Dreambuster

For me at least, dreams, are here to stay. I am a voracious dreamer. When I was younger, I had dreams of cruising through the streets leaving only a trail of smoke behind. Like my favorite superhero, I wanted to swish past people before they could even bat their eyelids. Pestered Dad for a flashy bike and even tried being a Godspeed. It was all crash and burn. That was my first encounter with this horrible place fondly called the hospital. Tears were shed. Lectures were there. Only one question kept bothering me whether my bike was okay or would it be stashed away to some remote island? I feared that I won't be able to ride it again, let alone speed it ! I didn't let the pain of my bruises silence my requests. Although initially nothing seemed to cut ice with my seemingly stern father, I knew deep down that he was always prone to mellow if I kept placating him. While I was recuperating, I would limp daily to the garage to have a look at my bike. With it being still and no key in the ignition, I would turn the full accelerator, feel its clutch , et al. With great difficulty , I would somehow manage to sit on it and fathom myself heading along some scenic highway.

When you are in those years, the high-decibel..super speed...adrenaline rush years... you dream incessantly. Deep within everyone knows that some won't fruitify. Some would require an extraordinary play of luck. Some would need an insane amount of will-power and resilience on our part to be realised. Nevertheless, we dream. The mechanism of dreams is so simple. You have time. You have desire. You have innate and acquired talents. You have your cordon of well-wishers who want you to be someone. You have this heart that keeps telling you that these guys deserve to have their faith rewarded. You make plans. You assess if you can really get there. You overestimate your capabilities or most of the time you downplay yourself. You see these people on the streets, sometimes seemingly mediocre ones, leading a flashy life. You browse the newspapers to read the success stories. You count the number of productive years you have. And then you start to dream. Then situations are there. Favorable ones give you that nudge to pursue the whole catalogue with even more ferocity. Unfavorable, disatrous ones unsettle you and constantly provoke you to give up and be a mute acceptor of make-believe reality. If everything is so chalked out- why have we never been able to tame the frustrations that rise after every little deadlock that befalls us? Why a split second moment of success makes us so complacent that we chuck out all our ethics and gorge on poor blokes. Dreams are never bad. It is just that tapped intoxication of their realisation that makes Frankensteins out of us.

Pikku is 17. He looks rattled. Dreams-eh! What is there to life? Bike-ah well!.. a group to hang out with, get in a cool college, grab a job and drive sleek cars. The route always looks easy..well at least before you take your backpack and start travelling on it. Sometimes you have to do this hitchhiking-- and tell you what--luck entertains a few travellers out there.

It's certain that some of your dreams won't ever come true. They were chimerical-may be, in the first place. Some of them would be pretty much realisable but you would goof up and curse yourself for it all your life. Some around you would become successful before you have even taken that first sip of happiness. People would be behind you-always- rooting for your downfall--and some fervently praying for you to succeed. It is these two kind of people who would egg you on to perform. Success is an esoteric territory. Once you get there, life won't really be a cakewalk. You might still screw things up for yourself.

Keep it simple. Take one dream-at a time. Give it your life-if it takes. Savor the outcome. Done-or not done- try to assimilate as much thrill as possible from the challenge that it poses to you. Look at me. I had this slew of dreams to start with. Screwed some of them. Some turned out to be true in the long run. Right now, I have this recurring dream of dying peacefully- night after night. With content. With loved ones all around me. With every one of you -known or unknown- forgiving me for whatever wrong I might have done to you in my blind dream-chase.

There is another dream --juxtaposed this one. Of surviving all this ordeal and going on for another 50 years:p ....Silly, haan?

P.S :: Prianca, don't give up on your dreams , please.

PLP, Kudos! You always remind me of my doggedness. Your indomitable will, the capacity to overcome the gloomy phases of your life is something I adore. With all my heart, I wish I could absorb some of it. How easy it would have been to endure all this, then?

Update

Overheard a peaceful silent conversation between my parents. Sensed a smile on their faces. Even Pikku is more buoyant than usual. I reckon doctors have injected some fresh hope into each of them. Or may be their prayers are bearing some fruit. To be honest,no one has ever told me if I am really on the way to my funeral. That's a rough guess. When people come in herds to visit you in a hospital ward and speedy-recovery wishes start pouring in uncontrollable torrents, you know something is really wrong. There were some signs which I started discerning within myself. Like those fits of sweating, excruciating spasms in various parts of my body. You know when you are that ill, your eyes start showing it. I hope it's not like that last brilliant flicker of fire before I am put out forever. Never-ending slew of unrealised dreams, the fear of leaving a gazillion faces sad, unfulfilled desires, untravelled places, never-experienced emotions, hope of a reunion, fear of losing friends, losing out on venting my feelings here, losing Pikku ...factor in heavily to make me doubt if I would really like to die now. We are all automatons of desire. We rest not until we achieve. We rest not until we are being led to sleep.

"Born from light,

Born for flight.

tinkling bright

Illuminating your summer night.

I am a firefly

I shall give light until I die."

P.S :: Sometimes, the things you say, the deeds you do... start making sense with the passage of time. Wrote this for my college journal, only today it sounds meaningful!

..clouds of past...

Today I am missing the sky. It has been months since I have seen it. Is it still blue and full of drifting clouds? It is completely out of the equation for me to venture out. For that ... a battery of hospital staff and some from my family would have to flex their muscles and would be required to be on a constant vigil. Anyway! I don't want them to rack up their brains for something that doesn't excite them anymore. When I was a child, I often thought about how gargantuan the universe was. I believed that every ray of light, that issued from these luminous and far-away celestial bodies, was designed to light up the sky so that children could look up and wonder in delight. No, my mother never told me that dead people ended up as stars. Somehow, the various shapes the constellations assumed always fed me with joy and surprise. I even tried measuring the huge expanse of the sky by merely spreading my fingers thereby spanning the whole view in it, or trying to eclipse the sun with my palms and making it disappear for a while with my wink. I had pretty quaint notions about the sun. Darkness always intrigued me. I believed that the clouds always hid the sun from our sights so that people could sleep at ease. I always wondered where my paper boats went once they were set sailing in the overflowing drains. Did they wither to tiny bits being constantly in battle with the strong currents or went ahead to join a bigger brook?

In fact , my life has been a quest to get a hang of that vastness. Once I scribbled my name on a 10 rupee note and set it on the carousel by buying some grocery. I have always hoped that it would come back to me. It never did. That led me to think that the world was real big. Correct conclusion. A very simple hypothesis testing which was employed by a child who never really welcomed the correction of his firmly affixed silly notions that the school later brought to his notice and subsequently forced him to restructure his beliefs. But then you have to grow, much against your wishes.

Pikku is trying to murder a yawn that is so restless to manifest itself. I have to cheer him up. There you go! Pikku corrects his posture, lets out a sound from his knuckles. He lives on dreams. He feeds on hope. He breathes peace. And so I have to jazz him up.

My early schooling took place in a silent, obscure town in India. We had beautiful uniforms. Sapphire pants, white shirts, grey ties. I am sure that back then even our silhouettes would have looked colorful. Everyday a rickshaw-wallah would religiously appear in wee hours of the morning and take me along with other children to the school. Children of my ilk would anxiously wait for the class to end and would jostle to get out. We headed straight to the field and played under the relentless sun. I don't remember their faces. I just remember the traits of our creed. Unadulterated and serene childhood friends of mine. I remember this particular girl (hold your breath! Yes! even her name to a t!) who was peculiar in the way she treated me. I don't remember being specially gifted ever. Not easy on the eye, a bit nerdy and definitely I had this air of unapproachibility going round me in eternal circles. She sat by my side in the class. Not willingly but was made to , thanks to a special permutation my class teacher devised to seperate the inseperable friends from each other. Just to spoil the party for merry-makers of the luncheon. The boisterous ones were paired with coy ones. Silence and noise annihilate each other. Perhaps.

She was magnanimous. Would lend me her pencils because I invariably left my case at home. I was neat in studies but my notes were terrible. She lent her copy and made sure that I never got my share of rebukes , which I so very well deserved. I don't remember if she was beautiful. With age you get those eyes that dissect beauty and create disparities that ruin our world. But whosoever she was, no matter how she looks now, I really pine for her. I always feel she never did let me do my bit for her. May be she was a tad too gracious for her age. Lying here, now, I really want to see her. I want that last bit of service from her. I really do.

Love is like that boat I set free in the pool of yesteryear. Forgotten, desolate, yet moving on against the tide of woes and despair. Love is like that sapling that survives the heat of Indian summers all on its own , even if you don't water it , to cool you in its shade. Love is a devil that hypnotises you to embrace even your estranged friends. It buoys you to a clear, blue sky above those dense clouds so that you know that darkness is just a phase. The envelop is all that is hiding your sun from you. Life is that breeze in which the smell of a thousand flowers waft leaving behind the pain of the seemingly tortuos thorns. Love is much like death. It expects you to keep savoring it long after it has been ditched to some inaccessible recess of your brain.

All of you who think that you have moved on after forgetting someone ... remember that there are somethings in this world that never cease to exist, no matter how hard we pretend to have forgetten them. Love is one such thing.

"Tale" between my legs

I feel like a popstar. Nervously breathing in the green room with the final show some minutes away from him. He can hear the colossal cheers of the crowd. He is sure to get drowned in the brightness of the eager flashlights. The screech of the microphone, people rooting for him with baited breaths are driving him nuts. Sometimes you can't escape from who you are.

Pikku looks perplexed. He is still too young to have a nose for philosophical crumbles. He has skipped college today for no reason at all. He says that his presence/absence doesn't even matter. Knows not, it rings true for almost everyone in this world! Anyway, I was not anticipating him. When he arrived, he darted towards my bed, drew his chair, chipped a pillow behind his back and said, " You promised every one of us a story!". And then he didn't stop there. He gave me that look which makes me phlegmatic. That is when I started feeling like that superstar I was talking about. He seems to think of me of some conjurer who would pull a rabbit out of his hat. He is growing impatient and is torturing me so that I cough up any story that I can recall. I ask him if a panchatantra story would do. He says, " No, I am no kid". Sophomores are smart these days. He knows he is in for some saucy story from my life. . He simply won't take any crap today. He wants deliverance. No beating about the bush.

I am not very old. In my late twenties. Past that dreadful 25 for almost two years now. I keep sounding grandpaish , I know. When you are ill, on a sabbatical, you think hard. Probably that makes you sound avuncular. Pikku's eyes are reddening. He knows that I am digressing to avoid confrontations with my past. How true is he! When I was a child, we lived in this big house. Mossy, with rusty bars, thick overgrowths of hedges marking its contours, it looked spookish to me. Ours was a comely neighbourhood with every household abuzz with breeziness of children that were as old as me. We were a formidable, noisy lot. The evenings were real fun and there were these bicycle races that evoke special memories. Although we had little feets, our riot raised little clouds of dust, the mists that would block our vision with dirt. Orange nimbuses that would make my face look shabby everytime I returned after speeding . Races always fuel rivalries. There were two of us who never got along very well. Intent to bring each other down, we raced dangerously close to each other. On several occasions our bicycles would brush each other and we would fall. I wasn't particularly bullish but I was not the one who could be downplayed that easily. Although our families hosted dinners for each other frequently and our mothers would throng the nearby shops for grocery together, our parents knew that we didn't like each other. We never really tried to hide it too. He had a beautiful cat. The kinda cat I have always yearned to own. Soft paws, beautiful whiskers, ferocious yet enticing eyes. It was fluffy, overweight and would meow everytime it grew hungry. As a matter of fact, I never saw it content with its appetite. It could eat till eternity. I was so fond of it that in his absence, I would run my fingers across its fur and took delight in its so dramatic and ostentatious prowling across the alleys and corridors. I never really wanted the world to know that the presence of the cat mellowed me. I doubted myself that one day that damn fat cat would lead me into bridging all the rifts that we fiercly maintained between each other . I kept pestering my father to buy me a dog, a cat or even a mouse so that I could love it with all the care that I could muster at that tender age, lest his cat gave me that weakness which love often thrusts on you. But he was never a cat-and-dog person so to speak. He never got me one. It has been years now and I asked him some days back while he visited me here as to why he never really liked pets. Sheepishly he confessed, " I had a dog once". I dug no further. The pain in the eye told it all. Pikku is a bit startled to know this fact. Dad is the one who would yell at the slightest purr. Him feeding nibbles of biscuit to a terrier is something none of us can fathom. The day the cat died, I cried till my pillows got dunked. I bellowed and groaned, shut myself in my room and longed to see it twitch its tail with an earnestness I have not felt thereafter. Childhood likings last for life. Obviously my little foe was also crestfallen. With him being mad with grief, I couldn't risk myself being anywhere near to him. My parents wanted me to go to him and help him sober up. They persisted till I gave in. I know now that I wanted to caress the fluffy skin of his cat more than anything else in the world at that moment. I wanted to see it one last time before it left for an unknown land, the tickets for which I have acquired only some months back. I plan to meet it , up there. Soon.

I don't remember its name. Perhaps it was something out of some comic book. But it was instrumental in bringing two cute little foes together. "Forever" is a dangerous word, I know. But I would use it to honour my sweet cat. It transformed both of us. Forever.

P.S:: Pikku is a bit sad. A bit moist. Being in college, he should resist tears as far as he can. Life is a twisted tale with your darkest deeds teaching you more than any lesson you learn in your college. Where your most ferocious competitors become your best friends. All it takes is a cute Cat!

P.S.S:: My friend still lives there, I hope. We moved out when father saved enough to own a big house. We all move on leaving good neighbours behind. I will tell your "hello" to the cat. I assure you of that.