Recently, I was talking to a bunch of strangers on Zoom. That’s my favourite thing in the world, by the way. On that call, the host, a dear friend, asked each of us ‘What’s your superpower?’. I knew mine right away but I wanted to keep my answer relevant to the Corona lockdown that we were in, so I went: “Oh! I am creative. I can make even the lockdown so much fun.”
So what is my superpower, the one I am going to brag about in the blogs to come?
Before that, a disclaimer: It’s my partner who thinks it’s a superpower. Not me. So judge him if you must.
The thing is, I remember my dreams in great detail. As I stare into the mirror, brushing my teeth, I exert my groggy brain to recall the nightly escapades. Which obviously means, I spend a long time strutting around with a mouth full of foam. And this has my partner worried for he thinks my teeth would fall off sooner than later 🙂
But I don’t stop at retrieving the dream. As I potter around the house, arranging cups and katoris, watering plants, reading news and browsing mails, I force my brain to dissect it too: ‘What could have inspired the dream?’, ‘If not the full dream, a part of it?’, ‘And what’s with my father? He is gate-crashing all my dreams’.
I am happy to share that 6 out of 10 times, my brain does figure out the reasons. For everything else, ‘Dear Google, What does this dream mean?’.
What follows next is a breakfast with the side of retelling of my dreams and a break-up of how much of it was fact, fiction and proxy-play by my brain. Initially, my partner used to be amused at my ability to recall the people, colours and locations I saw in dreams. But he’s past that phase. Now he’s become sort of a dream-critic – He loves a happy ending. He hates a build-up that leads nowhere. He scoffs at the inconsistencies in my dreams that defy time, space and genres.
Come on, dreams are like that, I argue. They have no head or tail. They come and go as they like. Once, I was holidaying on the slope of a green meadow when a boulder came rolling down and spared me by a whisker. It spared me even in the next dream. Sadly though, how my suitcase went missing in the first dream remains a mystery. Maybe I’ll get lucky in the third outing! You see, dreams are complicated.
But when I am under stress or feeling sick, my dreams can take a dark turn, bordering on hallucinations. Like a mixologist, my brain mixes up the real world with my dreams to write scripts that can put filmmakers of sci-fi, horror and surrealism to shame.
Picture this, my partner leaves the room and just then, in that instant, someone sneaks in to kill me. I want to fight back but my limbs have gone limp. I want to shout for help but I can’t speak. Do I survive in the dream? More on this, later. I PROMISE.
Yes, in this blog, I plan to journal my dreams as I remember them – no exaggeration, no cuts allowed. That’s because these are great scripts anyway. Scripts that I am the producer, director, casting agent, cinematographer, protagonist, narrator and now even promoter of. Oh wow! That does sound like a superpower.
Okay, good night. It’s my bedtime.
Wish me dreams, sweet, sour, stupid – anything.
I will see you at breakfast!
Diaries of a dreamworm 
Damn! I’m invested.
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