Dreams, Parallel Universes and Alternate Realities - 4

... Contd. from “Dreams, Parallel Universes and Alternate Realities - 3” ... If you want to see a dream again but this time control it to your liking, then go to sleep thinking about the dream along with a rough alternate storyline based on what you wish to see.

Now, I wanted to try that out asap. I thought of shooting and killing the whale, as I slowly drifted into the subconscious...

A deep fear fills me as I stand over an edge and look down the steep slope. I can’t ski down that. Yes, It’s not that far down, but I can’t go further with the skis on. What if I hurt myself? I can hardly do a “Green” slope without falling over even once. Should I find another way down? I turn left to look at the map and I see Bharath (a friend from NITC) coming down the slope behind me.

He jumps over the steep section but lands awkwardly. He loses balance as he falls over. He tumbles over the slope and finally rests face down just a couple of feet away from the edge of the cliff. He’s not moving. I can’t go down there to see if he is ok. I panic. I need to get help.

Out of the blue, my brother, on a snowboard, comes down over my left shoulder, negotiates the slope with ease and stops near Bharath like a pro. I shout out to him, “Call the paramedics. I will see if I can get help from up here.” (Apologies Bharath, if you are reading this. I don’t know if my subconscious wanted to hurt you or help you. No offense, please.)

I run off towards a hole in the wall on my left. As I go through, I hear the paramedics saying something. I only catch the words, “vision”, “problem”, “ glasses” and “power 2.5”. I reach the other side of the wall. I am on a corridor. It looks like the one in C-Hostel, NITC, the one near my old room (C-124). I reach the new section of the hostel and go towards the first open room. There are people inside. I shout out for help. Many people come out. I recognize Johnu and Dileep. I am trying to say something but it seems like they can’t hear me, or is it that they don’t care? I am surrounded now. I am frantically waving my hands in the air, trying to direct their attention to the wall I crossed to get here and also to find someone with power-2.5 glasses. (Actually, I have glasses of power 2.5). I recognize Pai in the crowd. He has a disinterested look on his face or rather he looks like he is pissed off at something I did. I look away from him as I black out ...

... I am standing on the snow capped slope. This time I am facing away from the steep section that earlier scared me. I have a machine gun in my hand and I am shooting up the slope. I am wearing military uniform and I seem to be in some kind of war. “I need to get away from here”, I think, as I run towards the wall with a hole. I go through the hole, hide on the other side of the wall and throw a bomb towards the slope. I think of “Napalm” while doing this. A group of 4-5 people also in military uniform, but those who felt like the enemy, run through the hole trying to escape the impending explosion.

The bomb goes off and I run back towards the slope. “I need to escape before they call the bluff and get back”, I think as I run on snow, covered with turmeric, towards the steep section. This time I just jump down, take a U-turn and start climbing a slope that runs parallel to the one I just came down from. I am halfway up when I meet 3 more people in uniform. I can’t recognize their faces but they are holding a map of India. One of them shows me where we currently are and that’s somewhere near Goa. We make a plan to keep running up the slope till we reach Gujarat. We start up the slope ...

... I am walking towards my lab. I think, “If you want to see a dream again but this time control it to your liking, then go to sleep thinking about the dream.” Ya, right! Only the shooting part came right. I stop at the photo-board outside the Rensselaer Nanotechnology center. My photo is not on it and one of the girls in my research group is wrongly listed as an undergrad. “That’s not possible. I am still in a dream.” I look around, make sure there’s no one and slap myself twice ...

Dreams, Parallel Universes and Alternate Realities - 3

It felt like home. There was the television on the far left corner and the dvd player below it. There was the blue colored divan on my right and the door to my grandmother’s room in front. My grandma was standing on my left and behind me was my uncle. At the same time something felt out of place.

I looked down and I was standing on a motorboat with a gun in my hand. Over to my left a giraffe’s head bobbed out of the water. My uncle started shooting at it with a shotgun but to no avail. Amidst all the gunfire, my grandma was talking to me. I couldn’t hear her completely but was able to make out the words “evil”, “giraffe”, “whale” and “terrorizing”.

Then I spot something moving fast under the boat. It was huge, a whale I presume. My uncle also seemed to have noticed it as he started shooting into the water. As soon as the boat reached the entrance to my grandma’s room, I jumped out onto solid ground and started shooting at the whale. 6 shots! Empty! I noticed I had another gun in my left hand. “ I have to conserve this. We have a long night ahead of us”, I thought as the boat sped away into the open sea.

I open my eyes. I am lying face down on a mattress on the floor of my grandma’s room. When did I fall asleep? Was I dreaming about the whale? No way, it has to be real. I look up and turn left. Ammoomma, a lady who has been helping out my grandma with the household chores since around the time I was born, is squatting on the floor next to the divan. She is saying something and gesturing with her hands but I can’t hear her. There is a loud noise in the background. “It’s something about the whale, I am sure. I must turn the noise off so that I can hear her”, I think as I crawl over into the living room. The noise is from the television set. There’s something in the dvd player. I press the pause button but before I could ask her about the whale, I black out.

I open my eyes and I am again on the mattress. It’s morning now. I can hear my grandma in the kitchen. I walk through the living room into the kitchen.I ask my grandma , “Athine kittiyo?” (Did we catch it?). She replies in the negative, “Evidennu!”. I walk back to the mattress. I see a bed beside it and my uncle is sleeping on it. I fall onto the mattress below and close my eyes.

The online alarm went off at 7, as usual. I woke up in my room in Troy, NY, logged in to my computer and shut the alarm. I didn’t feel like going back to sleep. I browsed Facebook for a while and checked the latest cricket scores. I remembered what I had read about dreams a couple of days back. If you want to see a dream again but this time control it to your liking, then go to sleep thinking about the dream along with a rough alternate storyline based on what you wish to see.

Now, I wanted to try that out asap. I thought of shooting and killing the whale, as I slowly drifted into the subconscious...