Dekha eik khwab to yeh silsile huey....


It is a shaadi house, insofar as I can tell between being simultaneously fully asleep and fully aware within my own dream that i am dreaming.

There is a string of gainday ke phool in my hand that I am tying to a staircase. This house is foreign, yet festive, homely yet not Home.

Some instinct tells me that is my Home, even if the physical structure does not induce any memory, the spirit of it is there. Maybe the presence of tinkling laughter, the young girls running around in bright pink and yellow and orange dupattas, ammi instructing me to hurry up, the dulhan is going to be here any second.

Brilliant larger-than-life colours. Blinding yellowing lights and yet a sense of gloom.
Andhera, but then that's nothing new.Most of my dreams are that way. I shrug off the feeling and join the gaggle of girls milling round trying to look busy, but getting in everyone's way.

Someone remarks that there's no flower garlands for the dulhan. It strikes me as odd, and speaks to some better part of me. I exit unnoticed and flag a bus down to the phool ki dukan. I realize this western element has set in me already; even in my dream I flag a bus as opposed to ordering my driver to take me to the little makeshift brown chowkis barely held together with sweat and spit, overloaded with motia ke gajray, gainday ke phool, gulab ki lareeyan.

My purchase done, some guy tells me that the next bus is not for 15 minutes. I panic, I must get home. And then a further realization, I do not know the way. I find myself distressed, crying, lost in a crowd of suspicious men with leering eyes and claw-like hands, and not a single comforting gaze.

Somehow I end up on the roof of some building. This too is nothing new, being at vantage points for suicides is also a constant feature of my dreams. By this time my sister has somehow miraculously apparated next to me, but she too doesn't know the way home.
A taxi cab driver offers to take me, but I tell him 'Mujhay raasta nahee pata..'


The horror rises up in my throat like bile, strongly reminiscent of the one time my dad left me waiting in the car to go see some mechanic when I was 7, and returned back to find me in tears and convulsions.I have had an indescribable fear of being left behind waiting since, and the thought alone causes me to get physically fearful.

The thought shifts..On the tenth try I manage to call and my brother picks up. He doesn't realize the plea in my vice, how frantic I am, and won't tell me where Home is. I stand there yelling and screaming and pleading to the faceless gods, heavens, whatever forsaken angels inhabit the realm of our wildest dreams.., 'Kahan hai ghar?' but to no obvious avail.
I bend over crying, and the overwhelming feeling of paranoia and loss and anxiety overcomes me until......

...... I wake up, staring at the ceiling and wondering whose house, whose bed I'm lying in..I gulp down some air like a drowned fish, still sweaty and still confused.It takes me a good deal of 10 minutes to finally calm down and get my bearings right. But does it matter?
Returning to reality doesn't mean the Nightmare's ended,
for this pale white blanket, the feel of this pillow, this cold and lonely bed is still foreign, still not mine.
and I'm still not Home.


and worse yet, even in reality and all sense functioning, I don't even know where that is...


nostalgia attacks.
-eeda