Tell me your dreams

A few days back, a few of us from office had stopped over for a couple of drinks while on our way back home. Quite strangely, somehow the conversation veered to a new topic (apart from the usual work cribs, sports and Katrina Kaif). We started talking about dreams – no, not the APJ-Abdul-Kalam-type dreams, that keep you awake at night. Rather, the dreams that you get when you are asleep at night.

It all started when we were ridiculing a colleague for his folly of having taken an ambitious bet on Sachin Tendulkar scoring a century in the 2^nd innings of the last India-Lanka Test . Given Sachin’s form and his track record in the last innings, it was always a far cry.

When he was asked as to what led to such a moment of weakness, he promptly responded – “I dreamt last night that he would score a century!” We were speechless. “Whats more” he added, “the dream even extended to how I was laughing at all of you in office for making fun of me taking such a bet”.

So, the conversation extended to the kind of dreams we all get and which is the one (or ones) which sticks in our memory for some time. One colleague narrated how he used to get dreams in his childhood about waking up late on exam-day and missing the test. Invariably, he would wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night!

Another colleague pledged full support that this was his most recallable dream too. Another one always used to dream about how he was falling off a tall building. One more used to get a strange dream that someone was sneaking behind him with a dagger to kill him and he wanted to scream but somehow his voice betrayed him.

After an energetic discussion dissecting everyone’s dreams, all eyes turned on me. I had been silently listening to this conversation with a steady nonchalance.

“What?” I said
“So tell us – which is your most recallable dream?”
“I don’t get dreams. Or at least I don’t remember them”
“WTF – That’s not possible”
“I’m serious. I seriously cannot recall any dream. I personally think, I don’t get dreams.”

They didn’t believe me. But I was assertive. They told me to check with my mom whether I used to wake up in the middle of the night in my childhood. I told them I had already done that long back, and she had confirmed that I used to sleep less, but peacefully. Still they didn’t believe me and I didn’t have much to say apart from giving a reassuring nod that I was being truthful.

But I have a confession to make – I was not being entirely truthful. Please don’t get me wrong, I actually cannot recall any dreams as such. However, there has been one dream, which I managed to recall, not once but twice in the space of a week.

It would have been 3 years back when I was in Sydney, and I got the same dream on 2 nights, 3-4 days apart. So novel was this whole getting-the-dream experience for me that I got nervous and jittery and called up my friends to share the incident. While they had no reaction to my excitement/nervousness on getting a dream, they did have a reaction to the content of my dream – laughter.

So here it is (in as much as I can remember at this date) –

There’s a vast mountainous land with a heavy undergrowth and I am running through it, panting heavily. I am dressed in army overalls and an army helmet and have a machine gun in my hand (probably an AK 47). The daylight is dwindling and a helicopter is following me – the chopper was the object from which I was running.

As the chopper catches up with me, there are multiple rounds of ammunition fired at me, but like a true-blue JP Dutta protagonist, I managed to avoid the barrage. I realized that I could not run away and so I turned, fell to the ground and fired a salvo of bullets at the chopper (which was bearing an enemy flag) letting out a Sunny-Deolish scream.

The chopper bursts into flames, but enemy bullets manage to find me. I lie prostrate on the ground – dead.

This is the point at which I wake up, and surprisingly could recall it distinctly. While it was an object of intrigue for me, it turned out to be an object of ridicule for my friends, and I thought it was wise to not mention it to work-friends and get similar reactions.

Even today, the thoughts of this dream keep haunting me. For a guy who does not get any dreams, or cannot recall any whatsoever, to get such a strange one as your ONLY recallable dream is indeed quite bizarre. I still keep waiting for the night when I’ll get it again, and maybe it will fill in some missing pieces. Has something like this happened to you? Is there an odd dream that has stayed with you?