The Owl

 I have been walking at nights in the park in front of my house for a few weeks now. A mandatory post dinner walks to clear my head and get my blood circulation running.  Every now and then I come across this small brownish own either sitting on a lamp or trying to catch bugs in the grass. 

From what I could make out by its size and shape it seems to be a spotted owlet or maybe a little owl. Around 5 years back when I used to go for morning runs in an adjacent park there used to be a couple residing in a tree. They used to be seen frolicking in the lawns, looking for insects before the sun came up. In Indian/hindu folklore spotting an owl is considered to be good fortune, the proverbial vehicle of Goddess Lakshmi. And an owl spotted near the festival of Deepawali is supposed to be all the more auspicious.

So here is to good beginnings!

Temple run

 I have been dreaming of temples of late. something I had never dreamed of before.

First one was about two temples side by side, first temple had curved roof, a rectangular room with the idol on the right wall. The next temple was adjacent to it and had only partially covered roof. The part with the idol, still on the right wall, was uncovered and the blue sky could be seen through it.

In the second dream the idol was in a square pit, around one foot by one foot and around half a foot deep. It was small idol of 4-5 inches, probably of Vishnu or someone similar.

I don't know their significance but they did come as a surprise.

Shoe story

You know those nightmare one has of going to school without shoes? And then in the assembly you realise that you are standing in just your white socks or bare feet and everyone around is either staring or making fun of you. 

Well today was one such day when that dream kind of came true. I had this laced up formal pure black leather shoe with leather sole which I had purchased a decade or so back. They at that time were the most comfortable formal shoe I had ever worn. So even when the leather sole gave away I got it resoled with a rubber sole. The shoes were honorably retired from active duty and transferred from Lucknow and stored away in my cupboard in Jammu. 

So after all those years I thought I would take the treasured shoes out and wear them to college for everyone to admire. I left early in the morning and had stopped on the way to Rajouri from Jammu at a water front near Nowshera. Went down to the river to admire the view, with the mist, the pine trees, the gurgling water and all. As it has been raining everything was damp and wet. Anyway after I had my fill of the view I reached the hospital. On the way up to the department I could feel something different with the shoes while walking. To my horrors of horror I could see both the soles of my shoes coming apart! Literally in huge chunks of black plastic/rubber 😦 I changed my steps and slowly trudged upto my chamber somehow. I shut myself in my chamber and planned to leave my seat only once at the end of the day lest my shoes came apart! After a bit I couldn't take it anymore and thought it would be better to leave early, that way no one would seem me coming apart at the seams! I gingerly walked in the corridors and down the stairs, making sure my feet were never more than a few inches above the floor. Unfortunately my car was parked deep inside the parking lot and I had to trudge through wet groud and mud. I could literally feel the mud and the water was seeping through the groud into my socks. With every step I prayed that I should get to the car with my shoes as well as honour intact.

I stormed out of the hospital in my car and couldn't find a parking space near my accommodation. Had to walk a bit in the rain to reach back to my place after parking the car but then I was too furious to care about the water running on the road and soaking my feet!

The shoes had an abrupt exit and end. They were disposed of into the garbage bin the minute I opened the front gate of my flat.

A bitter end after more than a decade of glorious service!

Trials & tribulations of boiling an egg!

Finally managed to make my own breakfast today of boiled eggs, peanut butter sandwich and coffee after much trial and tribulations. 

The tough part being the evasive electricity and that being my only way to cook (on a electric heater) or make coffee (in an electric kettle). I started the boiling the eggs day before at 6pm and finally managed to boil them by 11pm! I had infact forgotten all about them through the multiple power shut downs during the course of evening. Was reminded about them by the incessant banging of the eggs on the steel utensil once the water had fully boiled. 

Bottom line being I am totally dependent upon electricity. Will have to make arrangements for a gas connection and an inverter if I have to stay long. Aisae kaise chalega!

Danced a mini jig after the successful completion of breakfast in the morning today. Even an inane task like this seems like such a Herculean effort over here!

The one who almost got away...

So I have this record which I am rather fond of. I have never lost a friend, as in I am not talking about death, but never lost contact. I have tracked down people who had settled abroad, had changed their surnames and that too before Facebook and Google, after a gap of around 2 decades. There was hardly anyone I couldn't track, and I did track down quite a few and the rest I never lost sight of. Except one.

The irony of that was she was in my hometown, so technically she should have been the easiest to track. But I never could. She wasn't there on any social media. The hospital where we both had worked had shut down. We had no common acquaintance. Our one common friend was now semi-hostile. Plus with my bad memory for names I could not recollect of anyone else who had worked in the hospital. In short I had no leads to follow on, so was practically screwed! But I never gave up hope. 

I used to regularly scan the social media platforms in case she turns up somewhere, but with no luck. 

Fast forwarding to more than 21 years later one day while passing time in the department I thought of googling her name while doing research for an article I was working on. And presto! There she was!!! Or her mention in an article about a private medical college in my hometown.

After that I forgot all about my article and got on to dig out more details about her from the net. There was hardly anything though worth retrieving, but I did manage to grab hold of her Twitter handle. Now Twitter was one platform which I had never checked in cause one, I hardly used it and two, hardly anyone in my friend circle was active on it. That was literally the last place where I could have expected her, or anyone for that matter who is avoiding social media, to be. 

To cut the long story short, I inboxed her a message and thanking my lucky stars she remembered me! I met her the next time I came home.

So here we are, very much in contact after all these years, my outstanding record restored, and planning to not let her slip away from my sight ever again!

Storm in a teacup

Had a first hand experience of "breaking news" in the department at GMC today. 

Some media person with a microphone and a guy holding a cell phone recording the event broke into the dental department today. 

They caught hold of an attendant named Zia not wearing a mask and asked him where his mask was. He not knowing who the guys were asked where is your mask? When they revealed their identity Zia pushed them out of the OPD and locked the doors. 

Then all hell broke loose!

Incidentally the Principal was in our department getting his dental treatment done at that time. So it was all the more absurd and more of a real life drama.

Dream within a dream

I woke up at around 3am, fully awake, not the drowsy awake kind. I couldn't figure out why. I was neither cold nor under any pain or discomfort. Finally managed to drift back into sleep after an hour or so. That's when I saw this lucide dream.

"We were in the botanical/science institute in Jammu, but in my dream it was in Lucknow, on a Sunday. Walking towards the main building there were pretty weird kind of plants and I was telling Jai about the fruits of one of them. Ayush wanted her pics clicked near the statues places at the entrance of the closed building. There was an another person with us but I can't remember who. 

I started walking back when I saw there was some cultural program going on in the baradari like open structure in the lawns. As I approached it to check it out I could see a couple of yound women turning and looking towards me and talking. On coming closer I saw it was Vandana who was giving me a sheepish smile. I was so surprised to see her! The first thing I said was ki tum yahan kya kar rahe ho? She apparently had come for the function. She came down and I gave her a tight hug and a kiss on her forehead. It felt so good to meet her after so long. While we were hugging Ayush also came from behind. She obviously was pretty confused about what was going on. Vandana hugged her too which puzzled her even more. I mouthed Vandana's name to Ayush while they were hugging. 

In the second part of the dream I was talking to Harman while walking in the corridors of the building. In the dream he was inferring that he and Vanadana were married and now divorced. I was a bit puzzled cause I never knew that they even knew each other. He was also talking about his life in America and was not as overweight as he used to be when we met last. While we were talking it struck me that Harman has passed away in real life and I told him so. He said yes that's true with a laugh. So I figured out that maybe I am dreaming and asked him. He said yes you are seeing me in a dream."

And in my dream I am thinking that I am dreaming of Vanadana and Harman. After a long time I saw a dream which left a lasting impact on me.

Cacti cauldron

Started my cacti collection in Jammu too. Had got the one in the beer mug along with me in the plane and a few cuttings of the one in green Buddha and now they are multiplying. 

For some reason cactus have bad press, people only have bad things to say about the poor thing. But for some reason they resonate with me, I seem to understand them, or maybe they are just too easy to grow. Have to get another Buddha, maybe a brown or a black one. They should be in odd numbers. Hinduism as it is has a fascination for odd numbers.

The return of the native...

 I am back. Back to the room where I was back in 1974!

Took me around 46-47 years to complete the full circle before coming back to where it all started from.

I am in a state of limbo. Jobless. And almost penniless.

But I am at peace with myself. Secure and relatively stable.

Ah! The travesties and uncertainties of life.

My agyatvas, my hibernation.

 Amongst all this gave a presentation on history taking in a CDE organised by KGMU too. This pic is just to remind me later on in my life of these times. A speaker without a college to represent. Like a vagabond or a freelancer. 

The song "Sochna hai kya, jo hona hai hoga, janae kya hoga Rama re, janae kya hoga humara re?" is what all my life is about now.

Saskun

Saskun is the word used by the nomads in Yarkand, China, for an illusion, where you feel you can see your destination on the horizon, you can feel it, almost touch it, and will be there soon, but in reality you are still far, far away.....

This is the story of my Saskun..........but in reverse.

The year is 1853.

I am standing in the middle of the afternoon, around 2-3pm, on a single lane, black tarred road. All around, the land is barren, dry with scattered patches of brown grass. Something pretty similar to Khajurao or Jhansi. Semi desert landscape. And it's all hot and dusty due to summer time. The sky is clear and has a whitish haze due to the heat.
The road goes straight and right ahead is a white rectangular pillar around 2 feet wide and 6 feet high on the left side of the road. There is a small square platform on top and then a round white structure on top.
There is a white boundary wall on the left, but on the right side of the road there is neither a post or a boundary wall. That side consists of a thick foliage of trees. The road after the so called entrance turns towards the left and the rest of it is hidden by the wall.
After the turn the driveway becomes straight and has thick trees on the right for 20 meters or so. And on the left there is the wall and dry grass. As I move on there's this huge white villa on the right side, facing South. The house is a single storied structure and is rectangular. A semi parched lawn is there in front of the house with some rose bushes and other plants on the sides and the driveway after turning right into the porch does not continue ahead.
The porch has 3 or 4 tall cylindrical pillars which taper towards the top. The base of the pillars is made up of 3 squares of decreasing sizes. There are 3 doors to the entrance and the middle one is functional. It is made up of mahogany dark brown wood and has two shutters along with movable slits in the top panel.
As I enter there is a cool dark hall and on the left side of that hall there is a pista green double door with rough peeling paint and the white paint below is visible in patches. This is my room I know. And though I don't go inside I know there is a queen size poster bed inside facing the window opening towards the front of the house. The bed has some kind of a cloth roof. Maybe some kind of a mosquito net. The one window opens into the front of the house and has two shutters and is made up of double layer of small, clear glass squares, around 4 or 5 in number vertically. There is some significance attached to a writing desk of dark wood in my room with a sloping panel on top and multiple small drawers in the front, followed by a flat portion for writing, because I see it very clearly. This is the pre-electricity times as I don't recollect any fan or light inside the house. There is no attached bathroom to my bedroom so maybe this was the time of outhouses and washrooms at a distance from the main house. Just ahead of my room, around 6-7 steps away there is a brown stone staircase turning perpendicular and of about 8 stairs. It leads to a passage where other members of the family stay. Just next to it, at a lower level, is a gallery going towards the kitchen or the pantry.I see the back of a male servant in white going there.
I am Aditya Rai (or Rao) around 35 years old. Dark, 5'9" in height, moderate built, black hair, and shiny, maybe because of some kind of hair oil in them. I am wearing a long white kurta and an elaborately tied white starched dhoti with pleats and all in the front panel. We are some kind of land owners, kind of zamindars, hence I feel the title Rai.
I am married to Parvati. She is also dark, shorter and slim. Obviously younger. I see her in a green blouse and red/orange saree. Very conventional and traditional. I recollect some kind of a religious ceremony, maybe my marriage where I am wearing beads of white flower buds with two strands hanging from the side of my head.
Gatti is the younger daughter, around 5 years old, very chirpy and all smiles. She reminds me of Jai. And I of course love her to bits. And the name is Gatti, I double checked it, not Guddi, but Gatti. Just looking at her in my trance brought a smile on my face.
In the gallery mentioned above where there are rooms some one called Deodhar lives. He intimidates me to some extent as I was a bit uncomfortable thinking about him and could be an elder brother or father.
Next to the house, on it's left there is a teak plantation and admist the trees there are two huts made up of mud walls and thatch roof. These are for servants of the house hold. In one of these huts there is an old man called Kaptun (vernacular of Captain?) who stays there with his wife and is the trusted man friday of the household. He is thin, short, white hair and very dark.
I have no recollection of any automobiles so it could be a time period in the late 18th century. Or some where very remote in the countryside because the roads were tarred.
I do not see any calamity of any kind so most probably we live up to a ripe old age.
That is all I remember for now. After the main bulk the rest comes in bits and pieces. The funny part was that it all started from the writing desk. It really holds the key to my past, wherever it is.
The other day the word Archana river popped into my mind. I googled it but couldn't find any mention of any such river. Then by chance I came across Archana hills in Chattisgarh. There is a Achanakmar wildlife sanctuary too in Mungeli district. Topographically it matches the area I have imagined.

 I also see a white structure with a big dome on top. I went on the net with a fine tooth & comb and came up with some interesting facts to tally with my imagination. Yet on another day I turn around from the place I am standing right in the beginning and I see that the road is going straight to a small cluster of houses at a walkable distance. There is this huge banyan tree and a few tall, thick trees clustered in that village surrounded by the barren landscape. A white temple spire can be seen next to the banyan tree on the left side of the settlement. I can not see any houses or people but I know there is a well and a small settlement. I even knew the name of that place then, but forgot to write down then and have forgotten it now. I hope it comes back soon. This could be all true, or all a figment of my subconscious, but whatever it is, it is intense and very real.
Nonetheless, it was an amazing, once in a life time, experience and in a way it changed me forever........
My own Parallel Universe! Add on 1: Pimpri is the name of the village that you come to after leaving the house. It is straight down the road and has a huge banyan tree, a white washed temple with a tall spire and a few houses.

2. After 7 years I dreamt about that time again. To add to the surprise was my being in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh. There was a kind of balcony extending from the front left side of the house. The space space was covered, around 6-7 feet in width and the floor was hexagonal in shape. There was a kind of thick iron chicken meshwork screen on the tall 5 arches which extended from the high roof to the floor. The floor was grey cemented or reddish in colour. The meshwork was most probably for monkeys or thieves as the small verandah was directly connected to house, by a small gallery, without any gate in between.

God of dreams

Religion, gods or places of worship have never figured in my dreams. So by that by parameters my dream last night was extraordinary.

I dreamt I had gone to Tirumala temple during this Lockdown and it was almost empty. I have been to Tirupati just once and at that time I refused to go up to the temple. So whatever I saw within the temple was a figment of my imagination. There were just 4 people from a family ahead of me, an elderly gentleman with his wife and two more ladies. They were to the temple authorities cause they walked right into the sanctum santorium. Looking at them go even I thought of walking inside with them but changed my mind. 

I saw a huge statue or bust of Vishnu made up of some black stone and a lingam of similar dimensions and stone behind it. The thought that both Vishnu and Shiv are one stuck me at that time. The thought impacted me deeply.

Afterwards on the way back a guy told me that there was a swarm of angry bees blocking the passage through a large stony cave. I peeked in and saw the angry buzzing bees filling up the whole of the huge passageway. That guy told me that there's another way down the hill and took me to it. It was getting dark and the way down looked isolated and tricky so I refused to take it despite being told that it's the only way. While walking back to the sanctum I asked a young bald, boy in a saffron dhoti if there was another way down and he took me to a fire escape kind of a stairway which was made of concrete stairs and went all the way down.

The boy seemed like an apprentice young priest around 10-11 years old and escorted me all the way down.

I woke up in the morning wondering what was it I had dreamt and it's significance.

Ghost(s)?

I have been brought up on Ghost stories of the Gangetic planes from the mid of nineteenth century. There was this lady in a white sari in Allahabad who would appear on the terrace of the house at midnight where death used to come calling within a couple of days of her appearance. There was the famous man/men with horses hooves for hands in Lucknow.

These were all stories from my childhood of days (nights?) much before my time. I now stay in a well lit, huge tree lined, park facing neighborhood of educated people. 

Everything that you take for granted as signs of civilisation and modern times can appear like a thin veneer to the primal past at times. I had a minor glimpse of this yesterday.

I think it started in the afternoon when I noticed red thread tied multiple times around a huge tree in the park with vermilion and turmeric rubbed on it. I found it a bit strange and mystic but forgot about it after a while. 

Late at night while walking Alex after his meal he came up to a house at the end of the lane where his friend Jenni used to live. She was a 2 year old Golden Labrador who passed away suddenly around a month back. Alex goes to her gate still, everyday and gently whines while wagging his tail and looking at a spot as if he can see her/something there. It's a bit spooky, but she was a sweet kid so not so scary. He needs to coaxed away from her gate everynight. 

Just as I was about to get back to my gate I saw a kind of mini commotion outside my next door neighbours gate. He is an executive in Airtel and seems to be waiting for me. 

The first thing he said to me is that there is a problem. I thought my boys would've broken something while retrieving the shuttle cock from there terrace in the evening. But it turned out to be something else. 

He said that there has been this lady who has been coming to their gate deep into the night and peering inside. His boys and nephew had seen her thrice and he had even called the police regarding this. According to the description it was a stalky woman in a ghagra choli who walks up to their gate, peers inside and then disappears. I had nothing to say to this and was totally flummoxed as to how to respond to this. He seemed a bit worked up and a bit shaken up. 

I told him about the tree, thread and turmeric but he had an idea about who did it and when. Then he told me about a 3 storeyed yellow house across the park where a middle aged lady stays with her daughter. I had noticed that the house is always dark and looking at it you can't say whether it is habitated or not. He said that the lady has been deserted by her husband and there is something not good about that place. 

Here I was, all oblivious to my surroundings, happy with my cocooned life, and there I was in the midst of a semi-horror plot with proper spirits, ghosts and witches, within a matter of minutes. 

One thing is there. You might be all secure in your faith in modern world with all the bright lights and wi-fi broadband, but it just takes a person who is deeply convinced about occult and evil to rock your boat for that night at least.

Cycling sensibilities- 3

Not about sensibilities but more about silliness and it's related consequences.
Yesterday morning while cycling along Kathauta lake I came across a Durga Puja pandal near the pump station, which was being taken down. Like a hero (or an idiot) I cycled through it and almost at the end of the pandal the right brake of my cycle got stuck in a white curtain.
The bike turned right with a jerk and I found myself flying in the air. It all felt as if it was happening in slow motion.
Somehow, instinctively, I had the sense to roll over on my back, duck my head and break the roll with my palms to break the momentum of the fall. I got up as soon as my roll got to a stop.
I was a bit shaken and mildly bruised. Gave myself a once over, picked the bike and got back on the road. I realised that my right palm was bleeding a bit once I got moving on the cycle. Was contemplating whether to proceed with the cycling or go back home and dress my wounds when my thought went towards the cell I use to calibrate my cycling route, distance covered, calories burnt and time. The Samsung cell was not in the pocket of my shorts!
I realised that it must have slipped off when I fell down and as it had been more then 10 minutes since then my chances of finding it seemed remote.
Trudged back to the spot with a heavy heart, ruing this day and morning. I reached the spot and was pleasantly surprised to see my cell on the road!
The screen had cracked but the cell was functioning! So there was a silver lining in the dark cloud after all.
I was all fine the whole day, except for the minor twitches when the cloth brushed against the multiple bruised areas in the legs and palms. It was only when I lay down in bed at night that I realized that my left bum aches. I must have landed on it pretty hard.
Thought of going for a spin in the morning today but then I felt my body deserves a break for a day atleast.

Analysis of Misogynistic asshole

The other day I was called to the Principal office to enquire about a written complaint submitted by an intern about her batchmate.
The guy when he turned up for questioning was pretty chilled out about the whole thing. Was smiling in-between and had a cavalier attitude about the proceeding.  He had threatened the complainant that he will strip her and will pull her tongue out. He felt it was a minor thing and an unnecessary fuss is being created about it. It was only when I shouted at him in the end that he was able to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
We submitted the report after enquiring from the rest of the batch and the facts tallied with the one written in the complain.
Now today when he was given the formal letter from the Principal office that he came to me.
He was all repentant and crying today. What amazed me was the way his thought process worked. For one he imagined himself to be the victim. He quoted about another Professor who had been chucked out for sexual misdemeanor expecting me to be sympathetic. When I said he should have been kicked out a long time back he was taken aback.
Then he took the track of how the complainant doesn't do any work and goes around with guys outside. I asked him if the other 9 people in his batch had no issue with it, why is he so bothered? He had nothing to say.

3 wishes

In most of the fairy tales 3 wishes are granted for a good deed. It's a pretty standard ploy. Not 2 or 4 or 10. Just 3.
I had a similar experience a couple of days back though unfortunately no one told me that my wishes were about to come true.
First one was about shoes. I had been passively obsessing over getting a new pair for Alex's morning walk after the older one seemed to be on their last leg (no pun intended). 3 pairs had bitten the dust in as less as 9 months. I had fond memories of the my white school PT sneakers. They were from "Power" and with their thick canvas cover and a tough rubber soul were practically indestructible. I was thinking where would I be able to get them and if they were still available.
Well anyway, moving on, we went to Spencers later in the day and there, right in front were similar sneakers, that too in blue colour and
on a 70% discount!!!

In the second wish, I had been after John Wick - Chapter 3 since it was released a month back. I missed its release by a day in Lucknow, the timing was not right in Delhi and didn't realize it was playing in a multiplex next to my hotel. Looked it up as soon as we got back from Kashmir. There was just one show running and that too in Phoenix, which is a good 20kms from my place. Got on the app to book it and turned out to be House Full!!! Plus there was no show for the day after. Disheartened I put my mobile aside.
After my luck with sneakers I opened up the app once again and saw that there was a show today also in the same theater and booked my ticket in a jiffy. I got a discount of almost 30% on this too.

My third wish was something like a late release response. While going up the escalator to the theater in the mall I saw the Hanes shop whose tracks and boxers I usually buy. I thought if only there was a sale I would have definitely bought something. But it wasn't there.
On my way back after the movie I just gave a cursory glance towards the showroom and there they had put up a 20% discount sign board! Well needless to say I did from my shopping from there.

I realised the chain of events only while reminiscing about the day at night just before going to sleep. If only I would have known that 3 of my wishes would be coming true, things could have been so different today!

6 pieces of silver

This is a story from long, long ago.
Ok its not that long ago. Maybe over a month or max a couple of months old. But it played almost like a fairy tale, hence the opening line of this blog.
There I was on a pleasant morning walking along with Alex on our regular perambulation, when I came across something shiny in the huge sand heap alongside a house under construction. I poked with the stick I carry along to check the source of shininess and along slid out a round silvery thing as the one in the pic. Initially I thought it was a 1 rupee coin but on closer inspection it turned out to be a plain, round, silvery disk. Out of curiosity I poked the stick in the sand and a couple of disks fell out. Now I was mildly intrigued. I kept on poking the sand and more and more disks slid out. By the end I had around 8-9 at hand.
Once the discs stopped appearing I was lost as what to do with them. So as a prank I thought of spreading them at a distance from each other on the roadside and to check the next morning as how many people have been fooled into thinking that it was a Re.1 coin.
In the evening I was musing at how they must have come around at that one particular spot, there purpose and the odds of my finding them.
The next morning I was curious to check the result of my prank/psychological experiment. I walked towards the sand mount and just out of curiousity I poked my stick again into it, and out rolled out another disc! This was almost like magic cause this one wasn't even visible and it was just by chance I had poked there. Once more 5 more discs magically appeared out of the sand.
And this time I kept the 6 pieces of silver.

P.S.: the other pieces of silver spread out the day before had been taken by some hapless souls who I am sure would have cursed their luck, or me.

Return to PG days

I had the most amazing dream last night 😀
I had joined MDS again and that to in Oral Pathology 😁
We were 4 Pgs in the new batch and there were 2 girls and a guy other than me. They of course were much much younger.
Our head was a South Indian and he had called us to his place that evening and had told us to get a bag (something similar to a large grocery bag) along. Maybe he had some notes or books to give, I don't know and he didn't specify why.
Now the interesting part is that before I could go there, the head of NHSRC, Rajni Ma'am met me on the way and told me to come along with her 😳 Rajni Ma'am is kind of a Dean or the director of the place where I have joined to do my Pg in so I am not that worried about being late to my HoD. Plus I don't have the bag either as I was stopped on my way to the market by Ma'am.
She took me to a classroom kind of place where there were 2 lady teachers already sitting. We sat across the table and she said
that Anil should have gotten a better rank in the exams and tells them to review the papers once again. They go through each paper one by one and Ma'am keeps on pointing places where I should've gotten more marks. 😄
In-between somewhere she turns and pats me on the head also and says "Anil is a good boy" 😅 Something similar to the way you would say to a dog 😋

Sequelae of a dream

I dreamt almost the same dream on two different nights. This has never happened before and made me wonder. There was nothing much about the dream except for the fact that it was very realistic.
In the first one we had bought a house somewhere else in Lucknow. It was a busy street and somewhere in old city. I am not sure about the city, but it was somewhere in the north. There was an ECG or ultrasound clinic next to the house which I realised on the way out. The clinic opens up on the road.
This was two nights back. Today in the morning I dreamt about it again and this time I had a daughter and a son. I had gone to the house and we had yet to shift in. It was a single storeyed house with a driveway. I was talking to my daughter about the house and was asking her how many bathrooms there were, she said I think one and I thought we need to make another one before we shift.
The dreams were ordinary and pretty mundane but the continuity and the realistic part made me wonder.
Past life regression was one thing that came to my mind but this was pretty recent. Maybe somewhere in the late 90s or maybe present day. So that was out of the picture.
Parallel universe was the only possibility that comes to my mind.

The girl had no name

She had bright, big, shiny eyes.
Maybe 2-3 months old.
We used to meet almost every morning when Alex and I went for our walk.
She was a bit weary of Alex in the beginning but got over her fear with time.
With me she was always in a mood for a chat and I talked her up, teased her whenever we met.
Her coat was a mix of black and brown with a white patch here and there. She was small, with cute drooping ears. Must have had a daschund somewhere in her ancestors.
I had contemplated adopting her a couple of weeks back but with the upcoming summer break I postponed it.
Met her today morning around 6:30 and she was in good spirits and walked behind us for a bit. I came back on the reverse loop of the walk after hardly 10-15 mins and I saw what seemed like a bundle of cloth in the middle of the road where we had met.
She was no more.
It broke my heart. Such is life and such is fate.
She might not have a name, but she will never be forgotten.

Path of the Grimreaper

 "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living."

Last night while dropping Indira mausi to her home, she was reminiscing about her youngest sister who died of breast cancer in her early 20s. This was around 5 decades ago. Vijay mausa was posted in Jammu then. She said that she never dreams, but the night Tunnu mausi passed away she got up with a start when she saw a sheet covered body lying on the floor in her dream. The next morning mausi got a call from Lucknow about the death of her sister the previous night. Till the time she hadn't seen Tunnu mausi in her dream she wasn't even aware that in Hindus they keep the dead on the floor, she said. My aunt had been sent back from Bombay to Lucknow after the doctors realised that the cancer had spread. Every 15 days she used to get medicines for her cancer from Tata Memorial Hospital. The time when she passed away the postal department had gone on strike and the medicines weren't delivered. There used to be no courier service in those days and Tunnu mausi passed away in KGMC as her medicine couldn't reach on time.
This news of yesteryears affected me  and made me think about all the other dramatic deaths and life events I had heard about from the maternal side of my family.
My maternal grandfather had a son from his first wife. She died during childbirth while delivering her second kid. A daughter. Her husband, my grandfather went into such a shock from her untimely death that he went straight to the cremation ground from the hospital, did her final rituals there and left the place. He never went back for the baby. All this he had told to my brother and I came to know this way after his death. He had always been a very upright officer and a gentleman, a self made man, an exemplary engineer,  a disciplinarian father (he had 3 sons and 4 daughters). The fact that I have an aunt, maybe first cousins, nieces and nephews around me who I have no clue of, haunts me to this day.
In my grandfathers defense all I could say is that death affects one in different ways. He had a rough, traumatic childhood and a close encounter with death. Once when he was very young he got high fever. It got worse over days and eventually he lost conscious. He had no clue for how long he had passed out. When he finally regained consciousness he realised that except for his father his whole family had been wiped away by the small pox epidemic. His mother, siblings, everyone. Everyone. One moment you have your whole family around you, you pass out, the next moment when you regain your senses,  they have gone forever. No final goodbyes, no closures.
The things we read about in textbooks of medicine and pathology, the images we see in movies of epidemics and disasters, the pathos which are described, he had been through them, and survived.
I had a bad night and woke up with a slight headache today. I even woke up at night, sat upright on my bed and was calling someone before going back to sleep. The dreams were emotive and impressionable, and there were two people in it, though I cant remember them in detail. If I am able to recollect I will describe them here.