dreams and more dreams.

Let me begin by wishing all of you a very happy festival season. A Happy Navarathri, Id-ul-fitr and in general a happy, pleasant time to all of you. I started writing something serious but retained it as a draft because I felt that this was not the time for it. Vacations have begun and we plan a trip to Shiridi, Mumbai and Shringeri. I hear that the Malabar coast is luxuriant after the rains and I've never been to Shringeri.

In this post I am generally going to share with you some eerie dreams I had. Sue had long back tagged me asking me to write about my dreams. Being the boring teacher that I am, I wrote out a long list of figurative dreams of how I wanted terrorism to be wiped out and other similar stuff befitting my age. She then told me that she meant real dreams and I had promised that I'd share them later so here I go.

Dream no.1 I was around 13 years of age and it was a Saturday morning. I was studying in a residential school and we were allowed an extra hour of sleep on saturdays and Sundays. I woke up sweating profusely. I had a dream that my dad was in hospital and he was on some life support system. There were all kinds of tubes and stuff and he was all skin and bones. I recognize him only by his voice. We, in the boarding school believed that Friday night's dreams come true but if it was a bad dream its effect could be neutalized if shared. I quickly woke my friends up and shared my dream. Unfortunately the dream did come true and in the months that followed the same dream recurred a few more times and 4 months later when I visited my father in hospital I was shocked to see everything exactly as it was in my dream. My dad, a 175 pounder had been reduced to a skeleton and some 6 months later he died. I had never seen the interior if a hospital room before so I cannot explain how I got such a vivid picture of the hospital scene.

Dreams no.2 Just before my marriage I had a dream that my dad had come with a suitcase and said that he planned to spend sometime with us. He continued to come in my dreams prior to my younger sister's and older brother's weddings. My younger brothers got married some 12 years after our weddings. I almost expected him to come in my dreams when the two younger brothers got married. But no, he didn't.

Dream no. 3. This again involves my dad. I had, by then, almost stopped expecting him to visit me in my dreams. It was more that 33 years since he passed away. I was advised bed rest following high blood pressure. My dad took me in my dream to Patna for an interview. He leaves me at the gate of the Secretariat and vanishes much to my annoyance. My name is called out and I try to go in when a little girl asks me if I was PR and when I answer in the affirmative she asks me to go back saying that I was not called. I insist saying that I had indeed been called but she does not let me in.

I wonder what dreams are? I've had my mother in law coming in my dreams soon after her death. My father in law's blood urea count shot up before his death and he developed blisters all over his body due to that. A few days after his death I dreamt that he was looking good and was telling a friend of his that he was fine and all his blisters had healed. But for some reason my mother has never comes in my dreams. I think it is because my mother lived to see us well settled while my father didn't. If there is something called soul then my father's soul perhaps wanted to be part of any celebration in the family.

I have regular dreams but most of the time I cannot remember anything when I wake up. But these are a few that I can remember and they usually involve my dead relatives. I don't read too much into my dreams nor do I look for interpretations. But I do offer a silent prayer asking God to take care of things.