Bill's posts with tag: dreams
I've just finished writing Call Of The Khokkosh (originally titled Guardian At The Gate, which title I've retained for the first chapter only) - all 24 chapters of it.
To remind you - the first six chapters are here for all readers, and the next five only for contacts, but only temporarily. Within 48 hours I intend to pull all except for the first three, so if you want to read any part of it but haven't - read it now.
I have been sending enquiries out to as many literary agents as possible, and so far three have asked me to send portions to them for reading. Let's see how it turns out.
In the meantime, I have sacrificed food and sleep to write this book. I began writing it on 29 July, so it's rather less than a month since I started. I shall therefore be taking today off and not touch the computer till tomorrow evening.
Last night I almost didn't sleep. When I dozed off I dreamt of a museum where, upstairs, monsters resembling Jabba the Hutt's pet rancor in Return Of The Jedi picked up human beings by the legs like lollypops and ate them alive. The stairs were too narrow for the people to get down. It was a fun dream. Lots of screaming.
I need to sleep tonight, but am feeling charged up, so am not sure if I will.
Anyway, good night, all.
 These days I sleep very little, and when I do, I generally have long, complicated, and multi-themed dreams, most of which vanish from my memory on waking.
A bit of last night's (or, to be precise, this morning's) dream stuck in my mind, though.
You've heard of the favela tours some Rio de Janeiro tour groups promote? Well, it was something like that.
Those of you who are Indian will know this; those who aren't will probably have heard of this: the Great Indian Habit of urinating in public, behind every tree and against every wall.
So in my dream there was this group of European tourists (assorted ages and of both sexes, but mostly young and male) who were being taken on a Pissing Tour of Indian cities. Yes, you got that right - a pissing tour of Indian cities, where they got to line up behind trees and pee in public against grey concrete walls. They looked pretty enthusiastic doing it too, queuing up for their turn. Liberated.
Well: tourists pay big money to visit foreign beaches and walk around almost naked, while the locals walk around those same beaches almost naked also. But the locals do it because they don't have and can't afford the clothes the tourists pay to take off, and tour groups make a living from slumming tourists, so why not a Pissing Tour, huh? While in Rome do as the Romans do, etc., and Profit is King.
I'm offering my idea, gratis, to any tour group that might be interested.
Another awful dream.
I'm walking along the street. It's evening, dark and wet with rain, and the streetlights are all shut off. I'm not alone on the street, but the other people are, like the old Pet Shop Boys song goes,
The city's quiet, I go for a walk alone
Strangers in overcoats hurry on home
I see something grey on the street, splayed out, and at first I think it's a scrap of grey felt cloth. I walk past it and - I don't quite know why - look back. And I see it's roadkill, a grey cat that's obviously been run over by a truck.
Back in 1999, during the Kargil "war" against Pakistan, I saw a picture of a Pakistani soldier killed by a mortar shell. His face and head had been pretty much flattened. All these years later, I still don't understand why a family magazine would want to print that picture, or some others they did. Anyway, I mention this because that cat looks a bit like that soldier. It's crushed absolutely flat. Even the eyes are flattened, still open and staring upwards. Only one side of the head, one ear, and about half the tail are not flattened.
I turn away and begin walking on when I hear a sound. I stop on the spot. It's a mew. And it comes again. And it's the cat, and it isn't dead, and it's crying for help. Crushed flat, it's not dead and it's crying for help.
For a moment the urge to walk on is so strong I almost give in to it. But if I do, I shall break into a run and keep running, trying to leave that mew behind. I turn back. I look for a stone big enough, or any other weapon, anything I can use to put that cat out of its misery. And it keeps looking at me out of its crushed eyes and it keeps crying for me to help it.
And I wake up.
While I have never tried to hide the fact that I detest cats, I still haven't got over this one. I've never killed anything while driving, but if I ever do (with the exception of a human, because humans deserve killing), I'll never drive again.
 When I came back to the mead hall silence had fallen at last. Smoke drifted in eddies below the ceiling, and the shattered furniture lay tumbled where it had been thrown during the struggle, and afterwards.
I looked around indifferently. A couple of my men lay snoring on the floor, overcome with exertion and wine. I stepped over one of them. A yellow stain of vomit spread over the floor by his head; it matted his beard. His right hand still gripped his sword, and it was crusted with blood. I was careful not to touch him. He would lash out with it instinctively if disturbed. A few headless corpses still lay in the corner, where we had thrown them after the battle was over. The heads now decorated the palisade round the village, beards ruffled by the wind, eyes dried to dullness. The women lay where they had fallen. White skin and blond hair mixed liberally with sticky black patches of clotted blood. Most were already dead; a few still moved a little, a tremor of a hand or foot betraying them. I walked past them with distaste. While I do understand that women are the spoils of war and should be used as such, I pride myself on being above such instincts. I was looking for the body of the chief of the enemy clan. I had taken his head myself, in fair combat, and had spiked it myself on a post outside the mead hall, but I wanted his sword. I had noticed it while we had fought, long and wickedly sharp, much better than mine. My sealskin boot touched a woman’s hand then, and she sat up suddenly, covering her bare breasts instinctively with one hand. She cried out and rolled over, trying to crawl away from me, but went the wrong way and bumped into my knees. I tried to sidestep, but she clutched desperately at my knees, trying to pull herself erect, and I realised then why she apparently could not see me – someone had taken a knife and slashed her across the eyes. Her sockets were full of clotted blood. Something happened then. Maybe it was the smoke and the smell of wine and blood in the room; maybe it was the tension that had built up all the while since before the battle began. I kicked her savagely, knocked her down, and when she screamed I kicked her again. She tried to back away on hands and her heels, and I threw myself down on top of her, ripping at her, thrusting away into her in a joyless explosion, wanting to hurt and hurt. Her screams were silenced immediately, but I thrust and thrust at her, smashing her down with my body, unable to sate my anger and my wish to hurt until she gave a last shudder and lay still. Afterwards I found the old chief’s sword and cut off her head. I was a warrior, and the sword was a tool; one had to make sure it was sharp enough to do its job. It was.
 Last night I was strapped on a gurney and readied for execution.
I have no idea what my crime was, and no idea if I’d committed any crime at all, but I knew perfectly well that I was about to die by lethal injection. (I’d read up on lethal injection, of course, as part of my usual researches into topics in which I have any interest, and I knew what to expect … although, personally, I’d rather be executed by firing squad, if the time comes.) So I was lying on my back, a strapped arm stretched out, feeling needles being stuck in it and watching, through a long pane of glass, the witnesses (I really have never seen the point of having witnesses in an American execution. What the hell is it supposed to be, an execution or retribution? They used to charge admission to public hangings!) watching me from a rather brightly lit room. I especially remember one of them, a white man in a blue suit with a thick white moustache, who was watching me intently. I have no idea who he was. Someone – presumably a doctor – was explaining to me what would happen, in what sequence the drugs would be injected and what would happen to my body, its reactions as it died. Only in one detail did his description differ from the actual. He said I would probably become incoherent and begin making shrill noises. I remember this very well. They injected my arm. I felt liquid pour into my vein. The room dimmed, spun, and went dark. At this point I separated from my physical body. Oh, I knew it was happening. I could feel myself get up and walk away, but my body remained on the gurney. It wasn’t that I’d died – I was still very alive, I knew, but I also knew that very shortly I was going to be dead. I no longer saw my surroundings, the execution room and the voyeurs behind the window. I was back in my own home, walking through the empty rooms, empty of furniture, empty of everything but memories. The afternoon sun shone, I remember, golden through a dusty window. I wondered where my dogs were, and I desperately wanted them to come to me and jump up and lick me goodbye. I needed a farewell kiss. I wondered if I had begun making the noises yet, and I wondered at precisely what point I would begin to die. What would happen when I finally died, would I even feel it? I woke at that point. This was – again – not the best dream ever, although I will probably turn it into a short story soon enough. I wonder why it is that my death figures so often in my dreams, and in such disturbing ways.
 ‘Nother one bites the dust ‘Nother one bites the dust And ‘nother one gone, and ‘nother one gone ‘Nother one bites the dust. (Queen, Another One Bites The Dust) Propaganda finds its own way, even into dreams. Just so long as one remembers what it is, the results can be entertaining. Last night I dreamt I was watching a programme on either BBC or CNN (the second line of the Bushist propaganda machine after Fox News). The presenter was talking about how he would show live on TV how the US Air Force was pulverising insurgent positions in Iraq. The scene shifted to a hillside path, completely empty of human or animal life. It didn’t look like Iraq. It looked like a temperate zone, pine trees and all. American fighters flew by, low overhead, and one could hear the sound of cannon fire. The presenter was still talking of how everyone could see how the tide was being turned against insurgency in Iraq when cannon shells began smashing into the empty path, raising earth in fountains but achieving nothing else. The presenter went, “Ah, um, we shouldn’t take the incompetence of one pilot as an indicator of how things are really going…” The scene on the screen shifted to a shanty town, make largely of unpainted corrugated sheets, on the same sort of hillside. Red dust lay thick over everything. Men in high-visibility white uniforms and helmets, custom-made for TV viewing and strongly reminiscent of Indian traffic cops (as in the photo), were everywhere. They were armed with century-old Lee Enfield .303 rifles and shotguns or weren’t armed at all. “Now,” the presenter said with satisfaction, “we’re going to see an actual insurgent encampment smashed by USAF firepower. No slip-ups this time.” On cue, the jets roared by overhead and shells and bombs came down like rain. The earth in front of a crouching group of “insurgents” exploded in spurts of dust, and the white uniformed men all fell down in heaps just as in the Hollywood Vietnam films. The presenter yelled in excitement, the jets roared over and away, and the “dead” insurgents promptly got up again and dusted their clothes. The presenter was speechless. Not a peep out of him.
 The Wild East… I’m sitting in a restaurant with a couple of guys in Stetsons and the usual cowboy gear. They ignore me, although I’m in a Stetson, in cowboy gear, and carry six guns just like them. I’m resentful. I’m not their sidekick. I’m nothing. There is a drumming of hooves on the street and a lot of cowboys ride past. The two beside me perk up. “That’s the … gang,” one says. “They’re here to shoot up X’s place.” “We’re going to have to fight them,” the other says. “You go round this side and I’ll come round the other side and take them from both ends.” They go out and fire in the air a few times to draw attention and bring the enemy out on the street. I follow them. The street is one right here in this town, a place called Jingkieng, but in my dream there are no cars. It’s horse territory and there are a few “parked” like cars along the street. I can see cowboy-dressed characters standing here and there, looking around, all on this side of the street. The two guys have already disappeared, trying to make their way by back streets to come up from the sides and take these people. Well, I’m no worse by any standard. I sprint across the street and low down, fast as I can go, charge along the other side. I’m moving at least as fast as a racing car and the enemy is turning to look at me. My Colt is out, and I’m firing, and some of the enemy go down. No one is as yet firing back. I dive behind a lamp post for cover. The enemy is firing now. One guy goes screaming up the street and (everyone is on foot; nobody mounted) comes running back at me, firing, yelling abuse at his own men for not backing him up. I draw down on him and fire coolly. He goes down as if his legs have been yanked from underneath. The Big Boss of the gang has come out and stands shooting at me. I fire back and some more of the enemy fall. There is no recoil and I never have to reload, in the best traditions of Indian movies. Where the fuck are the two guys who began this whole thing? I scramble up a short road and up over a bridge. The enemy’s bullets are coming over my shoulders – very, very slow, little silver balls that fall softly on the blacktop like raindrops. I throw myself down in grass and sight carefully at the enemy who keep on coming. Suddenly there is a girl who comes in front and begins shooting at me. She is in white shirt, khaki jodhpurs and hat. I shoot her calmly, she goes down. Other girls appear to drag her up. I keep shooting them. She must have been somebody very important. The Big Boss’ daughter? Even as I keep killing the girls they keep coming to get shot in order to save her. One of the girls I see looks just like Sam Muhr. I’m about to shoot her when suddenly there is a blow at my back and I roll over to find the Big Boss standing over me with a gun. Sneaky bastard. I see his yellow face with great clarity, black eyes, wispy grey moustache (in two widely separated parts) and all. He is taking his time to kill me, savouring my horror and fear. I point my gun up and fire instinctively. A small hole opens just below his right eye. Slowly, like a chopped tree, he leans over sideways and begins to topple. I run. The bullets keep coming like so much silver rain, and I keep on running.
When I was a child, just about starting school, I used to have this dream. it recurred in various forms at least once a week (and as it seems to me now sometimes it was every day). I don't think it came back that many times...as soon as I adjusted to school it disappeared. All in all, maybe a month or two, but I still remember it.
It went like this: There was a huge vehicle that was intent on killing me. it could take any form, a bus, a truck, a helicopter; it could even disguise itself as a table or cupboard if necessary. And all it wanted was to do me in. It could sneak indoors unseen, it could snatch me from any part of the world and bring me before it, terrified and cringing, it could do anything at all. Night after night after night.
It was called "The Big One."
The only place I was safe, the only one, was the kitchen. My mother's domain, and safe with her I guess it was. The Big one had no power over me when I was in the kitchen, mother or not.
Well, that's pretty explicably Freudian.
In the days before I first flew in a plane (at the age of 12) I used to have recurrent dreams about flying. I always managed to make it on to the plane but never could make the imaginative leap to taking off. Those dreams ended once I flew for the first time. Nowadays flying to me is so routine I no longer feel the slightest interest in it as an experience, of course.
And in those days when I was still a virgin I used to have these blazing erotic fantasy dreams that somehow never got to the actual point of intercourse...blue ball city, and nowadays long since relegated to the back of my mental shelf.
But there is one form of recurrent dream that is making a comeback. I see versions at least once a fortnight. I'll just describe last night's.
I'm back with my class in medical college, we've an examination coming up tomorrow. Everyone in class is busy studying. I take a look at what they're studying...it is important, after all, I'm taking the exam tomorrow as well. Uh...they've got terms I've never even heard of, and their books are well used and much annotated. What books?
Er...electronics.
Never even knew we have the subject.
Just how insecure am I?
Was it a self-destructive urge manifesting itself?
I think I have been thinking about big motorcycles too much. This one was a big customised job, but it was my own bike at the same time. I was driving downhill (there is this actual, steep road, between Smit and Shillong, from where you have a good panoramic view of Shillong, and I was driving down it). It's a steep road and easy to lose control unless you go in first or second gear. Instead, I lay back on my bike (it had high ape hanger handlebars and a sissy bar (backrest) ) with my head pointing up at the sky. i could feel the bike move. it must have been going on fourth or maybe in neutral, because it was going fast and I had no control at all. The feeling wasn't panic, not really, just...a sort of delicious helplessness. Next thing I knew there was a hairpin bend and a big lorry, yellow with black stripes, in front of me and I was heading straight for it (from the back). My handlebars had either vanished or else they were unlocatable, so I somehow (it happens in dreams) shifted my body so much that somehow the bike slid out from under the lorry. I was already under the lorry's body and looking up (said already that I was lying back on the sissy bar) at the bottom - which was extremely clean, like a waxed floor, and brown bordered with yellow with black >>>>s. somehow then i was back in town. Parked somewhere at the side of an empty road. it was late afternoon, slanting orange western sunlight out of a pinkish sky. I went into some alleys (no, I do not remember for what). When I emerged I was driving a car, and coming up from somewhere else. No, I don't know where I got the car from and I don't own a car anyway. In any case, when I got there, there was no bike. I'd locked it and put on the wheel clamp, so any attempt to steal it would have involved major cutting. What on earth? The car vanished. By now it was almost dark. I was looking up alleys and inside people's houses when I found myself up on a high, high staircase with steep walls all around and a dead end in front, so high that it was still getting sunlight while the lower alleys were dark. Giddy desires to jump off and find out what death felt like.
I ended the dream with some idea that someone known to me had put the bike in his house for safekeeping.
All during this dream I did not see a single human being, not even in the truck I almost drove under. And it was all in real time, with the setting sun and all - unusual in a dream.
But I want a bike like that.
 I found myself, in last night’s dreamscape, on my bike (in photo) in the middle of the evening. I’d just parked it on a street known to me. The street is lined on both sides with shops, but in my dream only one side was. The other side had space for parking. I’d just, as I said, parked when I saw a Maruti taxi backing up towards my bike. The driver was, somehow or other, on the left side of the vehicle (on my side, that is) and was leaning out of the window looking backwards and driving straight at my bike. I was yelling at him and pounding on his car but I might have been non-existent for all the good I was doing. He drove his car right over my bike, which disappeared underneath it. All that was visible was a broken pannier. Somehow or other the car shifted itself entirely over to the side (the right of the bike) and I picked up the bike and began examining it. The car seemed entirely undamaged. The bike’s damage was remarkable in its mildness – several deep scrapes on the bodywork, and the smashed pannier. Not even the headlights and indicators had been damaged. I was preparing to shout at the taxi driver when this big fat policeman came up. He asked what was going on. I told him. He says "But backing up is not illegal."
My answer: "But flattening my bike is illegal, right?"
"Well, yes…" He went round the bike with me, and I pointed the damage out to him. Suddenly I realised that the taxi had taken this opportunity to drive off. I rounded on the cop because he had allowed it and discovered he had not even taken the number down.
He says then: "Don’t worry, you come with me." He takes me over to a shop and vanishes inside (Note: some of you may know of a certain woman who had a role in a family crisis when I was a kid. In reality, it was this woman’s shop the cop disappeared into in the dream, although I did not remember it then). He suddenly came out, put a fifty rupee note in my hand and vanished. I was looking at the note and wondering what I was supposed to do with it when I realised the cop had done a total bunk; there was no sign of him at all. I guess the money was meant as compensation.
I don’t know whether the money was his own or taken from the woman in the shop.
OK, so these aren’t the best of times…but still.
Last night I dreamt I was executed by having my head chopped off. I don’t mean I was about to be executed or sentenced to be executed. I mean I was executed.
I have no memory of my crime, if there was a crime, or of sentence being imposed, but here is what happened…
I was in a room – the execution room – that looked just like the room in the Saddam Hussein cellphone video (it even had the cellphone video granular appearance, only the dominant shades were reddish, not green), except there was no noose. Instead there was some kind of leather pad on a stand, and I was made to kneel before it and my head was bent forward so my neck was stretched over it. I don’t know if there was a guillotine, but I rather think I was to be decapitated by the old method of the executioner’s axe. I don’t remember being scared. I don’t recall any emotions on my own part, in fact. I felt the hands stretching my neck; I heard the noises of people moving around me; and then I felt a blow on the back of my neck, very distinctly, like a slap. That was the end of the dream, of course – I defy anyone to sleep past his or her own execution.
But then – I guess – I fell asleep almost instantly again and this time I dreamt I had gone somewhere, far away, to another town, with the dogs, and I had put them in some kind of makeshift kennel. I’d gone looking around for some booking office where I could find tickets for the journey home (I was rather anxious to get them back, and anxious to be back myself). While looking around cigarette stalls and grocer’s stores for a booking hall, and being misdirected by everyone, I was shown – somehow or other – my own skull and severed vertebral column, lying on white cloth in a display case. I remember my own emotions that time, looking at my polished brown skull and the thin bones of my vertebrae – a sort of calm sorrow compounded with a feeling that was "You need not have used an axe to cut such thin bones; they’re as delicate as a chicken’s."
And then I woke up for good.
Obviously, this was not the best dream I have ever had.
Dreamt I was in jail. Now I knew I was in jail just for one night, but would be released in the morning. I have actually visited jail, once, but only as a visitor (when I was researching "Rainbow's End"). But my dream jail was nothing like the jail I saw. it was like a series of large and small interconnected rooms (whitewashed - dirty whitewash) with a bathroom at one corner.There were beds around, not placed in any particular order, but scattered, like a dormitory. The beds had covers in all sorts of different colours.When I was put in I was quite happy at the fact that I was one of just two people there - the other one was an old man on another bed. I put my stuff there on the bed - I even had my mobile and watch with me - and went to the bathroom. By the time I came back other people had begun coming in. I took my cell up and then I began talking (not on the cell) with one of the people who came (another old guy, but a friendly one, I think a Marwari or Bihari). Soon the place was so full I went to one of the side rooms and shut the door. In this room there were several beds, mostly occupied, but at least the lights were off unlike the main room which was blindingly brightly lit. I took my cell and watch off and dropped them down inside the front of my shirt so no one could steal them (yeah, I was clear headed enough for that). I got into bed and began talking to someone to my side, a young guy. In the meantime the noise in the main room became very loud. I went to see what was going on and found everyone in that room (and there were females too) were drinking, dancing, gambling. Some were throwing popcorn around. Some jail. I came back to bed to find that my place had been taken by someone else. Somehow my mobile and watch had disappeared from the inside of my shirt but I was not anxious, I knew I could find them. I knew they were safe. There were maybe five beds in that room occupied by six or seven people. I squeezed in somehow but could not get to sleep. In the morning I went back to the main room and found it empty except for the old man I had befriended the previous night. He was shaving at one of the beds from a mug hung on the bedpost. I had no razor or anything and was thinking of asking him to lend me his (I could feel a thick stubble) when I was released from prison by the act of waking up.
As I said, I keep getting these weird dreams these days.
I don't clearly recall the events of last night's dream - but if you check back my "Rollin" paintings - the "Rainbow's End" paintings on Multiply - it was set in a landscape that looked like the background to those two paintings. Green hills, winding roads, little tin roofed villages. I seem to have been travelling with various people, and the scenes shifted back and forth from day to night and back again at random. I am not even sure whether these were all one dream or a series of dreams with one common linked theme.
At some stage I seem to have been either been a spectator or an organiser of a rifle competition - certainly I was not shooting anything. This was after I along with some others had passed through a village and I had stayed for some time at a Catholic run house - a concrete building that was more like Lucknow than Meghalaya village, with a tiled floor. There was a Catholic priest who allowed me to use the loo and gave me a room to freshen up. Its floor was tiled like the bathroom.
Then there were some things that I don't recall clearly. There was shadow and sunset and some sort of food in an open air restaurant in the middle of the jungle and I seem to recall lovers against the setting sun - but then I am sure I dreamt that a while back, so I don't know if I re-dreamt it or if I'm just remembering the older dream.
Then I was at some stage back at the Catholic building with a certain old relative of mine. This old man is a sufferer of urinary tract trouble, and he made a run for the bathroom in the Catholic place, but the priest tried to stop him. I told him "He's with me and he is not well. Do you have any objection?" and the priest finally and most reluctantly agreed. Then I went into the bathroom (my relative had already disappeared from the dream) and after that the bedroom next to it i had used earlier. Suddenly there was water spraying everywhere up from the floor through spaces between the tiles. My pants, feet, jacket were soaked. At the same time my mother came into the room, made some comments (I have no idea what) I ignored and vanished (did not leave the room; she just exited my dream). Then the water stopped spraying. The priest told me that there was some sort of problem with the water plumbing and water was coming in both the bedroom and the bathroom, but it was controlled in the bedroom but not in the bathroom. I had just taken off my pants and shoes and socks to change them (it was broad daylight now and the window was open, showing a sunny hillside) when I found that the room had changed to some kind of office. There was a man sitting by the window, and beside me a settee, and before me a desk. The door opened and the priest and Condoleeza Rice came in. I knew this was my office and I had just been made ruler of whatever nation I was in. Obviously Rice had come to see that I knew my place and followed orders. In fact instead of a meeting what happened was that Rice and the priest began climbing on top of each other and locking lips. While I was talking about how stupid they were to the guy at the window and trying to put on my pants.
Good dream, uh? Only as I write this I seem to remember that the rifle tournament was at the end, not the beginning.
Darkness and the sound of wheels on iron.
I wake to the noise of the wheels and the swaying of the carriage. The train is dark, the lights are off, and people are sleeping everywhere - on the bunks, on the floor between the bunks, in the corridor. There are no lights at all except for the flashes of passing hamlets through the windows.
There are three of us together, in all that sprawling mass of humanity – the girl, the dad, and I. The girl is about my age, which would make her rather more than a girl, actually; the dad is asleep. He has a heart condition, I hear. As he almost never speaks there is little I can say about him. He is a Sikh, beyond middle age, but with suspiciously black hair. I have never met him before. She does not look Sikh, or even Punjabi in any way. Mixed blood, I guess, but I have never asked her. We are not lovers. We’re just friendly, but not even really friends.
We are going to Lucknow. For the moment I cannot remember the reason. I have made this journey many times before, on this train, but never like this, with the carriage plunged in darkness and people everywhere. I feel for my little blue bag, which is all the luggage I am carrying. It’s still there, at my side.
The train is already slowing down. It is running before time, because even in this season it surely can’t still be dark if it’s on schedule? I sit up, turn, and look out of the window. So far as I am able to see anything, it’s dark. But here, on the horizon, is the usual long line of lights, like pearls on a string. Yes. We are coming into town.
The platform’s edge slides past us. First the end cabin, lit by a dim yellow bulb; then the usual cold stretch of grey concrete under pale electric lights. The usual blanket huddled forms crouch where they are. The kiosks with shutters down; the few tea vendors, even at this early hour; but there are no passengers to get on, and when I wake the other two the three of us are the only ones to alight. We have to clamber over recumbent bodies to get out.
It is already grey dawn’s light outside when we emerge from the railway station, the mist is absent this morning. People are about, but not very many. We are hardly out when an autorickshaw drives up and stops in front of us. It’s no problem getting in. The luggage we have is hardly anything, and even the three of us side by side don’t overload the auto too much. Someone must have given the auto driver a hotel address; I know I didn’t. I must have drifted off to sleep despite the jolts – because when I wake we are climbing a steep, narrow strip of street. I say "steep" because the auto’s nose is pointed up at the sky; and I say "narrow strip" because it is; even the auto’s wheels are more off than on what is left of the macadam. I don’t remember any hill in Lucknow in all the years I have lived in that city Strange, strange, strange.
Suddenly, we aren’t climbing so steeply and we stop. It’s full daylight by now. To the right I see green, rolling hills, and suddenly there appears a lovely little lake with a jetty and rowboats already plying. Oh, how I want to go down to that lake and sit by the side and soak up the quiet. Later, I promise myself. Everything, as Disraeli said, will come if a man will only wait.
The hotel is right opposite the lake. Why does such a snazzy hotel have such a crummy approach road? It’s big, not very high but solid, with a lot of blue grey glass frontage and right in the centre a tall spiral of metal gridwork, painted red, green and yellow, reaching up high into the sky. A tubular glass elevator is moving up and down it.
I get out of the auto, leaving the girl to escort the dad out, and walk into the hotel to get us checked in, my small blue bag in my hand. I look down at myself. I have on a dark blue shirt. Odd – I haven’t worn this particular shirt in years. Below is a black T shirt, and…odd. Why am I feeling so strange? Oh heavens. Oh fuck. I am not wearing any pants! Below the T shirt, till my socks begin, all I have got on are my underpants. This is awful! Where the hell are my pants?
Think. No time for delay or hesitation, the uniformed doorman is giving me funny looks already. Good thing I’m often taken for a foreigner. Everybody knows foreigners do weird things. I yank down the T shirt as far as it will go, almost down to my knees, and walk right in. There is a large dark lobby and a large dark desk across the way. A young man in a white shirt and black tie is bending over a computer screen. I am already up to the counter before he looks up. I talk fast to prevent myself from thinking. if I begin to think I'll paralyse myself.
The check-in causes no trouble. I handle it while the girl helps her father inside. The old man really does not look all that good. He has to be held by the arm. I look at them and turn back to the man at the desk. He is looking down at my bare legs.
"We normally don’t allow people wearing shorts to check in a this hotel, sir," he says. I’m surprised. What shorts? Then I realise he’s taken my pulled down T shirt for shorts.
"Is that a rule?" I ask.
"Well…no," he says. "Actually, there is a rule, but it only takes effect from tomorrow. From tomorrow, for the next two months, no shorts allowed in the hotel. But since you’re already here we’ll have to let you in. I just thought I’d mention it. Here is your room number. You’ll get the key from upstairs. The elevators are to your left."
We travel up a narrow little elevator with a grill type door. It is not the glass scenic elevator on the outside. That one is probably just for showing the passengers a view. This one is slow and crawls past incredibly thick floors. Each must be two metres thick, easily.
"They built solid," the girl murmurs. The lift is so small the three of us, and the uniformed lift man, are squeezed tight. I can feel her breasts crushed against my arm. At the moment I am too tired to enjoy the sensation. I tug my T-shirt down as far as it will go.
The lift does stop finally. We are in a large room, lit by daylight entering through the huge plate glass windows that make up one whole wall.
"Where do we get the key to our room?" I ask. There is a large airport type luggage carousel on our right as we enter, while to the left are bucket seats as in an airport lounge. The dad is already hobbling over towards the seats. Of course – one of the reasons we are here is to have his health restored.
"Where do we get the key?" I ask again. The lift man points at the carousel. "You get your luggage from there, sir," he says. "You collect it from the counter there, and you’ll get your key."
"Luggage? I have no luggage," I answer. The girl comes over from settling her dad into a chair just in time to hear this last comment. She gives me an odd look.
"Of course we have luggage," she says. "So much of it. It’s already there, see." There is, indeed, a large pile of rolls and suitcases stacked up at the counter near the carousel. On top is a very familiar small blue bag. I realise suddenly that I am no longer holding it. When did I hand it over? How did I forget all the luggage we had to load so painstakingly into the back of the autorickshaw? What is going on?
"Well," she says, "aren’t you going to get our key and luggage so we can get to our suite?"
I go over to the counter. The man there is fiftyish, with a deeply wizened face like an aged monkey. I ask him for our luggage and the keys.
"Can’t do that," he says. "I need to see your ID."
My ID? Where the hell is my ID? All the ID I’m carrying is my driver’s licence. My driver’s licence is in my wallet and my wallet is in the hip pocket of my pants. And I’m not wearing my pants.
"Can’t my companions’ ID do?" I ask desperately.
"Isn’t the room in your name?" I nod. "Sorry," he continues with unhidden relish, "in that case only your ID will do. House rule."
The girl comes over again. "What’s going on?"
I tell her. She considers. "Where might your pants be?" she asks at last.
"I guess in the autorickshaw. He must be long gone by now."
"No!" she squeaks excitedly. "We did not pay him! He must still be hanging around in the parking lot, meter running! You wait over there - " she points " – and I’ll go get the pants and your ID. What would you do without me?"
She is looking amazingly fresh and attractive. And, I remember, as she said, we have a suite! Not just a single room with no privacy. All the dad wants to do, apparently, is sleep. Well, I want some sleep too, but not so badly. Perhaps we won’t be just "friendly’ any more…?
She has already left. I walk over towards the plate glass wall and look out. Somehow it is already getting dark again. Most odd. I turn to look back at the room and suddenly the room has vanished. I am in darkness, in a large field, standing on short dry grass. Torches made of rags stuffed into iron pipes burn smokily a long way off. A few stars flicker in the sky. Where is the luggage counter? Where the hell am I?
The girl comes back. I am amazed. In this world that has suddenly changed, how can she be a constant? But here she is, and she is looking better than ever. Even if a little discouraged.
"I found the auto," she said. "But I didn’t find your pants in it. All I found were these." She gives me a pair of objects. I take them in my hand and nearly drop them, they are so heavy. It is a pair of the largest, thickest, heaviest, and most unwieldy leather sandals I have ever seen or even imagined. Who could ever wear such monstrosities?
"Whose are these?" I ask. "Your dad’s?"
"Dad?" she murmurs vaguely. "What dad?"
Did I say "dad"? What dad? But wasn’t there a dad? No. Not that I remember. What was I saying? There never was a dad.
But there is this girl and there is lovely soft grass and there is a warm soft night and we are alone.
She melts into my arms. Our lips merge. Her eyelids flutter against my cheek. She sighs in my mouth, gentle as a breeze.
And I wake up.
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