Wednesday 12 March 2008

A short story of a revelation

I had a bad dream last Sunday. I always try to find out the reason behind all dreams, but it was one of the rare occasions when I didn't find any. Here is what I saw:

I was standing on a foot over-bridge, which is unusually high. Standing beside me, was my daughter-about 12 years old. We stood there, static, with an ever-changing flux of people behind us and cars beneath. And we stood there like forever, as if the time had stopped, and nothing changed except the colourful haze of figures and patterns at the background. It was a sunny day, and there were no shadows, shades of light and darkness, everything appeared bare under the stark sunlight. Suddenly she appeared-it was a long take, and it seemed that she's been walking towards the bridge for years. Holding her hand was her daughter, she seemed younger than mine, but her figure seemed smaller. I looked at the the woman; though all I cud see clearly was her blue blouse and her long black skirt, her body seemed so known to me...and she walked towards us. Suddenly the colour of the sky took a reddish tint, and the halo covered the sky up to the farthest horizon. Everything came back to its normal pace-we saw people walking by, saw her crossing the road, crossing the tram tracks. We watched her more eagerly, for every step she took, she was a step closer to us. Just before she came just under the bridge, it appeared, that though the lateral distance was fathomed, our paths didn't meet because we were separated vertically. and then they were gone. We went back to the old eternia- stark daylight, hazy flux of people and cars.


When I woke up, the pain was almost physical. It was reminiscent of a broken family, a hope to get bring it together, and then the pang of an end to the hope. From the feelings it seemed that it was quite a long time since our family broke up. Perhaps it was the effect of a film I watched that evening that had a similar slow motion crossing, but why children? I don't know. But finally, I drew a conclusion, which has nothing to do with relationships but lines and planes. Apparently lines take any direction, but it's the planes that hold them. Whether two lines meet at a point, that depends on whether the planes meet. But so are human lives. We can only move along straight lines, but the planes that contain us, are our destiny...

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