The Dream

I wrote and posted this post in May 2008.I do not know why I chose to re post.The protagonist in the dream have time and again visited through dreams, but has not been as intense as I felt when after the dream, I penned this post four years ago.
Perhaps ,somethings from life linger and seek questions that one may not be able to answer.There will be a part of us that we refuse to acknowledge and try to stay within the armour.

I wrote and posted this post in May 2008. I do not know why I chose to re post. The protagonist in the dream has time and again visited my dreams, but it has not been as intense as I felt when, after the dream, I penned this post years ago.

Perhaps something from life lingers and seeks answers to questions that one may not be able to answer. There will be a part of us that refuses to acknowledge it and tries to stay within the armour.

To talk about dreams is to get into the realm of the games the mind plays. Some say it is a highly professional arena for those who have studied the human mind. But lay beings, like most of us, do have occasions when dreams and night mares kindle the past and sometimes come from the past to haunt us. It raises questions about the future, and at times, people claim it can be a premonition or harbinger of things to come. But I do not know if the human mind, through dreams, is capable of prophesying the future with accuracy, apart from lamenting our disappointments from the past, and fantasising our hopes and fears about the future.

Leaving that aside, I had a dream a few days ago. But a steady one at that, and I must have stayed in the dmovior quite a while in my sleep at night. It was certainly the longest dream I ever had.

It was thirty ( today it is more than forty) and more years ago that I last saw him (live).And though thoughts have remained in and out as often as they normally are, I have also had quite a handful of dreams about him. But they were all brief, like a whiff of air that passed over.

He came in from nowhere and got into a conversation with me. I knew we were meeting after a long, long time, but I did not gather the courage to ask him where he was all the while. I remember that he looked a little older than I knew, but certainly not like how he looked when I saw him last. His hair was not gray but had an even mixture of salt and pepper. It was lush and combed back as he used to. And the thick Hitler mush was in place. We walked together some way. I do not remember where and when the walk took place. But it was a fairly long walk and a long talk at that.

I noticed that he was taller than I was, by maybe 4 inches and more at my shoulder. That would make him 6 feet 4’. I remember being conscious of how tall I stood standing along side. He stood broad at the shoulder, and his age (I calculated, eighty seven) did not show on him a little bit. He had the Panamá cigarette pack in his shirt pocket and also a pack of I presume, "kaja beedis" up his shirt sleeves. I do not recall the conversation bit by bit, but I feel that it was substantial and was more about my life. I vividly remember him asking about Ara( my son). He sounded quite odd as to why Ara chose visual communication for his graduation. I told him that the fellow fancies life of a photographer. He was not quite approving of that. There was also discussion about Radhika( my daughter) and how she was doing with her studies. I remember him suggesting that she be directed into a profession that is more conservative. 

I guess the conversation went somewhere relating to my work. And I recall that the approval was not so comforting on his part. There was a comment that I had been directionless from the beginning. He enquired if I heeded his advise of going through the “Editorial” of The Hindu daily with the Oxford English dictionary near at hand. And if I spent more time batting solitary, throwing the tennis ball on the wall, and practicing solo cricket, he reminded me that was what Len Hutton and Don Bradman used to do at home when they were little, and honed their skills. There was a sort of anachronistic subject; it was on a topic that was from the past, though in the dream I was very much in the present. He asked me to remind him at 10 p.m. to switch on the radio as there will be a broadcast of a speech by Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan. And he is back in India after meeting Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Yahya Khan in Lahore.

He told me that he will be staying here and may not go back to where he was, and he would also like to see Mom. I remember walking him to our old house in Thiruvanathapuram. I saw him go in through the gate.

I woke up with a slight alarm. That was my father visiting after almost three and one half decades.