Dreams
Do dreams come true? — This has been a big question in my life. I had ‘dreams’, small and big, throughout my life, and there were two types of dreams — daydreams and night dreams. The category could include different dreams in multiple ways. I could take another cut-early morning dream and night dream. I have another classification — sweet and scary.
In most of my dreams, I have been chasing someone, or something or someone else or an animal is chasing me. I remember a dream where I was chasing a dog, and a black cat was chasing me in the same sequence. In yet another ‘dream’, I fell off a mountain cliff or sailed on a raft in a turbulent sea. Occasionally, my managers come into my dreams, even today, to remind me of unfulfilled tasks. My ‘dreams’ are fluffy and similar to clouds — they keep floating with no structure, and my efforts to make meaning out of these have been fruitless. While I wanted to write down the details after waking up, I never did so because of my laziness or inability to find a pen and paper. I considered my ‘dreams’ insignificant without a clear meaning or a purpose. The content of the dreams became hazy and left me soon.
My grandmother always told me that early morning dreams come true, which never happened to me. She made me and my sister recite ‘Ramaskandam..’ every night to ward off bad dreams, which became a nightly ritual for several years. On a few nights, I went to sleep expecting a beautiful ‘dream’ when I was young. But when I got up, I realised that the expectation had failed, and I had a scary dream. Early morning dreams still stand as a mirage to me.
I want to talk about another set called ‘day dreams’. I remember falling into a blissful sleep in a boring Hindi class or a history lesson at my school. My teacher asked me to stand on the bench (we never had individual desks) so I would not sleep again. My classmates(boys and girls) giggled as I stood up, and the punishment served as an example to others who also have the ‘day sleep’ habit in the class. ‘ Dream big’, my mathematics teacher told us in our class. I never understood the meaning as I could measure neither the size nor the length of my dream.
I also meet young entrepreneurs who ‘dream’ big and copy ‘desi’ and ‘videshi’ examples to succeed and rise to glory instantly. Instant gratification syndrome bites them hard as they get up and want to demonstrate to the world that they have arrived in life.
I love dream sequences in most regional movies and Bollywood movies where the hero and the heroine jump into a different settings for a duet. I recently talked to a friend who has been ‘dreaming’ for several years of building a state of art school for adults to teach the art of living. She is still dreaming and always paints a beautiful picture of how her school would look. I recall legendary Dr Kalam’s response to a question from my colleague in a public event when he said ‘ dreaming’ without a roadmap and resources has no meaning.
Scientific theories and experiments exist, explaining the world of dreams. Psychoanalysts have researched and published papers on dreams. Most of them talk about the impacts and the after-effects. When I was young, I attended a dream workshop, a group event. The facilitator, a young lady in her thirties, wanted to illustrate that structured dream analysis could explain a ‘personality’ type and expectations. She asked me to recall a new dream and explain the contents to the group as I remembered. Some elements of the ‘dream’ were clear to me — I was travelling in a train on a night with no other passengers on board. The train was chugging along with a cool breeze blowing on all sides. She asked me to split the ‘dream’ into three parts, name each piece, and create an imaginary conversation between the elements. I am trying to remember all the details now, but the discussion and the reflection were interesting. The analysis did not help me in any way.
I hope you understand your ‘dreams’ and they will come true.
