DreamTheatre 02

Disclaimer: The following chronicles are accounts of dreams. They might not make any sense whatsoever, but I find it imperative to record them. So there go the chronicles of a million contradictions and random, involuntary thoughts. Although I am tempted to include them, no interpretation, no separate facts, no representation of real life or real things is intentionally added here. There is no theory subscribed to. All coincidences are purely imaginary, and bear who-knows-what resemblance to anything living or dead.

We're at some kind of gigantic secret medical research facility, complete with ineffective tube-lights, a few bright lamps, seepage, huge mortuaries with no sign of life or death, randomly spilt blood-stains and the familiar odour of chloroform. By 'we', I mean a set of people with some known faces. We roam about aimlessly in the facility, until we're given a small, but heavy box that must be transported to another place. And this must be done with the help of the dilapidated truck that I am to drive. I don't seem to have the slightest idea about driving that god-forsaken machine, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm leaning outside, steering with one hand, clutching with one foot and when I have to shift, I lean inside and reach for the gears. I rarely go beyond the first gear. The gears are awful. With the other hand, I'm waving, almost routinely, at pedestrians, Shanghai-style rickshaws, kids playing on the road and hawkers to move the hell out of my way. I'm going at nothing more than about ten kilometers per hour. The road seems very similar to Lakeside, I think to myself. On the left side, though, exists a vast expanse of barren wasteland and on the right, buildings very similar to those at the IIT Bombay campus.

Once we reach the destination, I transform into a little boy. The place looks like a Vietnamese war camp. The infiniteness of inundated mud, guns and explosives detonating in the distance make up the faint view of the stretch between my feet and the horizon. I'm not bothered. I find myself playing around with three other kids. One of them is a girl, and she's the eldest among us. Of the other two boys, one is barely an infant. We decide to go into one of the temporary tents. There is a black and white television there, playing a video. The video has the four of us being molested by a middle-aged man. I shall forbear describing the excesses of this scene but to say the least, it isn't pretty according to either classical or contemporary ethics. We purposefully watch the entire video, and laugh wildly about it soon after. We rush outside into the dirt and grime ourselves filthy in the mud, none of us wearing anything below the waist. We jokingly fight, trying to reach a consensus as to which one of us screamed the loudest on the video.

Four women notice and stop beside us. One of them immediately relates to what transpires. They take us to the small, heavy box and open it. Within lies one photograph and she asks if that was him. Yes, it was.