The Guru
The dream starts with me roaming around in Jammu on foot. I come across some police officials hanging around a parking lot chatting. There this one senior official, probably a DIG, is bitching about the new DGP, and how unreasonable he is to his junior colleagues. They get some message on the wireless and they all rush towards the police headquarters in a convoy of white ambassadors and gypsys.I for whatever reason follow them. How? I have no clue as from what I remember I had no transport or money and the place I have to go to is at the top of a hill with a very steep approach road.
There a police annual day or fair kind of thing is going on with school kids performing, police march past and a 21 gun salute with some kind of mini canons. After the event gets over I am on my way out and meet the school kids psycho therapist, a young man around 28-30, slim built, 5'8" with specs and in formal wear. As we are crossing his place it starts to rain and he calls me to wait till the rain stops.
I am shocked to realise that he stays on the roof, without any cover, we stand under two different overhangs to protect us from the downpour. There is a thick transparent polythene sheet put from the top to protect us from rain while standing and I make designs with my finger on the fogging on the inner surface of sheet. This standing in the rain makes him all emotional once it stops. He starts crying and points out towards the area of the roof where he sleeps on the bare ground. I am pretty stunned because with the school kids he seemed so positive, upbeat, well educated and relatively well off.
The rains have stopped and I see that the view from the terrace is spectacular! At the horizon I can see a thin horizontal band of red evening sky and thick dark clouds on top, covering the sky. I take out my cell to click it as I had seen this very sight once before in a trance.
As I am about to click the snap there is some kind of commotion towards the front of the house, we both to look down to see who is there. From the way the guy jumps back to get out of sight I realise that the house owners have come back and this guy is some kind of a squatter.
A female is telling a man to go up and see whether that guy is still there or not. Around 3-4 men come up, one is an elderly gentleman and the other two are boys around 16 and 20 years old. And there is some servant or someone with them.
Just as they are about to speak to the squatter a swami suddenly appears from the front side of the terrace. He is in a saffron robe, in his mid 60s, with a salt and pepper stubble and head covered with his cloak. For some reason it becomes obvious that the guy is there on the roof with the swamis blessings. The men touch his feet and it's then that I realise that there is a blue coloured plaster up to the thigh of his right foot.
The swami then realises that even I am there and we make eye contact. He gives me the "I know who you are" intense stare.
And then I wake up!
I don't think it will be that difficult to recognise a swami with a blue plaster on his leg if I ever come across such a character in real life.
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