Dhakkan

"Dream you is a dhakkan." ~ supportive @levis517 is supportive.
Update: while typing this tweet, I got upgraded to dodo.

— a traveller (@a_traveller) August 27, 2014

A few weeks ago, I was browsing through old chat histories - I think it started off as looking for something specific, and then dissolved into sheer nostalgia - and came across this old gem between the BFF and me, from a few years ago. It made me giggle endlessly, and I texted her to tell her I might be blogging about it. And then a few days later, FB reminded me that I had in fact also posted on there about being called a dhakkan.

And so here, for your reading pleasure, on a day when the news has been even worse than what it's been for the past several months, is that conversation.


Wednesday, August 27, 2014 10:16 AM

Me: Can I tell you about my dream

Her: OK
Tell

Me: I come home (not really my home, but in dream my home) to find front door wide open
So I go, dammit I need to get my life together
And I walk in and the place is a mess
So again I go, I need to get my life together
But then I realize I've been robbed

Her: U say that IRL too

Me: Because laptop is missing

Her: Dream you is a dhakkan

Me: So I walk into bedroom and it's also been ransacked
So I am freaking out
And then I see that bathroom door is closed

Her: Erkkkk
I scared

Me: And bathroom for some reason is just outside the apartment front door, which is weird
But anyway, I poke it open
And the thief is there
Taking a shower

Her: Um

Me: And for some reason he has only one arm

Her: Um...

Me: And he sees me and smirks and next thing I know he's at the end of the corridor (like he apparated there)
And I’m trying to scream and call for help
But my voice is gone
Then it's later, and some guys are there helping me or whatever, and I think one of them was A, not sure who the other guy was
And the one-armed man reappears in my living room
And then I woke up

Her: Who is A
I'm not Freud
It's just a dream
Dream you is a dodo

Me: A is colleague-friend who lives down the corridor from me
So makes sense he would be there

Her: OK that's reasonable
Good dream well done

Me: Thank you

Her: :D

***************

I have to confess, I think I'm a lot braver in my dreams than in IRL. Real me would have run far, far away, not gone looking for the thief. Dream me is is truly a dhakkan.

Of dreams, conversations, and voices in the head

So I had this dream, right. I dreamed I was going somewhere with a friend, and I was driving, and all of a sudden she looks at my dashboard and says, "you need to get gas, the gas light is on." And I respond, "what rubbish, I got just got gas the other day, the tank's full."

And then I woke up, realized I was incredibly late, and practically ran out of the door to get to work. And halfway to work, the gas light does indeed go on, and I think to myself, "but I just picked up gas the other day." And then realised that was in the dream.

*************

So I called the father this morning, and for once it wasn't handed over to the mother without so much as a hello, not that we are complaining or anything, and I chatted with him after more than a week, not that we are complaining or anything.

Anyway. I asked how the monsoon in Delhi was going, and got the following rant:

Listen, all I know is as soon as the Power Minister visited Gurgaon, and announced Gurgaon will never have power cuts again, we started having power cuts after weeks of none of them. And then as soon as the IMD announced the monsoons had arrived all over India, the rains in Delhi stopped completely. And now our Prime Minister has gone and announced India's going completely digital, so...

One needs to learn the art of whining without sounding like one is whining from the man.

*************

I saw Inside Out last night. Nothing is cuter than the short movies Disney/Pixar has started playing before their movies. I was practically holding my breath thinking Lava was going to end in tragedy and I would start crying less than ten minutes into the movie (oh, like you don't do that every time you watch Up), but thankfully it all ended quite happily.

The movie itself, btw, was totes adorbs. I now know what was happening inside my head when the parents made me move from Chandigarh to Delhi at the age of 9. And I could see the little red man with Lewis Black's voice driving inside my head when I was driving home last night and again to work this morning.

And it might be soon to tell, but this movie might just end up messing with my thought processes the same way Everybody Says I'm Fine did. Because the voices in my head still go from 0 to completely panicked and crazy every time I go for a haircut or even just a head massage.

*************

I was telling the father about a coworker who gets... excited over everything. And after giving him a few examples of what had agitated her over the past couple of weeks, I made the mistake of saying I could see myself turning into her in a few years. To which I got the response:

Can we just be clear that I wasn't the one to say that? I may have been thinking it, but I didn't say it.

Sigh.

 

Where my subconscious starts acting up

There have been weird dreams lately.

Two nights ago, when I had only 90 minutes to sleep between the heartbreaking end of a match, and y'know, work, I dreamt nonstop about the call I had to get on half an hour after waking up, and how everything on the call was going wrong and it was all my fault.

Which is weird because though things have been stressful at work lately, I thought I've become the sort of person who leaves work at work. Once I'm home, I'm not really thinking about it. Clearly my subconscious believes otherwise.

Then last night. Slept relatively earlyish, although not as early as I would have liked to. I knew I had calls starting super early this morning, but I also knew colleagues were working through the night and sending status updates, so I kept waking up and reading emails. So again, clearly not as switched off as I like to think.

But in between those periods of being awake, the dreams. But first, a side bar. I've been getting used to the new apartment, and one of the things to get used to is that there is an attached garage for my car, and a door to enter the apartment through the garage - one of the main reasons I was sold on this apartment, to be honest. Now because of this garage door, the main entrance to the apartment is hardly ever used. It took me three days to realize a package had been left outside my front door, because I never checked. And then the other day, I came home and knew I had to leave again in 15 minutes, so I parked outside the garage and tried to enter through the front door. Only to realize that my paranoia of keeping both locks on the door locked ever since getting robbed some years ago meant I couldn't open the door from outside. So I went in through the garage, and then left ten minutes later through the front door. Only when I came back two hours later, and this time parked in the garage and therefore tried to enter through the garage door, I couldn't, because paranoia meant I had double locked the garage door this time.

I would like take a moment here to publicly apologize to the mother for rolling my eyes every time she talked about how many doors she has keep track of and make sure are locked in her house, since I clearly can't manage even two. Which does not mean I won't roll my eyes in the future.

End side bar.

So the dreams last night. I dreamt I was leaving the apartment through the front door, and as I was locking up, some woman who I didn't recognize but who in the dream seemed to be some sort of nemesis of mine bumped into me and we had... words. When I come back some hours later, I enter my apartment to find every piece of furniture I own has been stolen, and I'm left with nothing. So the conclusion is she stole my key when we had our altercation and so I go to the police station which is nothing like any police station I've ever seen because it's so pretty and for some reason this nemesis of mine is already there and we have words again, and then suddenly, there is time travel and I'm back at the exact moment I was locking my apartment door that morning. Cut to later when I'm telling someone how this time, I knew she was waiting to bump into me and steal my key so I made sure that didn't happen (how, I have no idea). Cut to that evening when I come home and everything is in its place so yay time travel.

And then I woke up because the father was calling to make sure I was up for the first of my early morning calls.

So... the important question here is - is the past tense of dream dreamt? Or dreamed?

Peekaboo

There was a girl I used to go to school with who I used to occasionally speak to because we were at the time both applying for colleges in the US. We weren't friends per se, and moved in very different circles, but our applications were grounds for conversation at the very least. She once mentioned to me she wanted to major in mathematics, and then become a professor in a university. She was quite bemused when I thought this was a very cool idea, because most apparently didn't think so.

Right after school, when I took the momentous decision to take up psychology, and follow the career path of becoming a psychologist/counsellor, I was advised against this by everyone. Literally. Family, friends, pretty much everyone who knew me told me I wasn't cut out for it and that I shouldn't do this.

Which is probably the reason I decided I will do this.

She, on the other hand, was the only person who didn’t say any such thing – mainly, I suspect, because she didn’t really know all that well. At the time, however, we had both laughed and talked about how we’ll both go down these paths and show the world we’re right.

However, as we all know, while studying for my counselling paper month before my final year exams, going through characteristics of a good counsellor made me realize that I really wasn’t cut out for it. It took me another two years to get convinced I should enter the field I am in right now, and I’m still not entirely show I know exactly what I do want in life.

She, I recently discovered, did major in math, but is now working in an investment firm somewhere.

Have you read the book Aparajito by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee?

No, you probably wouldn't have heard of this book. It's the sequel to Pather Panchali by the same author. I only know of these books because I love Satyajit Ray's Feluda stories, and while reading his biography I discovered how he had made a trilogy of movies based on these two books.

I read the book two years ago, and quite liked the book. It's a simple story, about a time none of us can probably relate to; after all, a scholarship of two rupees is, well, laughable these days.

But there are parts of it which I think I related to a great deal; particularly since these are things I've been wondering about some time now. When we're in school and college, many of us are full of dreams - to make it big in life, to change the world, to make a difference. Yet, how many of us actually see those dreams come true? We fall into the monotony of juggling our personal and professional lives, and that's all life becomes. Those dreams get buried somewhere, to be thoughts of rather wistfully on occasion, but buried away for the most part.

Apu, the protagonist of Aparajito, on the other hand, never gave up on these dreams. He never attained them, but the idealism of his adolescence never left him either.

How many of us can say that?