The Dream He Thought Was Reality

She came to me while I slept. In a dream, I thought was reality. I was walking down the road, a safe hearing distance from my dorm, when the car passed me. A black Honda City with two people sitting up in the front. The driver had a beard, the only distinguishable feature I could see from the other side of the tinted windshield. A short white silver tuft of hair that hung down upon his chin. Looked 40, I thought but then revised that age to 55 realizing I had never been good at guessing ages. But it was not him but her, who sat beside him, who enchanted me. Took me to a dream within the dream I thought was reality. Even with the tinted vagueness of the glass, I could see, half dreamily in the dream and half of sane mind, what attracted me to her. That sculpted face, sat stonily behind the glass, hair covered under the canopy of a dupatta. A rebellious black strand escaped the censor of the cloth, dangled down her ivory skin-soft cheek and rested at the sides of her half parted lips. Lips of light pink, colored behind the black and white of the glass. In the second I took to see this dream within my dream, and in the same second it took for the car to pass me, I saw more than what a second would have ever allowed me to see. Maybe because it was a dream, I could perceive more than time could allow. But I didn’t know that. So I assumed what I had heard from other people. That time stops to let you live a moment of truth or a moment of love, a few seconds more.

Bewitched, my feet kept walking even while my eyes tracked the car behind me to a turn. A turn at whose side, the black car receded from sight. I shook my head and felt the dust of enchantment fall gently from my shaking head. My feet quickened the pace of their steps. To a destination I had suddenly forgotten I needed to be at. It took me a whiff of the air in my dream to realize I was supposed to be in my History class. A history class discussing “Gender in the British Empire”. A class, my watch told me upon a glance, I was late for. I hurried. Past fallen red orange leaves. Past small colored flowers I didn’t know the names of. Past grass, verdure, verdant in diamond dew of the morning. I passed the beauty of the morning, without so much as a glance. Probably because I had already perceived beauty enough for a morning. In a trance, I didn’t know I was in, I reached the brown washed doors of the auditorium which held my history class. Remembering I had a response paper to recall from my head for this class, I shook my head once again, took a deep breath, and looked back as if by an old habit. Doors, people and books. Sighing, I opened the door and walked in.

Remembering a class, when you have already lived the true meaning of your life can be daunting. Therefore, I remember nothing or almost next to nothing of the time that passed next. Except for the British accent of a British Indian teacher, the glaring tube-lights I walked my eyes into and the feeling of floating in air. I came out with a squint then. Tube-lights in congregation can be very annoying. More annoying can be the habit of not learning by doing. Adjusting my eyes to the open colors, which the breeze brought in, I put my hands in my pockets and started walking. It wasn’t the walk I started my day with. It was without purpose. It was the roaming walk of a man who does not know where he is going or where he is going to end up. It was the walk of a man who could no longer see anything that could surprise him. Or touch him. A plant. A plant walked across his path then. A small burgundy pot harbored this plant. My ignorance of vegetation came to the fore once again. What was it called, I questioned my helpless mind. I knew the answer wouldn’t come. Waiting a few seconds for the silence to become unbearably uncomfortable, I shrugged my shoulders and continued my aimless walking. It became slightly ironic to me, as I kept walking. That having found out the meaning of life, I had nothing more to live for. Nothing more to live for, my mind repeated in my head. I kept walking. The minutes of the day became a stream. A stream which ran into hours and then into nightfall. My aimless wandering had left me lost. It was then that I actually looked up and took my hands out of my empty pockets. Night. And the road, I had begun the day at. I couldn’t see myself. I couldn’t even feel myself but I knew that in the darkness of the night, I smiled. One of those small smiles that make you feel alive. I could hear the people in the distance shout; echoes of which floated towards me in intermittent sounds. I tried to listen closely to the echoes because the pervading silence around me had suddenly become too suffocating for me. I heard a cry. Or I think I heard a cry. And laughter. And squeaky voices prattling in excitement. And then a roar of enthusiasm, which became more than individual echoes. I could hear that distinctly. Confirmed that I lived in the same world as those voices. It was then, that I heard the sound of that car. That car. I froze and felt time stop around me as the engine of the car approached. The echoes and the roar fell silent. Under the cloak of the night, the car broke the negritude through its head-lights. Head-lights against which I squinted. Head-lights against which I looked through the windshield in the dark. Dreams can make you see through the darkness, through headlights, through everything. I did not see her. I saw the white silver beard. Even felt wrinkles on the face that nurtured the beard. Yet I did not see her. Time, which had deceived me in stopping in the first place, did not prolong its rest. And in the second I had seen the world, I saw headlights and a white beard. Gradually the black Honda City became one with the night. The echoes and the roar came back. Rustling the ground beneath my feet, I thought for a while. About life and about her. Biting my lip, I thought. Seconds passed, echoes passed and life passed. Taking a look back into the nothingness of the night, I started to walk back home, in my dream.