Sunday 18 January 2015

Daddy-Daddy Dream

17.1.2015 Saturday

Once again messed up days in my head. On friday, sent a mail to Sethuvamma asking her what saree she was going to wear to church on Sunday. It was only when i crossed the bridge over the pond between the hostel and my department that i understood it was a working day. The place was abuzz with students and staff. Days like that make me feel like someone who dressed wrong for an occasion. As if i wore a lehenga to an interview. That was how i was yesterday when my mind was set to battle a sunday and i got to know it was only a meaker, less pretentious, saturday. I lost the day to dilly-dallying and procrastination. At 4 pm when i looked out of my balcony i was surprised to see that it was dark. That usually happened at around 5. 30pm. I had four more hours till the badminton games started. At 6 when i got out to buy cigarettes i was again surprised to hear the sound of rackets against shuttlecock. 'Why were they playing so early!'. A look at my watch for the first time in the day made it worse. It was 8 pm. Suddenly it was all clear. The new OS installation had upturned my system's clock settings and it wasn't IST that was being displayed on it. Phew! It couldn't get worse. Or so i thought.

For over five years i was running my computers on GNU/Linux. Being a complete non-techie this was proving to be more difficult that i imagined especially after i installed Chakra. I was in love with everything Chakra but just wasn't competent enough to handle it. I had to rush to my techie friends online every time i faced a problem which was quite often. Decided to shift back to windows. The pirated version of Windows 8.1 which i am currently using is, however, proving to be a much bigger headache. Privacy is non existent and is a luxury. It is the most clumsy piece of technology i have laid hands upon. Thinking of shifting to Windows 7.

Between badminton and a half-hearted download of Windows 7 was when i spotted my heartthrob Fahadh Fazil starring 'God's Own Country' online. The film was usual mallu drama and offered nothing new. It was another sleepless night. It was 5 am. My roommate was up boiling water for coffee and our attempt to find happiness in the latest break-up stories on campus proved unfruitful. Nobody was as miserable as us. Our sugar was over. NN found a bag of sugar which had spilled on the floor full of dog fur, cigarette ash and weed leftovers. Like the last survivors of a lost island we gathered just enough for two cups of coffee from it. 'Dirty is good' we said to ourselves and sounded like a Surf Excel advertisement.

Dawn broke at 5:45 and i decided to go for a jog. That made me feel good. Anybody who saw me would think i woke up dutifully that early.
It was 7 am when i finally hit the bed.
And it was then that i dreamed of Papaji, my father.

In the dream i was with my father and his friends. One of them looked like John Abraham, the film maker from Kerala who is much worshiped for reasons unknown to me. They were all as old as i am now. It must have been 70's. I was an anachronic piece. We were all on an adventure trek to some place which looked like Wayanad to me. I was there, like i was their classmate. It was as if only i knew that Papaji was my father. There was a rope bridge that all of us had to cross and i almost fell. Everyone drank beer on a mountain top. The men were all talking and i watched papaji all the while. It was intriguing to watch something that i could never have seen in real life. Ah, exactly what dreams were put in people's heads for, i guess.

It was recently on my way home from Kolkata that i read Alexander Raskin's 'When Daddy was a Little Boy'. Russian literature which once flooded Indian bookstores is still a pleasant (and painful for pessimists like me) nostalgia for most people. Here is a blog dedicated solely for them. You will be able to find the pdf version of the book (Malayalam translation) which i read there. Well, i felt i was in one such book, 'When Daddy was an Angry Young Man'.

When i woke up it was Sunday, this time, for real.

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