You may say I'm a Dreamer

“Many, many happy returns of the day!”

 

As far as dreams go, this one was certainly lame. There was no surrealism in the events that unfolded after the pronouncement of that statement. ‘Unfolded’ seems to imply an unfurling in the past, when it actually happened outside time. And space. Our consciousness is no more limited by the now than it is limited by the skull. Thought does not happen in the corrugated alien surface of the brain. Awareness is not an electric spark that arches from the medulla oblongata. Reality is the self. The universe is an idea – and not a well thought out one at that.

 

People that know me are not surprised that I keep writing about dreams. For reasons that are perceived by various individuals simultaneously as laziness, cowardice, deviant behavior, complacency, introspection and imagination, my love for these visions of alternate realities are known to many, if not understood.

 

The fogginess of a dream is purely retrospective. Furthermore, though it is often diagnosed as a cataract in the mind’s eye brought on due to the supposed linearity of time, the haze is purely the result of ignorance and a refusal to be awed.

 

My birthday party is held in an all-girls’ school. I am slightly irked by my assumption that I would automatically enjoy revelry in the presence of pheromones flowing like tiny rivulets down a mountain hirsute with sage and oak. It is the cafeteria, and the other tables are occupied completely by teasing teams of teens tickled by the thought of testosterone. None of them look at our table, preferring to ignore the rather raucous party thrown to celebrate my birthday – which it isn’t.

 

Sitting right across me is you, happy and mischievous. You love such parties – not because you enjoy being part of such social extravaganza, but rather due to your propensity to come up with fabulous one-liners and sharp retorts. It is only the unimaginative that would leave the party without a punch-line, you think.

 

Two others are here too – but what good is it in trying to paint their faces for you? They could be anybody. They could be my brothers, or my sisters. They could be elves or Martians. Their heads could be oblong or ovoid. They are fillers – twenty-second commercials. They provide the comic relief in a humorous play. They shout and cackle like the heroine’s friends in a Hindi movie. They are here for the cake and the ambience.

 

Breezing through the throng of a million more girls entering the cafeteria is your friend. I do not know him. He is my mentor. He holds a tray full of what ought to be tequila shots. Up close, the tray is empty. And I am drunk.

 

“What whiskey was it?” asks my mentor.

 

I struggle to remember. “The name had something to do with a shore. Ivory Coast, Green label?"

 

You let out a snort. Incidentally, snorting is rather difficult to do. You can easily swallow your spittle and choke on it. And snorting is very unbecoming too. It sounds like an immoral guffaw.

 

“Mulberry Coast! How can you forget?” You are scandalized and amused that my knowledge of elite whisky is still not as incomplete as yours. The girls are laughing – like thousands of metal dishes eloping. Like millions of angry fiddles bitching about cats.

 

“And now,” says the unfamiliar mentor with a flourish. There ought to be a cape and a handlebar moustache jostling with that flourish. “And now, for your gift!”

 

A man seated amidst the gaggle of girls undergoes spontaneous combustion. If I can save the man, the girls would shower me with French kisses. I approach the burning man and he stares me down.

 

“Pitiful,” murmur the three or four comic goons at our table. The mentor shakes his cape mournfully and departs. When one is mournful, one doesn’t just leave. One departs.

 

Standing to my right is a dog. I pet him.

 

“Really?” he asks before bounding away.

 

Pitiful.