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the Dreamweaver
"For someone of your potential, it'll
just be a walk in the park." So told, she was sent ...
Years had passed since then, ... and, she was still taking her
walk in the park. Evidently, the ones who'd sent her
hadn't told her everything she needed to know. Probably, they
meant to play a joke on her. But, she didn't know what to think
or say anymore.
She really needed to clear her mind. "Maybe some fresh air would
help," she thought. She pulled on her track suit and her
favourite pair of sneakers, and walked out of her hut into the
woods. The night air was chill, and it seemed to resonate with
the chill in her bones. The chill that comes from meeting more
than an ordinary woman's share of sorrows and disappointments,
and living to think about it all. She knew in her heart now,
that the chill could not be driven away. There was no more any
warmth...
She had loved the night. She remembered as she ran, how she had
gazed at the full-moon so many times, when she was a kid, when
she was an adolescent, and even afterwards... how its cool and
mellow light had tingled her skin, ...
Even now, as she looked up at it, it seemed to shine with the
same unearthly radiance. Only now, she could see the maria
very clearly on its surface. "Too clearly," she thought. She had
begun her journeys with the firm belief that every cloud had a
silver lining and now, she knew, she knew that
even the moon's face was blemished. Her tears splashed into the
night air, drops of sorrow and anger and regret, that burned the
very fabric of this world, as they fell to the ground. She trod
on these tears as fiercely as she trod on the ground beneath her
feet. But, for how long? "Never again will I drown in my own
tears," she thought angrily. "But, but, ...I was deceived. I was
denied my happiness. I have every right to be sorrowful", her
voice kept up this chant within her. "Life was snatched away
from me", her whole being cried into the night. Her chest was
wracked with stifled sobs.
She ran on blindly through the forest, blinded by her tears and
her sorrow. One part of her brain thought detachedly, of how her
running seemed to be very silent. "It must be that the forest
floor is strewn with wet leaves, from..., from rain", replied
another voice inside her. She ran on, oblivious of the hail that
drove all around her, pouring from ominous dark clouds. Maybe,
it was the rain of her sorrow and the raindrops were her
tears?...
*Crack*...*Thud*. She fell, and heavily too. The rain had made
the ground slushy and she had slipped. As the mud oozed from her
face, her fallen figure hunched into a ball and shivered. The
cold now seemed to be getting to her. Shivering convulsively,
she got up and started walking, her delicate body resolutely
moving along the direction of the wind, which drove the hail on
her from behind. It was almost as if she was being prodded by
forces more powerful than her.
Disjointed images flooded through her brain. She saw with
crystal clarity, concentric chambers of metal casing, filled
with layers of fissionable uranium and plutonium. A
three-dimensional cascade of flashing pictures danced before her
mind's eye...She saw the thousand immaculate triggers and the
simultaneous, temporally-kin electric charges that flooded
through them and sparked the flames of destruction...She saw the
shine of the casing and the symmetry of the structure, only to
see, no, feel it being blown, wrenched, torn and dismembered
into infinitesimal primordial particles by the blast of the
nuclear explosion, it itself had given birth to. There was the
Truth, she thought. But, of what? Why? She could not remember
even what she had discovered in that fragmented- illusion?
She continued walking unsteadily, no longer seeing the world or
hearing its sounds. She was lost to reality, almost.
She had been beautiful once. Very beautiful. Both men and women
had been drawn to her beauty. Now, her hair was white and
tangled and unkempt. Her skin was wrinkled and worn-out. Her
limbs creaked as she ran. She hadn't lost the athleticism
though...
In the old days, when she had been young, someone had called her
' voluptuously athletic '...
She had known happiness once, too. And it pained her, the
realisation, that it would never be hers again. The memories of
the good times no longer supported her through the bad times.
Rather, the sweet memories had now become the salt on her
wounds. The lost joys screeched their impermanence on the black
board of her life. "Mujo", she thought.
The happiness had come after lots of trials. When she had
thought that all was lost, happiness had come stealthily and
caressed her gently. And then, without asking for her
permission, the joys had fled away from her, taking with them
the objects of her affection and desire.
She hadn't the heart to think about it now but, she had brought
happiness in whosever’s life she had passed through. However
fleeting her presence had been, she had changed the person's
life. It didn't matter if the said people expressed their
gratitude for her gifts or even thought of gratitude towards
her. It was in her nature to spread joy and love into everyone's
life. Even though she was hurt by most of the people whose lives
she had illumined with her words and actions and her presence,
she just moved on and brought joy into other people's lives. She
was almost, unreal. She seemed to be a dream to everyone...
At last, through the falling rain and the slippery ground, she
came up to a huge tree. She did not see the tree but, stopped in
front of it. In her mind, she saw a staircase, a golden
staircase...
"You have done your job well. Time for you to bid farewell", she
was now told. As she moved nearer to the tree, the rain stopped
falling. As she touched the tree trunk, a huge arc of lightning
fell on the tree and its current blasted away a great many
branches from the tree, their flaming remains falling around her
as she stood unmoving, the smoke from their burning clouding
about her. It was all so different in her mind...
She was now climbing the golden staircase. Every stair on it was
obscured by coruscating clouds. She had to use her hands as
well, so she wouldn't slip and fall, so steep were the stairs.
She kept climbing, like a zombie. Higher and higher, the way
stretched. Suddenly, the staircase ended abruptly. And as she
clasped the last golden rail, she saw that Heaven lay stretched
on all sides of her. All she had to do, was let go. "Gladly",
she thought. She let go...
Falling, falling, falling...the clouds seemed to guide her
smoothly to her destination... It was her destiny. Suddenly, it
became clear to her, as a voice chanted the Truth that had been
hidden from her, until now. " You were sent into the world, to
relieve people of their pain and misery. You were the most
powerful of us and, the most creative. People forget their
dreams. So, you were sent...to be a living dream...It was the
supreme attempt...And, you did your job. You changed so many
lives...". All around her, the blackness of night suddenly came
about but, above and only a hand's breadth from her, shined the
moon. Gone were the maria. No more were the blemishes on
its fair face. Her skin tingled with the moonlight playing on
it, and, and...she was youthful once more. Her skin was soft and
supple and taut over her angelic face. Her face was an image of
Beauty. The beauty that can only be in dreams. Ideal Beauty. Her
hand reached out towards her friend, the moon, which had watched
over her for so long. " One more like you was sent out into the
world of reality. She was to support you and give you strength
and inspire you when the world's miseries crowded around you.
Now you know her...the one you always knew in your heart as a
sister-spirit."
Loony. So many had called her that. Pity, then, that they did
not know truly, why they called her that. It was because her
spirit was the same as that of the moon. They were both one. Its
waxing and waning had mirrored her moods and her successes and
failures had kept time with the moon's cycles. Why, even her
body's rhythm unconsciously moved to the moon's beat...
And then, its radiance enveloped her and she felt its light and
energy flooding into her being, in a way she had never known
before...No wait, she knew this feeling. It was in her dreams.
This beauty and energy and the moonlight surging through her.
All her sorrow and regret and anger dropped away from her. She
was one with her kindred spirit.
In giving joy to the world and bringing almost unreal happiness
into the lives of whom she touched, the world had slowly
fastened its mortality into her. In making a reality out of
people's dreams, she had no choice but to allow the world to
tarnish her dream-reality with Its dreadful dream. But, now, she
was free. The Real could never hope to destroy her. She was
immortal. She was...
Lightning flashed a second time that night in our world and, in
Her own world there was but a final flashing of moonlight...and
she became once again, the stuff of dreams. From whence she
came, there she returned...
... the Dreamweaver.
- Abhishek Chari.
Biomedical
Sciences,
Delhi University |
