Everyone is familiar with the experience of waking up from a dream. We all have dreams, sometimes manifestations of our hidden and secret desires, sometimes a mirror of our internal conflict, or sometimes just an outlet for the emotions we’ve been experiencing and just can’t deal with while fully conscious.
I had such a kind of dream too, and I woke up feeling utterly perplexed and disturbed. It wasn’t a bad dream, but it gave me a strong whiff of my own desperation and want that was lurking behind a badly disguised sub-conscious play. I had barely slept that night. It was a week before exams, so it was necessary I study. But I couldn’t; it was just one of those days. And when I couldn’t study, and time kept inching past, I started to worry about not studying. I then began to worry about worrying, and inevitably my mind wandered helplessly to those time-tested thoughts that work wonders at filling my heart with dread and depression.
I began to think of the future, of my family and loved ones I would one day have to leave behind; I thought about myself, and what I was doing wrong that made me sad and all alone on nights like these. Most of the time, I believe its not right to burden even your closest friends with such intensely personal doubts and insecurities, and I abstain from spilling my guts to people who, after all, have their own problems to deal with and don’t need mine on their backs as well. But it was one of those nights, and my own shoulder wasn’t strong enough.
I slept after midnight, though generally I’m not a nocturnal person. I love my sleep, cherish it, and devote my night-time completely to sub-conscious bliss. It was difficult to sleep with all the junk swarming about in my head. Sometimes I wish I could switch off my brain and relax using the little time I have, but that’s not possible is it?
It was sudden. My eyes snapped open, and I heard the whistle of a train in the distance. I checked my watch and it was 5.30. I had slept four hours, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. Dawn was silent except for the cawing of a few stray crows. An hour later, Koels would start to coo. Moments like these made me love my neighborhood, absolutely free from the urgency of the city.
And amidst the silence and the breaking dawn played my favorite song out of the blue. It came from a few houses down the block, muffled but loud enough to hear without straining my ears. All the unhappy thoughts that had rushed back into my head when I awoke, kind of melted away into the melody. So I went up to the open window with my cup of tea and I just sat there, listening, while my mother slept on. The moment was very personal, and I knew I would remember it, along with other such experiences which took place before morning. Like the first rain of 2009 – 3AM on a regular day in March, I suddenly awoke to enormous droplets of water splattering on the glass pane of the window, and I was overwhelmed by such elation, I can barely describe it in words. It was the one of the purest, strongest forms of joy I had ever felt.
If I believed in a god, I would say God played that song at that moment to soothe my soul. But I don’t, so I just thanked the stranger who did, in my head, and got out of bed, feeling not as bad as before. The whole day lay ahead of me, and I knew it would be good, with such a brilliant start.
