When God invented us, there was no movie
industry or single screen halls or multiplexes where one could go to and forget
the reality for a few hours. Get to see things that are sometimes very real,
sometimes very weird, sometimes very imaginative, and sometimes very
meaningful. God knew it would take a few hundred thousand years for Homo Sapiens to start enjoying Bollywood
and Hollywood, so she invented the next best alternative – dreams!I look
forward to going to bed every night, all dressed up in my kurta pyjama, nicely
tucked in my blankets, and ready to watch several back to back movies for the
next several hours. No one to disturb me, no one to gossip on the seat behind
me, and no one to noisily munch on tacos, in the next seat. And then there is
the surprise element also. I don’t know what will be the genre of the movies
for that night. Might be a romantic comedy or an action movie or a horror
flick. Or a combination. And the best part is that I am often the hero also in
most of these movies, and invariably always come out alive from the movies
(notice how in your own dreams, whenever death is imminent, then some miracle
will save you or you will get up!). And all this for free! God could not have
given us a better mode of life long free entertainment. Dreams are much more
than entertainment though, my friends from IIT often say. Many of them are
doing advanced level research on the pattern of dreams, tracking the brain
signals to portray the source and development of our dreams. They do agree
though that having dreams relaxes the body. Just like watching movies do. So
the one part of dreams that is unambiguously accepted by all is that it is a
cost free mode of relaxation. I call dreams, therefore, a movie theatre.
We have often heard the saying “a lull before
a storm”. And in corporate circles, we have heard a lot about “brain-storming”.
Just like the mind goes into a “lull”, before a storm of thoughts, ideas,
imaginations inundate the brain. Personally, for my mind, it goes into B-Rain,
or Bollywood Rain! Girls dancing, elephants chasing, cars crashing, wife
fighting – the whole screen of the mind is set on fire immediately as I start
dreaming. But when the elephants chase me in the forests, I notice how the
forest looks like in the dark, when the girls dance, I realise that one aerobic
exercise I had been wanting to tone my buttocks, and when the cars crash I
observe how the flame spreads inside the car. And when my wife shouts, I
observe how beautiful her crooked teeth looks. The small insights, the hitherto
ignored nuances, the meaningful breakthroughs, the unsolved riddle, the last
part of the puzzle – they often get clearer during those entertaining dreams.
Corporate brainstorming in a jungle retreat, amidst nature, freeing open all
the pores of the skull – dreams are better than that. I hence call dreams as a
brainstorming retreat!
The last and my favourite, is the role of
dreams as an astrologer in a virtual reality amusement park. The amusement
park, with all its water rides and virtual reality games and simulations, is
always a fun place to visit. And sometimes in one corner stall, there is an
astrologer sitting quietly, with a strange fragrance around him, looking
furtively at the passerby, almost knowing who will be entering his stall. In
my dreams too like in the amusement parks – tired from all the simulated rides
of the night, I often wake up in the morning with a consequential impact like a
slight pain in the knee or the wrist, or sometimes even a drop of water on the
bed. And behind all the rides in the dreams, I remember a predictive astrologer
sitting silently behind the screen of the dreams, just like the one in the
amusement park. Sometimes, he comes out and gives an indication, directly or
through a collection of hints, of what is to come in the real life in future.
We call it premonitions also. Scientifically not proven still, but accepted by
many, especially those like me, who have experienced it on a personal level. I
love my Disney’s Astrologer, and don’t care for the scientific explanations.
Mickey Mouse is real at Disney to the millions of kids visiting every year, and
my Disney’s Astrologer is real in the millions of dreams visiting my brain
every year!
