Dreams, January 2016

2nd January 2016

• I find the ring of the pressure cooker which fits. [the one i had had fallen loose and i was not able to fit it back that night]
• Gi, childhood friend falls into a mud puddle in front of me. Her father whom i hate stands watching and says something to me.

3rd January 2016

• Dreamed that in some statement that i gave in court there was inconsistency and i was questioned based on that.
• Another dream in which S Choudhari, one of the professors who got suspended for sexual harassment charges had summoned all of us direction students in a room. He was very well dressed and he said what the charges against him were. Then he pointed to three female students including me in class and said that he knew that it was we who had complained. 
• In another dream Jay was trying hit on me saying that i was always his true love 
 

21st January 2016

• A dream in which i brushed against Han's (junior) hands. Looked like we liked each other. 

27th January 2016

• A dream in which N. Sahay was there. He was going to the ICC Chairperson saying that he had got a signature from some high authority, probably a professor. I see this and conclude that it is O. Hazra who has signed in his favour. ICC Chairperson doesn't acknowledge the paper. O Hazra is again teaching us and doing her bullying. Sethuvamma tries to protest.

Dreams, December 2015

• Ms Priya [Math teacher from higher secondary school] in the dream. She had three children. I picked one of them up. She said she had had four. Then i deduced that one had died. Quadruplets. There was a train catching scene. Running behind moving train. I catch it. 
• Crazy dream about Sethuvamma murdering a child. In the new house or something. Then there is Deep, junior, who is in the mes and gets emotional and says thank you to me. Then i turn to him as if to whisper and kiss him then. He is very moved. Then there is house warming kind of thing where all relatives have come. They are all helping. I can't do anything properly thinking about the girl she killed and put in a trunk in some bedroom. Scene of Hari [junior] coming on a motorbike. It is pouring and yet i lie on the ground in the rain and bawl. Aware of the possibility of my nipples which are hard due to cold showing, my breasts showing in the rain. I just couldn't stop thinking of the girl she killed and just lay there and cried. 
• 25th Decmber 2015, Night.
  I am at Vai Vow's room. I see that there is a thief inside. I wait for him to come out. He does and i see it is Pal, a junior. He is ashamed and takes a rod like thing, a mop or something which he had stolen from the room to hit me. I ask him to please not kill me. Vai Vow arrives. He aims the rod at Vai Vow. We don't speak anything but cower in fear. Pal doesn't have the strength to kill us. He drops the mop and leaves. I get up and run behind him. I hug him tight and say that it is all alright. He cries but doesn't say anything. I tell him that he can sleep in my room that night. Vai Vow and i go to my room with Pal. When i wake up i see Vai Vow next to me. By then i have started thinking that i am with Jai, my ex lover. I get up and when i am about to say goodbye to Pal i see that Jai is also leaving with him. I call out to him. Jai, Jai, where are you going. He turns and i see that it is not Jai, it is a junior whose name i don't know. Pal laughs an evil laugh and says that it was fun for both of them to rape me. He says that that would shut me up about his robberies.
  I am next seen with the chairperson of the sexual harassment committee of the institute. She is giving me confidence to fight against the juniors who raped me. I have to appear for a medical examination. I go to a lot of places with her for the purpose. At one mall i see that Jai is working and he says that the ride on the elevator is free of cost for him because he works there. I ask something about the possibility of him testifying for me. The dream dissolves or fades out of memory. It was terrifying. 
• Mother comes into the room when i am taking bath. I am naked and embarrassed and ask her to please go out. She stands there and tries to talk to me. I beg her to please go out because i am naked. She doesn't. I feel very helpless.
  Vai Vow said that the same night, i shouted, 'Daivame! [god!] how did you do that? He asked, 'What?', I said, 'Not you, Debja Ni', 'What did she do?', he asked, and i said, 'She sung this malayalam song so well.' He asked me which song and i even sang it. 

Documentary Diaries #14: Nth Dream

I have got used to dreams about film making. On Holi day, 2015 i woke up to a rather peculiar dream about Florence Madeira. In it D Jeet, NN and i were again at Madeira and Co. This time we had gone with a cut Aalyalam had made with the available rushes. I showed it to her and she responded to me. She gave the interview i was after. From it i learned that she was a striptease artist. She also gave erotic conversations on phone for money. There were more than two women who worked under her. In the dream Florence was afraid of men. I didn't like it one bit and woke up to the festival of colours.


Documentary Diaries #15: Patch Shoot but not Patch Shoot

Appachan Dream

I had to write about her because i loved her. When in pain i mostly think of her and her pain. Love always came with pain. She was love the way she was also pain.
There was, for me, one love which did not hurt except in death. I never speak of it to anybody. Even when in love i hesitate to share Appachan. Appachan was mine and he was not to be shared with anything related to pain. He never hurt me and his love was precious.

For the past two days i have been dreaming of Appachan, my grandfather. Appachan, who gave me reading, his many word games, who said that i could use his lines and it still wouldn't be plagiarism (he chucked copyright away much before i learned the term), who knew meanings of all words i asked him while i sat with a book and he with another, who said gadget meant കുന്ത്രാണ്ടം and made me laugh yet understand what it meant, who sung me to sleep, who read me to sleep, with whom i slept for the most part of my childhood, who said that my arm on his back was like a feather.

Appachan, who grew up in Veethulikkunnu, Kunnamkulam, Kerala. Twenty years of his life there before he left for Bombay. Like how later his grandchild left for Kolkata after twenty years in Kozhikode. He gave all of those twenty years to me with his stories of Veethulikkunnu which got its name because of the shape the hill was in. A broad chisel. He lived in a house which was named Hillview by himself and his brother. They had a sister who died of cancer when she was 20. There was a cemetery behind the house which was close to the church. All of my dead are buried there. Most of my love went to people there.

When Appachan was a little boy one of his uncles gifted him a tennis ball. Yellow and bouncy, the children loved it. Their evenings which were usually of football turned around to new games with the little yellow ball. A happy little thing, unlike the tattered cloth ball they had earlier. One of those days the happy ball bounced up a path they failed to foresee. It bounced its way to the cemetery. Past the Kanjiramaram (Snake-wood) and the iron gate which must not have been rusted then. They looked for the ball, all of them and Appchan did in increased desperation. He loved the ball so. They never got it.

When he told me this story i tried comforting him saying 'It's a vast place. It could have been anywhere in there. Not your fault that you couldn't find it'. He smiled. His upper lip had a small bump. I once tried getting one such by biting my lip ritualistically. It bled and gave me no bump. I got in the habit of biting my lips till they bled. Still no bump. So he smiled his bumpy lipped smile and said 'No, it's not that. Nothing and nobody who went in there ever returned'.

His sister didn't. His brother didn't. His son, my father, didn't. His wife, Amma, didn't. He didn't, like how his tennis ball didn't.

Kaanjiram (കാഞ്ഞിരം) bears poisonous fruit. That is the tree which stood guard to the cemetery. It has been a few years since i visited the place but i can feel its shadow on me. Once when we visited the place with Appachan and Amma we spotted a peacock there. It cawed and fled when it saw us. On that hill where a man spent twenty years of his long life of 89 years was where his perakkutty (grand child) sprouted wings to soar her skies of sadness. Kaanjiram shed its fruit. I was earth and took the poison in. The casuarina trees (ചൂളമരം) up there made for the strange music to which i danced. Oh all my life was one stolen line which Appachan wrote. No copyright. A captain-less ship.

Kunju Thalona once made a painting of me and Appachan which said everything about us. That was how i slept beside him. I would place my arm around him and ask if it bothered him. That was when he would say it was light as a feather. That was why i asked him that every time i hugged him. He kept a torch beside him on the window sill. On it were other things as his medicine box, his fine toothed comb and always a book. My years of blissful sleep were the ones in which i slept beside him. Never after that have i had unperturbed sleep.

Appachan and i. Painting by Kunju Thalona

Last night i had the second consecutive dream about him. I don't remember the first one. In my dream i had made a music video with some of my photographs on instagram. There were a lot of dogs and cats. I was shooting. I shot a lot of footage which i could use in some film i was making. Later i saw that one of the kittens was killed by a dog. I witnessed that murder. I shot it. I held the dead kitten and i was bloody. A lot of animals were dying around me and the Pink Floyd like music was playing all the while. Then i saw my photographs being projected on sky. The closest to the music i heard would be High Hopes by Pink Floyd. I ran. I ran to Appachan like how i used to in my childhood when i got the spellings wrong and Amma ran behind me with drumsticks to spank me. Appachan was on a chair in a room under the ground which i learned was where we lived. There was a film camera there. Purnendu da who took care of cameras in the institute was there too, dusting it. Appachan spoke to me and i started laughing. I saw D Jeet there in some time.

When i woke up i only had blood in my head. All that blood from all those dead animals. A trail of blood which led to our house under the ground. We were marked, Appachan and i. Oh my!

Documentary Diaries #13 Dreaming On

The anti-depressants i am taking ensure good sleep. The first time in years i hit the bed around 11 p.m yesterday. In the sleep i again dreamed of Florence. D Jeet, NN and i were at Madeira Undertakers and Co. again. I approached Florence for an interview. I was hopeless. Thought she would dismiss me like always. She didn't and on the contrary started speaking in length about all things her. I made sure that NN was capturing sound. When i turned to D Jeet i realized that he didn't have a camera with him. I was shocked. I asked him what he was doing and he said that we could just make use of the sound. I had a panic attack but continued speaking to Florence.

I am yet to approach her in reality. I am scared. I hope she talks.

Documentary Diaries #14: nth Dream

Documentary Diaries#12: Another Nightmare

12the February 2015

Dreamed that Florence was actually a man and that she was fooling me all the while. Her (now his) accomplice was his lawyer. Both of them were evading me for a long time because they were soon going to get away from the place. There was chess. There was me looking at Florence who now had a clean shaven face. I looked her (her for me) in the eye for a long time to to comprehend what was going on. And when i understood what it was all about, that familiar feeling rose inside me. Of losing everything. I felt that twice last year and i felt it in my dream yesterday. It's a pity that i am being followed by that even in sleep.

It was around 5 a.m when i hit the bed yesterday. I got up with a start after this dream. Was relieved that it was only a dream. I wanted to write it down in all its detail. There was nothing on the bed. I couldn't get up.

In the morning i was reminded of it only when i was editing last day's blog post on Bhawanipore burial. Had forgotten most of the details. It was better that way. Details in nightmares are the most horrendous things. I still remember the curve of a little girl's smile from a dream which scared me when i was in third standard. She was a witch.

Florence was a man in my dream and i felt cheated. Betrayed. Lost.
I am waiting for it to be the end of February to see her again and attempt talking to her.
Till then i will try and dream less.

Documentary Diaries#13: Dreaming On

Documentary Diaries #5 I Have a Dream

31st January 2015

During the night of 30th or morning of 31st i had a dream.
I dreamed that Florence shut us off from Madeira Undertakers building. I saw that the ground floor where the bodies were kept had been made over to function as an office alone. She cut off the passage between her house upstairs and the office by placing a huge wooden safe in front of the door in front of the stairs. I saw this and was very upset. I was worried how i was going to shoot her if she was to behave that way. Her mood swings were something.
When i was thinking that and talking to D Jeet and NN, Florence came close to me and said that there were some people who wanted to talk to me. I asked her who they were and she said that they were all her helpers in the business. I remember being hesitant for a moment and looking at D Jeet. She didn't allow him in and took me first and said that she would go back for NN. A peculiar thing i remember she did was pull me in by my pants. She in fact slid two fingers in the waist band of my pants and hauled me in, one could say. Like how you see sometimes is shown in cartoons. Angry school teachers to impertinent students.
Inside that room, there were men.
They sexually assaulted me.
Don't remember the details again.
I do remember crying for help. Then when the men had all got what they wanted i remember thinking how to expose them. It was terrible. What i felt in the dream. 
They were going to get NN in when i woke up.
We didn't shoot that day.
The next day, NN fell down the stairs while shooting and sprained her ankle. We stopped shoot till she left for Mumbai where her house is on 3rd February 2015.

Documentary Diaries #6: A Fall and a Cemetery 

Impending Death and Another Nightmare

I was in the spell of 'Lost in Translation', the film, yesterday. Went to bed at 4:30 am which was quite an improvement, i should say. My room is gloomy now. My radio stopped working and i have discarded my usual songs so that they don't bring back memories. Songs selected by strangers are only what i can take now, i feel. Music-less sleep is difficult for me. I feel cold.
But from the past two days NN and i have been worrying not about people, but about an animal. Dee Bee, a dog that we took care of for some time and we loved. Dee Bee was found by NN and her friend Mal on the road. Mal liked her very much and took to campus. After the initial fondness he left her to NN to be fed. When Mal went to his home in Pune, NN took care of her. I grew fond of dogs because of NN who loves all animals. There were a lot of dogs on campus. Kolkata itself is home to a lot of homeless dogs. And people.

Dee Bee was the most energetic thing i had ever seen. In my sadness and pain when i saw her jump up and down and pounce upon me whenever my feet as much as brushed against the hostel gate, i felt a little better. Two minutes a day became bearable because of her. Piku, a kitten i had found and brought to campus was in the room along with Penny, also a dog Mal had brought out of impulsive fondness. Coffee, our long time cur cure was there too. So our room had three dogs and a kitten. We were scared they would just rip her into pieces and gobble her up. But they made friends. They played all day. Piku even started sucking Dee Bee's teat looking for mother's milk.

Dee Bee and Piku. Photo: NN

Our room was meant for the accommodation of only one person and we ourselves are amazed at how we are surviving here, us two women. With the dogs and cat included we didn't have space to even breathe. I tried giving my kitten to one of the professors. Then i decided to leave for home and as usual, a crazy idea popped up right before the 48 hours long journey. I made up my mind to take Piku home. I did. The journey was hell for her and for me but now she is happy in Kozhikode, eating five mathis (sardines) at a go and making Sethuvamma believe she is human. Sethuvamma doesn't talk about me on phone any more. Only talks of what Piku did that day. 

Dee Bee was sent to Kolkata Municipal Corporation to be neutered. Penny too. Dee Bee caught a viral infection there and has been sick since. She can hardly walk. Looks malnourished and gets scared at the slightest sound. NN took her to a vet and was told that she had distemper. Which meant she wouldn't survive, in all probability.
I think of people dying all the time. I never thought of Dee Bee's death. Not fair.

So there was the gloom of an impending death added to the room. Throughout the night Dee Bee made sounds of pain, unknown suffering and fear. I would jump up from sleep every time she whined or made a sound. When i slipped deeper into somnolence, i had the nightmare.

I was being sexually abused. Thankfully, i don't remember the details. But i do remember the man telling me 'You are liking it. Don't lie to me'. I remember people around me blaming me for having got assaulted. Them repeating that i had liked what he did and that i was making up the 'abuse story'.

Woke up with a start and earlier than i intended to. Dee Bee was dying. There was no radio. I had to repair it as soon as i could.

Some nights are like that. There would only be a sleep which was not fully one. It would be as if you thought you had yourself protected under the thick blanket. While shifting a foot slips out, and lies like that, cold, for the rest of the night giving you nightmares. Sleep, my foot. 

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.

Fifteenth

In the dream i was again shuttling a lot between Kozhikode and Kochi. As is what happens usually, started talking to the man at the ticket counter. We talked more and more. Once while discussing Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code, i saw a familiar glint in his eyes and a curling of his smile. It was so familiar that even intricate details of the 'there-she-goes-again love story' that would follow unfurled before me in my mind's eye. Scared, i was. The tone of the dream changed in an instant. The railway station was now trapping me. It felt as if the rails were crawling up my back and clutching my throat with inexplicable strength.

Then i was at his place in Kakkanad. A young man, probably my cameraperson and a girl i knew and had nothing to do with from highschool were there. It was a sleepover. I was scared again. There were calls. On the other end of the phone was a voice. The voice didn't want me to die. 'I won't die', i said. I had to run.
There was a pond. I was shooting. I took pebbles and held it in my palm. I was losing it, said the coldness resting on my palm. I looked at him. He looked sad. Puzzled. Knotted eyebrows, tense heart. I wanted to kiss him. Didn't know how to. I had to run.

The highschool girl's dad was there to pick her. My cameraperson was nowhere to be seen. I had to make it to the station and i shouldn't die. Big responsibility. But i had the voice, i had the voice, i thought. I ran, with all the air that was left in my lungs, not turning back to look at him. He had to disappear so that i could live. Damn! He would be at the counter in the station. I panicked.

I got on the train without a ticket. It would be night when i reached home. 'I won't die', i told the voice, in my mind thinking of dying and not dying. I saw myself bleeding. A bleeding body dropping off the train while it crossed a bridge over a river. Over a river which would have cold pebbles. Over a river which would have cold pebbles which could sit smugly on my palm. A thin streak of red climbing upwards from my wrist to the sky. Fairy tale stuff. A jack to climb the red beanstalk.

It was the 'there-she-goes-again love story'.
Dreams are worse than ever. I should stop sleeping during the day.