It’s 4:30 am. For the last few nights, I have been having the same dream. I am not sure if it’s a dream or a nightmare, but I do end up with my eyes wide awake in the middle of the night. When I was a kid, I never used to dream. It was a bit worrying actually. Kids my age used to discuss their dreams during recess whereas I had to make up stories just to be a part of their conversation. There is this one story that I had told so many times that now I get confused if it was a made-up story or did I actually dream that. Anyway, my no-dream streak broke a couple of years ago. I remember I was coming back from the office and I saw this guy on the train, with very distinctive features. He was rehearsing something very animatedly. From the corner of their eyes, everyone was watching him. It felt like we were living in one of the early pages of someone’s biopic. That night I had dreamt that the guy has become a huge star. He has started walking on red carpets and all. At one of his movie’s premieres, I get the chance to meet him and tell him about the train story. He says he remembers that and even remembers my face. “Even I don’t remember my face”, I say. “That’s because you are in your dream”, he says and moves on. That’s when I woke up. Good dream. After that, I met the guy a bunch of times in my dreams. And the conversation is always about what am I dreaming about nowadays. Yes, it’s very weird.
Last Saturday, I came back home a bit late. It was a colleague’s farewell. She got a nice job offer in Sweden and that’s the reason she resigned. “Good for you”, I said when she told me all about how she cracked the interview. I am still trying to figure out why people share their success stories so passionately. It’s disgusting. Live your part and leave the planet. There is no reason to boast about anything that you do here. Instead of Live and Let Live, the quote should have been Live and Leave. I told her I’ll come to her place whenever I visit Europe next. She seemed to be already making plans. I went out for some fresh air. In clubs, you always find people going out for some fresh air. I wonder why they make it so claustrophobic in the first place. To my surprise, I find her outside with a bunch of other colleagues. I join them. She is telling them the same story that she was telling me inside. While telling the story, she looked at me a bunch of times as I wasn’t showing any interest in her story. And why would I? I had just heard it inside. In detail. But something was off with the way she was looking at me. After a while, I figured out that she doesn’t even remember that she has told me the story already. After realising that, I started showing interest in the story I had already listened to. “Good for you,” I told her after the end of the story. I will visit you whenever I visit Europe the next time. She started making plans again, but this time the itinerary was different. How can she not remember a conversation we had just five minutes ago? Strange. I started to walk back home. My house was a kilometer away from that place. Actually, I don’t remember the walk back home. I don’t even remember getting into the lift or opening the door of my apartment. All I remember is waking up from the dream I had later that night. In fact, that night was the first time I had the dream which I have been having for the last seven days.
This is how the dream goes. It’s an infinite swimming pool. Not the infinity pool, not the ones that you have in these five-star hotels. It’s infinite. And it’s not the sea either. Because I can see the railings of the pool. Even though they are very far- almost touching the horizon, but I can still see them. As if they are giving this body of water a sense of boundary. I am afraid to go towards that side, as it feels like the water is too deep down there. In my dream, I always find myself in the middle of this pool, swimming. I am not a good swimmer but I somehow manage to stay afloat. I keep swimming towards the other end, where I can see a few people have already reached. I don’t know if it’s a race or not, as I can’t see anybody else swimming with me. Either I am too far ahead of everyone else, or just way behind them. As I am swimming, I realise I am not covering any distance. So I push harder. But the distance doesn’t seem to increase or decrease. It stays the same. I start giving up because I am tired. And that’s when I wake up, with my hands in the air, trying to swim. It’s always three o clock. The first night I dreamt that, it felt ominous. Would I have drowned? I kept thinking about this till the next night. And then the next night came- and it was the same dream. I again woke up drenched with sweat, trying to swim in the air. After the fourth night, I had consciously decided to swim toward the horizon, instead of swimming towards the end line. If it’s not a race, then why am I going towards that side? I had convinced myself. So I slept prepared. Sure enough, the dream was back. But somehow I didn’t remember what I had thought of and started swimming towards the end line again. Again I woke up. Damn it. But last night, I managed to swim toward the horizon. It felt like I was consciously dreaming. In my dream, I even felt happy that I remembered to swim toward the horizon. Can this happen? I don’t know. It has happened in some movies. But can this happen in real life too? I should consult a psychologist. Some part of my brain which is responsible to function during reality has gotten involved in this game now. So I swam freely. Towards that railing. Towards that horizon. Towards nowhere. It was like watching dolphins in the water, except that the dolphin was me. But again, the distance didn’t seem to reduce. After swimming for a couple of hours, I decided to give up. I woke up again with that drowning feeling. It’s 4:30 am.
I have decided to go for a walk now. I lock my apartment and keep the keys under the doormat. It’s very quiet outside. I should do something about these dreams. I spot a guy on a cycle, who is selling tea. It’s never a bad time for a cup of tea. The tea guy seems familiar though. I don’t know from where. It’s dark. I drink tea and start walking again. And just then I hear the tea guy rehearsing the same dialogues that I had heard on that local train a couple of years back. I turn around and look at him closely, it’s indeed the same guy. The guy who meets me in my dreams. His clothes are torn and he now has a quite big beard. He didn’t make it to the red carpet then. I don’t realise that I have been staring at him for a long time. He starts getting uncomfortable. “Do you want anything else?”, he asks me. “No”, I say and start walking again. He doesn’t know that I know him. Actually, do I know him? Maybe, I know some other guy with his facial features. As I am walking more, I am realising that it is indeed unusually quiet today. This city has never been this quiet. I get an ominous feeling. So I turn back and starts walking towards my house again. I cross the tea-seller again. I pretend to not know him. I keep walking. Just then I hear a voice. It feels like the tea-seller has called me by my name. I don’t turn around. I keep walking. I hear his voice again. “What did you dream today?” Did he just ask me that? He can’t. How can he? But can he? I turn around and he isn’t there anymore. I run towards the place where his bicycle was parked. There are no tyre marks, no empty cups, nothing. Instead, there lies a piece of broken railing. This is freaky. I run towards my apartment, as hard as I can. I hear his voice again. A couple of times. It’s now echoing everywhere. He is asking me all sorts of questions. “Did you swim towards the horizon?”, “Did you wake up before you could drown?”, “Are you scared?”, “Don’t you wanna go towards the finishing line?” “It’s not a race”. I am running harder now. I have almost reached my house. There is water everywhere. The railing that I just saw has grown and made a boundary around me. I am knee-deep in water. I can’t seem to reach my apartment, no matter how hard I am running. I can’t even seem to touch the railing. I scream. If this had been a dream, I should’ve woken up by now. I keep pinching myself. It’s not a dream. The level of water is rising. My house seems to be getting out of my reach now. I don’t know how to swim but I have to do something. I close my eyes and start swimming towards… the other side. Maybe this is not where I belong. Maybe this is not where any of us belongs. Did the tea-seller shout, “it’s not a race”? I don’t know.
Suddenly, the security guard of my building comes. I am standing outside the building with my eyes closed. He lets me in. “Were you sleeping? I have been standing outside for so long”, I ask him. “I was dreaming”, he replies. “But it looks like you were sleeping”, he adds. I hope I was. I go to my apartment. I make myself a cup of tea and take it to my bedroom. I sit on my bed and a splash of water hits me. The mattress is wobbling. I hold on to the railing. I have stopped pinching myself now. Either all of it is real or none of it is.
"To travel without moving, read". Reading your writing justifies the accuracy of this quote every time.
Feels like Murakami's Kafka on the shore