Sunday, May 20, 2012

crash and burn

i was at home, at the comp. it was late at night, the parents were asleep, but the brother and I were very much for up-and-about. The lights were on too.

bro suggested we play a game. a flight sim. i agreed. it was a race of some sort. we started the race, when i realized i didn't know the controls. in fact I didn't know if I was player 1 or player 2. tried "wasd", tried the arrow keys. neither seemed to make any difference to the trajectory of my plane.

that's when i realized we weren't playing split-screen (obviously!). so i figured the arrow keys should do it. by the time I realized I was actually already controlling the plane, the game announced I was 30 seconds behind.

okay, some description now: we were flying over some sorta urban terrain, it was dusk-coloured, but the colours were very crappy and dithered, everything was huge dotted blocks (as if it was actually text-mode graphics). everything was dark and i could barely see stuff on-screen.

next thing I knew, the screen burst into bright shades of red and yellow and orange. it looked like everything just blew up around my plane. the camera angle changed to a view from the sky, and i could then see that it wasn't a plane, but a car! and it had mysteriously blown up in the middle of the track without crashing or anything.

and then i realized it was a dream.

Monday, May 07, 2012

feeling light

last night's dream was set in my college (st xaviers). but strangely, none of my college friends were present in the dream.

it was lunch hour. we were in the mess, which had wooden tables and benches that were pretty much unpainted, roughly cut planks on wooden legs. the plates were huge steel plates. everyone was there for the unlimited "thali" lunch, but i had carried my own tiffin, which was in those cheap plastic boxes that restaurants use to pack for home delivery.

the food they were serving looked very similar to what i recently ate at the "mahaprasad" at a temple in sajjangad, satara.

anyway, i was sitting at the the table with my school friend jude, and opposite me was my ex-manager tony. while the servers started making their way, spooning out rice and vegetables and khichdi and daal, i suddenly realized i needed to pee. so i excused myself, and for some reason, carried my lunch-box too.

i saw the restrooms right outside the mess, but for some reason i decided to go to the one on the lower floor. but then realized there wasn't one there. walked down two more floors, and found myself on the first floor. walked along the corridor along the length of that building, and then turned to the next. this one was an open corridor, and for some reason, the college walls were white stone instead of the grey i remember. the corridor was bustling with people walking either way. everyone was speaking loudly, and their voices added up to a crescendo. it somehow had a very happy, festive feel too... as if everyone was excited about something. that's when i bumped into cleona, who was walking the other way.

she noticed the lunchbox in my hand and asked if i was done with lunch. i told her i hadn't, and i'm not hungry any more. she reminded me i had just 10 minutes left of the lunch break, in case i changed my mind.

and at that moment, i did.

i turned around and started walking in the direction she was (back to the mess), but she had already hurried through the crowds and was impossible to spot.

that's when i looked upwards, and saw that at the end of the corridor (the end i had just passed on my way here), a crane was lifting a huge brass angel onto its mounting on the wall. the angel was huge, but then i realized so was everything else, and even though i was just on the first floor, it looked like the ground was 3 floors below me. and the 2 more floors of the building towered over me. and that's when i realized that space was strangely distorted, as everything looked normal when indoors (in fact, the ceiling of the mess and the height of the stairway seemed pretty low), but viewed from outside, everything was just super huge!

i raced back to the mess, and once i was back indoors things again seemed small. ran up the stairs, and then ran up an extra floor. the stairs ended in two corridors at right angles, one so low i couldn't even get in without stooping, and the other just about high enough for me.

i walked the entire length of the latter corridor, looking out at the 4-storey white walled building opposite, that looked well over 20 storeys high. it also looked very distant... basically everything outside looked like 5-10 times their expected size.

i reached the end of the corridor, and climbed up a very narrow wooden staircase, that opened onto the roof. one part of the roof was tiled and slightly sloping, and the rest was flat. a girl i didn't recognize was lying at the point where the sloping roof met the flat one. she was reading a book and smoking.

she told me the point where the tiled roof met the next building is an awesome place to sit and relax.

i walked along the roof, half crouched cos i was scared of the height.

and then i suddenly reached the end of the roof. there must have been atleast 100 feet of gap between this roof and the next building. the end came upon me so suddenly that i was literally at the edge. i looked down and realized how tiny i was. the wall stretched down as far as the eye could see.

i felt this light feeling that i get (even in real life), when i look down.

in fact, i can still feel the same light feeling as i type this.

the feeling that i'm weightless, and that i should jump.

(that's when i woke up with a start)

Friday, May 04, 2012

the very very arbit dream

i have strange dreams. but this one takes the cake.

a certain girl and i (can't give more details about the girl, for reasons you'll find out soon - let's just call her "M") had figured out a way to mine the rocks in a certain place (a narrow rocky gorge, near a waterfall, with awesome rock pools all around). and we were mining for (yeah this is the weird part):

a runny bright red liquid to be used to make nailpolish.

that's right. we drilled the rocks, reached the point where we could get at the liquid, took out a bucketful which she tried on her fingernails. (strangely, no memory of how exactly we drilled). and she said it was perfect.

so we fitted on a grey plastic lid to the hole we had drilled (it looked like a slightly enlarged bathroom drain cover), to prevent it from evaporating. anyway, it was evening, about an hour from sunset, so we had to find a place to sleep. it was dark by the time we found an isolated place in the middle of nowhere, a dusty two-room cottage. we had carried a rug, bedsheet, quilt and pillows, which we spread by torchlight and fell asleep.

the next morning, we woke up late. and strangely (again!), the room looked exactly like the hall of my own home! and we were snuggled very cozily under the covers :P

i heard the sound of someone moving in the other room. a woman's voice. a man's voice. the sound of someone washing utensils. but the door was still closed, and our bags seemed untouched.

i nudged M. she awoke, sleepily. i whispered in her ear (yeah, her ear was very near :P) that someone was in the outer room, and we were trapped here.

M: "what on earth are we doing?"
K: "nothing, i just woke up. i can't move. you've like pinned my arm"
(M rolled off to the other side of the rug)
M: (definitely loud enough for those people to hear) "get off me, or everyone a few miles away will know we're here!"

that's when i woke up.

in the same spot i was sleeping in, in my dream.

dad and mom were making breakfast in the next room.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

grow

a lot of people wish for their childhood, wish to go back to their past, when things were "simple" or "different".

whenever i come across a friend in such a frame of mind, i somehow cannot keep silent. i'm always in love with the present, and i feel those who wish for other times, haven't truly realized what they currently have, and what they have gained :)

as i once said:
people who wish for the simplicity of childhood, please remember, those were also the days when your happiness wasn't in your own hands :)

life is a zero sum game. for everything we lose, we gain something else. it is always as perfect as it was, and ever will be :)
that's the problem with going back. the essence of each moment is to prepare yourself for the ones to come. and if that's what you want to do, you're implying you can't see the meaning in your past. and hence, you want to leave a potentially meaningful present, for a definitely meaningless past. it doesn't quite add up for me :)
fine, so you're getting older. you feel time is slipping by. your body and mind can't do what they could before. but that's because they did what they were meant to!

there's nothing wrong with losing control of your body with old age. because you should have gained enough in your mind now, to realize what matters.

as i once said about my (recently-turned-91-years-old) grandma:
she is now too old for irritation, anger, hate, jealousy, and even hunger and sleep. she eats because her body wants to keep going. she sleeps because it feels like it's a perfectly natural thing to do. all that she does voluntarily, is love :)

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