyard shifts and catch the first train home from Belapur. Sometimes, I would be so exhausted that I would fall asleep immediately after sitting by the window, and it so happened that I woke up many stations after Sanpada. But nothing can beat the tiredness of waking up at Vadala, and that too on its about turn journey. The train reached CST and returned; I stayed asleep. In my dreams, I fall asleep on local trains and miss my stations often. The only difference being I don’t panic much. Too old for that shit now.
Ranga can’t stand other dogs, cats, creatures. His deep-rooted fear and insecurity doesn’t allow him to mingle. Yet, in my dreams, he is one of those videshi dogs who are making friends everywhere they go, playing with fellow street dogs and grooming cats and whatnot. Doing tricks and being jovial like a beam of sunlight. In my dreams, Ranga is the coolest dog on the planet. He is full of energy and doing things he would never do even if bribed with his beloved treats (i.e. pigeons).
You can do a lot of things, accomplish many ridiculously mighty goals when you are fast asleep but you can’t die in your dreams. Nope. That feature is missing. And for someone as morbid as me who is quasi-obsessed with the subject of death—most of my favourite artists died young; longevity must be destructive for creativity with few notable exceptions—I know more about suicide laws in India than I ideally should—I often see myself trying to die somehow in my dreams. But since my mind is already equipped with the knowledge that it’s not going to happen, funny plot twists take place. I jump from the top of a building and find myself gliding above the city like a fucking squirrel.
As a lanky boy who appeared like someone perpetually suffering from TB, the person I looked up was Dr. Patel and a part of me wanted to impress him by becoming a physician myself someday. Maybe this could be the reason why in some of my dreams, I am in a gormint hospital in white overcoat walking the dettol-ed corridor with a Tibetan nurse. She shows me notes which I can’t decipher and she leads me to old patients who look at me with hope. I tell them that they are going to be alright and then smile at the nurse who never smiles back.
If singing is a crime, then I am its biggest criminal. Thanks to my croaky voice, many a beautiful songs have experienced genocide. I hope this wasn’t the case in my dreams at least. But, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I am a pathetic singer in my dreams as well. Whenever I belt out some lyrics thinking I am the solid reincarnation of Rafi, people around me look at me as if I’ve deflowered a mannequin in front of them. My face starts sweating, my throat feels lumpy, my lips get heavy, and there is a chilling sensation in my knees but I continue singing because I don’t give a shit about people.
I am directing a biopic on Steve Bucknor and the movie is called Ek Ruka Hua Faisla. Everything is going great until the moment the lead Nigerian actor is asked to understand the rules of cricket. He is being such a pain, constantly deriding Indians for playing a dull game like cricket. This coming from a man whose country gained independence in 1960, 13 years after we did. Just because Nigerians chose football over cricket doesn’t make him any better, something I don’t have the liberty to say as I am the director. As a result, I delayed my decision of sacking him and replacing with someone more professional.
Most of the people I know, who are around my age, are doing phenomenally well. And I say this only based on the car they drive. To my credit, I learned driving pretty late and am currently driving a second-hand Eon which doesn’t let me turn on the AC, and makes a creaking sound when the gear is changed from first to second. Also, the left window takes ages to roll up and the sound system is broken. Apart from these qualities, it’s quite a smooth ride. Interestingly, in my dreams, I never see this car because I am busy driving SUVs with utmost confidence, playing supercool rap songs from the mid-2010s. Also, I use only one hand to steer wheel as my other hand is occupied with changing playlists.
Last and certainly the least dream has me walking around like Shiva from both Garuda Gamana as well as Kantara. Zero fear, boss. Full on pett-ist mode. True to my principles, I don’t pick up fights. I drop them. Bad folks fall like dominoes in my presence but my sunglasses remain untouched. I save young women as well as old men—whom I failed to save in the gormint hospital—and inspire children to grow up with an idol worth emulating. Everybody does namaskara as I walk like a breeze and refuse to take money from me, be it for goli-baje or Mangalorean meals. To help people, I stand in local election and realise that people love you but they only vote for you when they are scared of you. And there aren’t enough bad folks around who can vote you to victory. Bloody pett-kammi people.