Ways Of Escape Part III:
Woman in a Dream

Dutta Kawle also had had bad dreams. He said he had seen a mysterious woman in his dream warning him of danger ahead and told me that neither of us should proceed towards Calcutta today. It was an omen. I was flummoxed. The dhaba was nice but not exactly touristy and the prospect of spending another day with truck drivers and flies was not at all appealing. I struck a deal with Kawle. We would proceed west, off the main road and would therefore neither be going towards Calcutta nor towards where we came from. We went, as the dhaba owner instructed, a few kilometres down a dirt track, past a couple of villages and came by the banks of the Damodar River, once called 'Bengal's Sorrow" because of the annual flooding it would cause. Engineers had constructed dams on the Damodar and now the only sorrowful thing about it was its pathetic yellow flow. We took the ferry and went across.

The other side of the river was the district of Purulia. As we walked in it was obvious we were in another part of Bengal. The lush green Burdwan-type vegetation rapidly fell away and after a couple of kilometres it was clear that we were in more arid country. At places, there was no vegetation for hundreds of yards except for tall cacti. The air too was drier. Soon I began to feel thirsty. My shirt was soaked in the mid-day heat and I was beginning to miss a clean shirt. After walking for a few more kilometres we stopped at what looked like a temple to catch our breath. It was a small temple with a large cement veranderah. It looked as if not too much money had been spent on its construction. Only the main temple, a small pyramid structure in a courtyard enclosed by the veranderah, was constructed out of rough sandstone. There were old banyan trees growing out of the stonework just like it is in old paintings of temples. The pace did not look the least interesting and soon I was strecthed out on the cement floor, glad to be out of the sun and the dusty landscape. Looking back, I wondered if this diversion was a good idea. Kawle had his inscrutable oriental look on and I could not guage how he felt.

I began dozing and thanking my inborn ability to sleep at any place and at any time. Sleep was delicious, and so was the few minutes of fantasizing or cogitating that preceded unconsciousness. I looked forward to these occasions and always felt that more than one was required each day. Drifting off to sleep, it occurred to me that we were here primarily because of my craving for sleep. As I slept, I dreamt I was in this wonderful country, which bore an uncanny resemblance to the place we had come to, and a wonderful old man told me that whatever one dreamed came true. Rather in that kingdom, the dream was reality. Ordinary life as we know it was a dream. So, if you really wanted to be as famous as Shakespeare, or as ominpotent at Rudolph Valentino, or as spiritual as Swami Vivekanda or as scientific as Albert Einstien, this was the place where you really had a chance to actually be any of them. I chose to be a sleeper.

Also, in my dream, it occurred to me that it was as difficult in dream kingdom to be somebody because you would have to want very hard to dream the dream you really want to. It was perhaps tougher than real life. That is why this dream kingdom was not really a dream kingdom. I got what I wanted because my desires were pretty stupid. I wanted to sleep in my dream. The wonderful man, who was probably God, felt that was too easy and let me sleep. I could have been Rockerfeller I guess or Clint Eastwood, but I lacked the drive to want to be any of them, or be anything but a person who likes to sleep whenever it is possible. If I tried hard enough I could have been Kumbhakarna, this ogre who sleeps for centuries and wakes up only when summoned to cause mayhem. I was not too interested in the mayem part. In the legends, Kumbhakarna is killed by Lord Krishna. What a life. He should have kept sleeping if he had any sense. At any rate, despite the heavy intellectual content of my dream, the short nap I took was most refreshing.

I woke up to find Kawle looking pale. More accurately grey given that he was completely black. His peculiar ccomplexion gave me a start. It was a rude and frightful awakening and from that moment onwards I was overcome with a sense of foreboding. Soon we would have ravens and strange spirits in the vicinity. And as I had feared, the sky began to darken and an evil wind began blowing from the north east. "I saw her", Kawle managed to whisper after an appreciable effort. "The woman in my dream. She is here. Lurking around somewhere but here."

I looked around curious to know what kind of woman Kawle dreamed about. Did he dream about women as black as himself or did he have a kink about fair women? It was an interesting question and would doubtless shed considerable light on the workings of his sexual mind. Coming to think of it it, that Kawle shouild have a sexual mind was itself incredible. Did a man like him, dreaming of potatos and onions, drinking himself silly every evening, have any thought of sex? Maybe he was a randy young man when he was marching to Rangoon and who knows what he did in Mandalay, but after that did such men think of bewitrching women or want them hard enough. Immersed in such irrelevant thought, I caught site of a female figure coming out of the temple.

To be Continued: Part IV: The Big City

Part II of Narrative