Cos’ rats ruin everything

Hello dreamers,

There are two things you should know about me:

I am a huge fan of Rajeev Khandelwal.

Faaiine. I will live with the fact that you don’t know this genius of an actor, this insane looker, this man of intellect and many talents, this adventurous soul. Sad you haven’t experienced the twinkle in his eyes, the gentleness of his smile, the ring of music in the way he talks. You get the drift, right? RK was my teenage crush and remains so. Just the mention of RK’s name does something to my hormones (*Naren cries and checks himself out in the mirror*) – 15 years since I first spotted him in what went on to become a hugely popular romantic TV serial called Kahiin Toh Hoga. My school friends can fill you in with stories of my craze for RK. Sample this: I begged the local cable TV operator to air a small-time channel called SAB TV so I can watch RK’s new-age show Left Right Left. I begged, pleaded, emotionally-manipulated the bhaiya to let me see RK as the cool Captain Shekhawat. He gave in. Yay!

Okay, okay, here is our man…

Just look at him…

Actually, us…

2. The second thing you should know about me… I have fans too but I simply hate them.

They are neither homo sapiens nor do I desire them in any way. But it’s a one-sided love for them, stalker love, to be honest. Wherever I go, their network follows.

Meet them.

I’ll spare you the trauma of being at the receiving end of an unrequited love and jump straight into the dream. I would request you to stay with me till the end because there’s a lot of surprise in store.

************

I wake up early. Actually, I didn’t sleep well last night. I was tossing and turning in the bed, dizzy with the excitement of what lies ahead of me. Today, Rajeev Khandelwal’s XYZ film is releasing in the theatres of Bangalore, and mamma, papa, Shishir bhaiya, Kuku and I are going for the afternoon show. XYZ film had premiered in the north of India a few months ago and did surprisingly well, leaving fans like me in the south high and dry. But now our time has come.

I did watch the film on a streaming platform but it is something else to watch it on the big screen. Especially, when your family is as excited as you are, or at least, you have convinced them to trust your excitement. I won’t give away too much about the film but it’s a spy thriller, where RK busts an international conspiracy to blow up an Indian ship and recounts how he foiled the plan in flashback.

I am so excited that I want to dress up nicely. So I get out of my bed to take a shower.

I am walking past the living room to get to the better of the two bathrooms we have. For that, I first need to reach our patio and then into an outhouse. The layout convinces me I am in my childhood home in Himachal 🙂 I reach the patio and YIKKES!

Sniffing on the floor is my evil lover – a big, dirty, spiky rat. It senses my presence and stares right back at me.

I run back into the hall in horror and start broadcasting to my family: “There’s a big, dirty rat out there in the patio. Why do I always have to spot a rat? Why???”

There’s no time to waste. I need to get this rat out of my way and my important day. So I decide to organise an adoption drive and post the message as my WhatsApp Status.

Kavitha: Hey, me and my aunt are ready to adopt the rat.

Wow. That was quick. Now I don’t have to live in terror. Yay!

Kavitha: I saw my aunt’s notebook, she has decided to buy it for Rs20 lakhs. Even I will buy the rat around that price.

RS20 lakhs? It must be an exotic species then.

Wow! I didn’t know Kavitha is so rich.

Why are they paying? It’s a free adoption.

How does it matter? Just let them take that ugly rat away.

There’s only one rat, which Kavitha’s aunt plans to buy. So what is Kavitha calculating money for?

Forget it. I have found ‘suitors’ and that’s all that matters.

I decide to go back to the patio and check on the rat. I reach and I….

“Mamma, mamma, the rat has died. Somebody has killed it. The stench is so bad, I am going to die. I can’t stand the smell. Please have it thrown away,” I shout at the top of my lungs.

Disinterested in my drama, mamma turns to my papa to say, “Go and take bath or we’ll get late for the movie.” In goes papa, then Shishir bhaiya, Kuku and mamma. One after another, of course 🙂

“Okay, gudiya (that’s me), now you go and take shower too,” mamma calls my name.

“What?” I can’t believe what I just heard. Mamma is asking me to cross the patio, where the rat is lying dead, to reach the bathroom! No way. “I will puke and die in that stench. I can’t go that side,” I shut the case. Meanwhile, papa is puzzled why I am acting hysterical. He offers an alternative: “Okay, you go to the second bathroom.”

“No, papa. The smell of that rat has taken over my senses. I can’t take that smell out of my head. Now I can’t go to any bathroom,” I rationalise my behaviour.

Papa gives up and sends Shishir bhaiya and Kuku instead, to convince me to rethink.

They come, they fail, they go away while I glide into the kitchen to discover that I am not the only one giving mamma a hard time today. Standing on the door of the kitchen is a young boy of about 10 years. He is new to our family. Looks like we have adopted him recently.

Just when I was falling for his innocence and curly hair, I realised he is a high-maintenance kid. He has told mamma he would go to theatre only if she gets him a glass belt to wear along with his jeans – or he won’t go. It’s a new fashion trend among kids, it seems. Mamma gives in to his tantrums and proceeds to get the glass belt from one of our rooms.

“What? We have a glass belt? When did we even buy that thing?” I quiz myself.

On no! Mamma was trying to lift the glass belt off the hook but it got stuck, fell and cracked. The belt is still quite wearable but the kid is beyond consolation. He is not shouting at us but his face says it all, he is heart-broken.

Wait. Why doesn’t he speak anything? As I implore him to talk, he points his finger back into the kitchen and gestures to say that he is loving how fast my mamma is making rotis and how round. Oh, damn! He is hearing- and speech-impaired, I realised. Overcome with guilt of labelling him a brat, I decide to surprise him with my sign language skills that I picked up at a workshop a few years ago. I sign about a car and then a man who runs on all fours, faster than a car! The kid is ecstatic.

With my job done, I retire to my bedroom. I am sitting by the window side that overlooks a school. As I curse the rat for ruining my day, I hear young and happy voices coming from the left side of my window. Now I see a beeline of kids dressed in home clothes rushing to the school, with their schoolbags on – all boys.

I stop a hurried kid and ask him what’s the buzz about. “We have exams today,” he answers as he runs forward. Next, I hear a group of students whispering about a new jeans trend. “You know that jeans comes with a glass belt, which highlights the waistline,” I overheard them saying. Just when I connected the dots between that chubby kid and his obsession with the glass belt, he showed up – smiling ear to ear. “Look, look,” he lifted his shirt to reveal his slim waistline, which he was able to achieve with the cracked glass belt. He lunges forward to hug me and say bye. “I am going to write my exams,” he announces and vanishes in thin air.

Wait. What? Was he not supposed to go to the movies with my family, with that glass belt on?!

Not my problem. I brush his childishness aside and switch the TV on to kill time because my family has left me home alone with a dead rat and gone to watch an RK movie. Good for them.

As my cruel fate would have it, RK’s interview is airing on the first channel that I tune into. “I have done 20 films till date which have stories told in flashback but none has ever done so well at the box office as XYZ has. So much so that it’s become a talking point down south, a market that’s new to me,” RK is telling the reporter while my mind is wanting to kill that already dead rat.

“Gudiya, it was such a good film,” papa bursts into my bedroom with a stellar review of RK’s film. “Oh okay,” I force a smile on me while also imagining how mamma and papa would have reacted to those sexy songs in the film. Shishir bhaiya and Kuku would have drowned in shame, I visualise further.

Now mamma, Shishir bhaiya and Kuku are taking turns to sing praises about RK’s film and I just want to mute their reviews. I am upset, more upset, most upset that a rat ruined my date with RK.

I am so upset that I wake up. I am in my senses now and I know that the rat was a dream and so was RK’s film. But I am still upset. So upset that Naren is wanting to cuddle and hug me but I am not interested. After invading my kitchen, my study room, my road trips, the rat has now started invading my dreams as well. How low will you stoop, you rat?!

*********

Now is the time to unfold the surprise. In the first blog, I had told you that in six out of 10 cases, I can decipher where my dream originates from. Let me demonstrate it to you today.

Why did I see Rajeev Khandelwal?

I saw the dream in the wee hours of October 17, a day after RK’s birthday. The last thing I read on my phone before going to sleep was messages on my school WhatsApp group, which went like:

Shriti: Umm.. Can someone remind me what day is it today? Please get it right.

Apurwa: Amavasya.

Shriti: Aww thank you for participating in my silly game Apurwa but you too forgot! It’s Rajeev Khandelwal’s bday today.. 😛

What about Rajeev Khandelwal’s film

On October 16, a day before I had the dream, I saw the teaser of his upcoming web series, which tackles the unglamorous but important story of the Naxal movement. So I was looking forward to seeing RK in a new project.

Why the rat

Evening before the dream, Naren and I had gone to eat the most yummy momos in our side of the town, Yeshwanthpur in Bengaluru. As I got down from the car, my eyes fell on a big, fat, dirty rat foraging something on a broken pavement to my left.

It’s become an internal joke in my family that if there’s a mouse or a rat around, it will first give its darshan to me and then maybe, at all, to others. Rats stalk me, haunt me, ghost on me.

Who was that child

After returning from the momo stall, Naren and I decided to watch something on TV. Much browsing and disappointment later, we opened a short film called Pencil Box. It revolves around a young boy with curly hair who loves to watch his mother make rotis. That kid also finds himself in the mid of an unsuspecting adoption battle. I saw that kid in my dream. Him 👇

What about Kavitha adopting the rat

Two days before the dream, I had put up an adoption post on one of our trekking groups to help three kittens find a home. To which, our friend Kavitha had responded, “I wanted to keep a pet but I travel a lot sometimes, so if Linga (another friend) is ready to babysit my pets. I can take one 😂😂”

Why I wanted to dress up

A few days leading up to this dream, I was scrolling my old pictures. I realised, once upon a time, I used to make efforts to dress up nicely but now, it’s zilch and I don’t like it. Naren has been encouraging me to dress up and feel better and that sentiment made it to this dream, I guess.

What about that glass belt?

No idea. But I won’t lie I am fed up of the flab around my waist and have been working on it – half-heartedly. I am on intermittent fasting but also on a daily diet of pakodas :p

**********

Have you dreamt about your celebrity crush?

Have you encountered your enemy-animal in dreams?

What is the most close-to-reality dream you have dreamt?

Let me know in the comments. I am waiting!

Road to Rashi

Hi! I am Rashi. I mean, I am Barkha, but I am identifying myself as Rashi in this dream. Why Rashi?

My guess is as good as yours. I overdosed on the Rasode Mein Kaun Tha video a bit too much and the many memes and spoofs it had spawned. Like a broken tape recorder, I kept repeating, almost chanting, Ye Rashi Thi, Ye Rashi Thi, Ye Rashi Thi. So here I am, in my dream, under Rashi’s spell. But that’s that. There’s no cooker, no chaney, no Kokilaben, no shoutfest. Phew!

But before I begin, no harm in listening to the Rasode rap by Yashraj Mukhate once again, right?

I enter a hospital, wearing a backpack. No, backpacks have never been my scene but here I am in one. Oh no, I am being silly. It’s a school bag. I have slipped my thumbs under the shoulder straps and I am pacing up and down the lobby like a kid waiting for her school bus restlessly.

I don’t know what I am here for. I am feeling lost, also scared. What if some aunty or uncle catches me red-handed? What will I say? I don’t even have a scratch on my body? What am I here for?

Just then, a tall doctor in his 40s lunges forward to greet me. “Hi Rashi, come on in. I will take you to the room.” “Oh okay. He seems to know why I am here.” I am relieved.

We enter a big hall that’s crowded yet strangely quiet. “Others are practising now. You go and sit in one corner and wait for your turn,” the doctor leaves me with the instructions.

I dislodge my bag and sit against the wall because my back’s hurting. In front of me, people of my age and above are riding a toy car one by one. No, I am not even talking about those fancy Fords and Coopers that kids drive around in their backyard these days. Not this one.

But this one.

Source: https://www.alamy.com/young-man-riding-small-toy-car-image3578961.html

Yes, the kind where your bum drives the car, not the engine.

The rules of the game are simple. You need to drive the car in one straight line from one end of the room to another. Straying from your line or crashing with another car will disqualify you.

“Shit! This man just crashed against the wall,” I cringe and look away. Before I could recover from the shock, he walks up to me to say, “Hey, it’s your turn. All the best.”

Yes, it’s my turn finally. “But why am I alone in the room? Has everybody taken their turn? When did that happen? What’s my strategy? What about the warm-up?” my brain goes into overdrive.

Anyway, I have got a shiny red limousine to ride and I am pretty chuffed. I sit on top of it, balance myself, and push it forward. “Shit, no, no, no…” And I fall to my side.

Black And White Love GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

“Damn. Such a loser I am.” As if this isn’t embarrassing already, I see a team of doctors rushing to the accident spot. They scoop me in their arms and drop me near the same wall where I was sitting before. They ask me to relax and take rest.

Don’t laugh guys and girls, but I am actually in pain and now, upset, dejected and hopelessly quiet too. Each player gets only one chance to play the game and I blew it up! In between cursing myself and nursing the pain, I fall asleep on the ground.

“Rashi is fine,” I can hear the doctor say this to somebody outside the room. Before I can investigate, the door throws open and enters Sharad bhaiya, then Shishir bhaiya, then mamma, then Basant bhaiya, then Hemant bhaiya, then Kuku. My family, that is.

They take my school bag and help me stand up. I manage to walk up till the lobby but I can’t any further, so they find me a steel bench to sit on. But I’d rather lie down. I am feeling weak. I am passing out.

My eyes are closed but I can still hear my family members dissecting the situation: “What happened to her?” “What is she doing here?” “Why was she playing with a toy car?”

Now they are slapping my face gently, hurriedly, trying to wake me up. I struggle but open my eyes somehow. Everything looks blurry and wait for it, double, triple, quadruple. I can see four Basant bhaiyas, three mammas and many, many doctors. Aah! My head hurts. I feel disoriented. It seems like I am under heavy medication. I won’t use the word drugs because you know, right?!

My family decides to book a car to take me home. But hey! Where are they going? One by one, Basant bhaiya, Hemant bhaiya, Sharad bhaiya, Shishir bhaiya, Kuku and mamma leave the lobby to get me a car. “Can’t they book an Ola?” I am confused. In a fit of I-don’t-know-what, I decide I will also go after them. Only that I am too frail and wobbly to move even an inch. I am losing my balance but my family comes and catches me in time.

Hum Saath Saath Hain — Source: imaansheikh.files.wordpress.com

Without any further ado, my family takes me to the checkout counter. Shishir bhaiya is settling the bills while Sharad bhaiya is hovering around me like a bodyguard. Next to the counter is a window that overlooks a valley. It’s a scene straight out of the Santorini Islands only that the houses are a pale shade of pink than snowy white. It’s a beautiful chaos out there. Or maybe just chaos. I am feeling uneasy. I turn to Sharad bhaiya to break a dreadful news, “Bhaiya, those houses are continuously changing their shape. They are going from tall to short to wide to total flat.”

“No, they aren’t,” he says as peers out of the window.

“Trust me, bhaiya,” I insist.

Now Bhaiya is confused while I am consumed by fear. “What if I’ve damaged my eyes in the car accident?” I turn to the window to double-check my claims. But I am right. The houses are still dancing and may I add, it’s oddly satisfying to watch them this way. It’s like I am teleported to a land of dreams, bliss and mystery and I want to believe it’s for real. But no. “We gave her heavy medicines,” the head doctor comes and jolts me out of my utopia.

We get down outside a hotel in Yeshwanthpur (where my real-self stays in Bangalore). Sharad bhaiya leaves to arrange food for me while Shishir bhaiya gets me to my room in ‘one piece’. Shishir bhaiya switches on TV while I drift to a sunny corner in the room to dote over a beautiful bonsai. It’s similar to the ficus I was gifted recently. I also spot succulents growing on the edges of two baskets but they are messy and entangled. I set out to free them from each other’s clutches and I do a splendid job.

I shift to the window. I slide it open and rest my elbows on it. Ahead of me is a valley so green, misty and inviting that I turn around to ask bhaiya, “Should we head out?” He obliges at once.

Bhaiya calls a cab and we leave without informing Sharad bhaiya that we won’t be having the food he has gone out in search for. I don’t know which era we are in because neither does my family order cabs on the app nor food! Hmm…

The road to the valley is kuchcha and bad but the scenery more than makes up for it. “What is the driver doing? Can’t he see where he is going?” I complain to Shishir bhaiya who’s sitting in the back seat. Looks like our car has hit a dead-end and now the driver is driving the car up a steep hill – vertically. He’s basically rock-climbing but with a car and us.

He knows his job well because our car is now 20 feet above the road, stuck on the hill like a giant spider. “Okay, what next? Move, why won’t you?” I yell at the driver because I know the devil called gravity is round the corner.

Before I could say more, our car loses the grip and we start falling. I grab Shishir bhaiya’s hand and throw the car door open and jump out. I fall on my face and I am alive. I am surprised. But where is Shishir bhaiya?

I look to my left, my right, up the valley, down the valley, he’s nowhere. I shout his name loud but only the echo comes back to me, not my bhaiya. What should I do? I am not even carrying my phone or wallet. Where has the driver disappeared? Why is there not a single soul on this road? My patience is wearing thin but I can’t give up. I shout bhaiya’s name over and over and then tiredly sit down on the road, hoping to find a cab back to the hotel or borrow a phone to alert my family.

If my misery isn’t enough, the sun is also burning hot. This is getting too much. I am dizzy. I am fainting. And just then, I hear, ‘Gudiya, I am here’. I turn my face back and see Shishir bhaiya riding a kid’s tricycle and pedalling towards me – excitedly. He is cycling so fast that either he will run over me or run down the valley. SCREEEEEEECH! Thank goodness, he put the brake on time.

Let’s just say, all’s well that ends well.

Angry Riding GIF by South Park - Find & Share on GIPHY

Reality-check: I am learning to drive a car these days and that might have inspired this road trip-of-a-dream, I think.

Have you seen car chases or Rasode wali Rashi in your dreams lately? Let me know in the comment section below.

In the eye of a mental storm

A new study says trauma survivors respond to the positive images in a similar manner as to the negative visuals, in a hyper-responsive way. Will this change the course of therapy?

The eyes are the window to the soul, they say, but the eyes can also be a window to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a new Welsh study has found. More precisely, the pupils could give away the pain that the body has been suppressing, incurred during a war, sexual attack, accident or personal loss. But will we care to look deeply?

India has one of the worst records of patient care with regards to mental health. Over 90 million Indians are shackled by some or the other form of mental disorder, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Published in the Biological Psychology, the finding establishes that people with PTSD not only show a hypersensitive response to threatening pictures but also to neutral and pleasant images, indicating they are in a constant state of vigilance and they find it difficult to let their guard down and relax.

Can this finding allow medical practitioners to understand patients in a new light, with new intervention such as making use of positive images during the therapy than focusing just on a fear-based stimulus?

Hyderabad-based consultant psychiatrist Dr I Bharat Kumar Reddy can’t say for sure because the study isn’t conclusive and needs further investigation. But he doesn’t dismiss its potential either. “For instance, you won’t show horrifying images to rape survivors because it can be triggering. Maybe the use of positive images would do better. But I think the use of positive images and the study of pupillary reaction would be effective only in diagnosing the trauma, not in the treatment.’

During the therapy, he says, experts study how the entire body reacts to a stimulus, ranging from heart rate to pulse rate and blood pressure to palpitations, and not just the pupillary response. “That’s because the pupillary response alone can be an unreliable measure. For instance, the pupil of a fireman would dilate the first time he witnesses a fire but the same pupil would constrict once he gets used to the sight of the fire. Must I also add that the pupillary response can indicate other conditions too, not just PTSD,” Dr Reddy explains.

Likewise, Padmalatha Ravi, an expressive arts therapist from Bengaluru, who has worked with people suffering from PTSD and co-conditions, believes the study needs more empirical evidence. “But it does show yet again that trauma is not just psychological but also physiological, and so mental health professionals should focus on both the emotional and physical well being of a person who has experienced trauma,” she says.

Gurugram-based psychiatrist Dr Samir Parikh suggests while the study develops, we should focus on what we already know about PTSD. That, it occurs in people who have either experienced a traumatic event or witnessed it and it manifests in the form of nightmares, flashbacks and overwhelming feelings even a month after the incident.

What ensues post trauma

Clinical psychologist Dr Aishwarya Pethe-Kulkarni from Bengaluru agrees that living with untreated PTSD can impact daily life, at school, in office, at home, and in relationships. “You may be buying groceries in a supermarket and the smell of a perfume can remind you of your abductor, your rapist, of the time you felt powerless. When such flashbacks happen, you tend to forget that you are in a safer space now,” she says, adding even some food can set them off.

Dissociation from the present is quite common among people with PTSD, so is avoidance of their past. “They may avoid going to environments that can trigger those memories. It can be an area, a sight, a sound, a smell, a conversation,” Gurugram-based psychiatrist Dr Samir Parikh explains. Other tell-tale signs of PTSD, he says, are disturbed sleep, nightmares, flashbacks, and hyperarousal (an abnormally heightened state of anxiety that occurs whenever you think about a traumatic event) and the resulting, hyper-vigilance. Irritability, breathlessness, frequent low moods, pessimistic thoughts that your world is falling apart, loss of interest in things that once excited them, trust issues, social isolation, and depression are red flags too. “Guilt and shame are also a big part of PTSD, reminding one constantly how powerless or weak he/she felt during the traumatic event,” says Dr Kulkarni, adding that it may even lead to suicidal thoughts.

Like with most anxiety and depressive disorders, some people with PTSD can go about their life “as a high-functioning individual” but when they return to “their safe space, their room, they can struggle to get out of the bed to even fix themselves a sandwich,” Dr Kulkarni comments on the invisible nature of mental health illnesses. However, PTSD is no longer considered an anxiety disorder as it was once, Dr Parikh clarifies, sharing that “the latest version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), released in 2013, has re-categorised it under ‘Trauma and stressor-related disorder’.”

Dr Parikh stresses on the word stressor, which is anything that causes a state of strain or tension. He brings this up to explain that PTSD can happen to anybody, at any age, of any gender, as long as one is exposed to a stressor – a terrifying life event.

Though the timeline can vary greatly, it’s possible to recover from PTSD with a mix of medication, psychotherapy, art therapy and support of their family. “But the stigma around mental health prevents people from seeking treatment,” says Dr Parikh. “Also the fact that we, including the people who have suffered trauma, tend to trivialise our feelings and brush them aside,” says Ravi.

The road to recovery

Ravi says it can take eight weeks to a couple of years of therapy just to get people to talk about their trauma without feeling triggered. “Children are more open to therapy exercises such as drawing while adults need coaxing. That’s because children have a support system in their parents while adults usually come alone. I’ve seen having a support system outside therapy can speed up the recovery.”

But is it possible for a person to recover from PTSD and have a relapse? “If you are vulnerable and exposed to a stressor, you may,” says Dr Parikh. Dr Kulkarni agrees but also feels that “people suffering from PTSD may develop coping mechanisms over time, thereby developing some level of resilience against stressing situations in their lives.”

PTSD at a glance

It can be classified as: Big T is triggered by natural disasters, crime, war, and debilitating injuries. Small T are distressing events experienced at a personal level, such as break-ups, emotional abuse, death of a family member or pet. Complex Trauma is a result of stressors experienced over time, such as facing abuse in childhood, then a road accident and a terrorist attack later in life.

As per a 2019 report in Frontiers in Psychiatry, the prevalence of PTSD is seen among survivors of natural disasters (31%), abuse (28%), and man-made accidents (16.4%).

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to produce a large increase in instances of PTSD, predicts the Welsh study. “But it’s too soon to make that conclusion,” says Dr Parikh.

Confessions of a jobless mind

It’s been almost a month since I posted a dream. Not because I didn’t see any or recall them. The problem is I haven’t been dreaming funny dreams, which is what I set out to journal and which is what my dreams were made up of in an era we now call ‘pre-COVID’. These days, I only dream about hunting a job, finding a news to tell or running helter-skelter to get a freelance story published somehow. For those of you who know my situation, you’ve already made the connection. And for those who aren’t tuned in, yes, I have been out of job for six months and I am trying to find a profile I like. I am trying to score freelance assignments, no matter how petty the money be, and above all, just getting a response from editors. Even a ‘no’ will do, you know.

And so, I wasn’t sure if I should share stories of anxiety at a time in history when there are enough and more of it already. Will it trigger you in anyway? That was my concern. But after a lot of introspection, I have decided to go for it. I analysed my ‘dark dreams’ by stripping them off my backstory that I just told you and I realised they aren’t as distressing. They are still pretty weird.

Okay, enough lecture. Here are two such dreams that I saw back-to-back.

A mango recipe I wish I hadn’t discovered

A girl and I have been assigned to write a mood piece on the mango season, for a website that’s partly into news and partly into feel-good, click-bait stories. I am not happy to share my byline with that girl because “Come on, it’s such an easy story,” I feel. But the boss wants what she wants. So off I go to interview some mango-sellers in the locality.

But where am I exactly? I think I am standing on top of a lush green hill, overlooking the main road that I must reach to meet the mango-sellers. So I start strolling down the hill, smiling as I take the winding route flanked by pretty trees. I hit the main road and also the realisation that I am in Kerala. “Oh wow!” I squeal with excitement because it’s one of my favourite getaways.

The next thing I know, I am standing outside a mango-seller’s home. It’s a small house of mud and a roof so low that I get down on my fours to enter it. The mango-seller is introducing me to the women of his family while also talking about the yield and the variety of mangoes he was able to do this season. He excuses me for a minute and goes outside of the kitchen, leaving me in the company of his wife and old mother. There’s an appetising aroma floating in the air and I am drawn to its source, a silver pot sitting on the fire. But his wife is panicking as I peer closer to the dish – a mango chutney. Without any warning, she leaps at me and drives me away from the chutney.

An eerie silence befalls on the room.

I enquire if everything is okay. She exchanges a tensed glance with her mother-in-law and takes me to a corner. “It’s a secret recipe. We have been guarding it for generations. This mango chutney is unlike others. It’s more spicy than sweet. Only our family members are allowed to eat it,” she reveals. “Wow! That’s an exciting story,” my eyes light up with excitement. I muster some courage and ask her if I can publish this on my website. She turns her face away, not wanting to take this conversation any further. After a lot of negotiation, the family allows me to mention this secret recipe in passing, without giving away too many details. Phew! I am relieved.

I am back in the office, thrashing my findings on the keyboard. I soon e-mail my draft to that girl so she can add her inputs and compile them all into a 1,000-word article. Once she’s done, she sends the article back to me for editing and fact-checking. “The copy is fine but you need to re-structure the last line. You see, the placement of ‘the’ or ‘a’ can change the meaning of the entire sentence,” I guide her. We proof-read the story, email it to the boss and leave for our respective homes.

“Barkha, meet me in the office ASAP!!!”. I wake up to a stinker from my boss, who sounds pretty pissed. I dress up and rush to the office, straight into her cabin.

“Did you write this bit on the mango chutney? On the family recipe? On the secret?” she fires questions at me, each sounding progressively worse.

“Yes,” I nod hesitatingly.

“Why? Who told you to write this?” she demands.

“Because nobody knows about it. It’s a hidden recipe and it’s about the fruit of the season, mango. I think it will go viral ,” I justify passionately.

But she isn’t sold on the idea. She bangs her fist on the desk, gets up from her chair and dashes towards me, visibly suppressing her anger under heavy breaths. “Listen, nobody should ever know about this mango recipe. I am warning you. Just erase it from your memory and also your email. You should not have unravelled this mystery. Do you hear me? You don’t realise what you have done!”

I am terrified because she is beside herself. If I may say so, she is looking like the blood-thirsty ghost Manjulika from Bhool Bhulaiya. I decided to run away from her office. I am running as far as I can but I can’t run away from my thoughts. “Is there a cult around this mango chutney? And… And… Is my boss a part of that cult I should have never known about?”

Trivia: I saw this dream a few days after I made a mango chutney, or pachadi as it’s known in the south, using the microwave. Ping me for the recipe. It’s super quick, easy and finger-licking.

Like what happens after every disturbing dream, I woke up and started throwing my hands under the blanket to look for my phone. Some scrolling and news reading later, I decided to sleep.

A red sofa I wish I hadn’t lost

Its 4.15 am now. Preeti, my sister-in-law, is standing outside our bedroom. She has come to wake my partner Naren up for some ritual. Kuku, my brother, comes in, mocking me for sleeping so much. I ignore them and bury myself under the blanket while Naren is taken away to the bathroom for the ritual. I think they are going to pour cold water on him, I am giggling at the thought.

Hours pass by and suddenly, the house is empty. I am home alone, which, given my past record, has never gone down well. So I decide to step out of the house to look for Naren, Kuku and Preeti, and before I know it, I have strayed a little too far.

I am standing in front of a building that’s under construction. I troop inside and find a group of civic authorities arguing with a man in his mid-40s. I barge in on the scene and ask one of the officials what the matter is. He says, “This man has dug a sanitation pipeline under the building to draw water. It’s never been done before but it’s both illegal and dangerous.”

“What dangerous? It’s yuck! How can you draw drinking water from a sanitation pipe?” I convulse at the idea. But I recover from my disgust soon to realise there’s a story here.

Bengaluru’s water crisis has gone from worse to worst. We recently stumbled upon a person in Yeshwanthpur who had no choice but to draw water using a sanitation pipe… I start forming the intro of the story in my head. It’s out of habit, cultivated on the advice given by my editors that, ‘If you can’t think of the intro soon, there is no story.’ But well, I have a rough intro and a story. Yay!

The crowd is now moving to the first floor of the building and the man is begging the authorities to forgive him. “Why is he crying?” I ask myself and push through the crowd to have a word with him. “Ma’am, I bought this house in 2015. I was told by the builder that the building would be complete two years ago but he’s been absconding and I have nowhere to go. So I decided to move in a few months ago and build a water supply myself,” he shares, sobbing bitterly. No sooner does he finish his story that I break down. I know I have to report this story fast. It’s a story of human desperation, water crisis and builders’ apathy all rolled into one. He can’t be penalised.

I want to stay longer and interview him and the authorities but I need to rush back, because I forgot to lock the house! Now my mind is running with thoughts of burglary: “What if somebody broke into the house and stole things? What will I answer to Kuku and Preeti? It’s their house, after all. No, no, no. I am overthinking. I have at least shut the door tight.”

I hop and sprint to the house only to discover that the door is indeed wide open. I run inside to see if all the things are in place. They are and I am so relieved. No, wait. My eyes fall on the place where our red, English sofa should be in the living room. It’s MISSING. “Oh no, no,” I cry out loud, pulling my hair in frustration. “But I am sure the thief will come back, so I will go and hide behind the main door to nab him/her,” I make a plan quickly and take my position.

My plan was on point because the thief tried to break in again but this time, I caught him by his hand. To my disbelief, the thief is a young boy of eight years. He stays in the building on the same floor. I hold him by his T-shirt collar and drag him to the corridor. I smack him on his head and back alternatively, so hard that it’s hurting my own hand but I won’t stop. I need answers.

“How dare you steal the sofa? Where is it? Tell me,” I demand aggressively. “Aunty, what are you saying? I haven’t stolen any sofa,” he responds, coolly. He’s making me mad. “Tell me or I will kill you. I mean it,” I ask him earnestly, trying to hold back my tears. But no, it’s too late. I am crying copiously. “Just please, tell me,” I beg him. “Aunty, at least listen to me. What if Preeti Aunty have sold it in the market to buy a new one instead?” he tries to show me the reason. I am in no mood to listen to him. I want to see the sofa in front of my eyes right now. That’s it.

As the beatings continue, his brother of about 11 years of age comes looking for him. I suspect him to be the partner in crime and nab him and start smacking him too. I can see their mother from the corridor. She is frying puris and calling out for her boys, knowing little the crime they have done.

And just then, Preeti shows up. My heart is in my mouth now. “What will I tell her?” my face grows small. She storms into the house and storms out in a minute. She had come to pick up something. “Didi, I am leaving now. And leave these boys, why are you harassing them?” she says nonchalantly.

“Preeti, are you okay? Don’t you realise something is missing?” I ask her softly, tired from all the crying and beating that has ensued in the last 10 minutes.

“What?” she asks, confused and also irritated.

“The sofa is missing. These boys, they have stolen it,” I tell her finally, hanging my head in shame.

“Oho didi, we sold it in the market when you were sleeping. We need to buy a new one,” she resolves the mystery casually.

“You sold it?! You never told me. You have no idea what I have gone through in these 10 minutes. I almost died of guilt and almost killed these boys,” I tell her, as I flung my back against the wall and slipped down wailing inconsolably.

“Kya didi!” Preeti shuts me up in jest and leaves to do her errands.

Now I am almost delirious out of exhaustion, slurring words to myself. The boys have run back home but I have no strength to run after them to say “Sorry, I am so sorry”.

It’s 4.53 am. I wake up from the nightmare to check my phone again, only to discover a message that upset me further. We are headed to a trek in an hour and Naren’s ex-colleague has forgotten to bring the plant cuttings that she had promised to. “If my mood wasn’t bad already,” I shoot a groggy reply to her and finally get up to get ready for the trek.

Trivia: It’s the first time I have ever been violent in my dreams. What’s going on? 🤪

Have you ever seen a savage dream? Have you ever walked in on a secret or a cult you shouldn’t have, of course, in your dreamland? Let me know in the feedback section. Come, let’s laugh them off together.

Chasing news

Hello dreamers,

I want you to watch this video till the end. Some of you might have already seen it on your TLs while others could have watched something similar. Whatever be the case, watch it before you proceed.

Bicycle kite by Taiwanese kite-maker Feng Tsan-huang

To unsuspecting eyes, it’s a man cycling in the sky. How cool is that. And ooh! Look at that cap – he’s clearly equipped for a ride under the sun. But yeah, I know, we know, it’s just a life-sized kite.

So why am I talking kites today? Scroll down to read my latest dream and find out.

Naren and I are on a holiday. To a hill station, perhaps. The sun is up, the sky is clear, and I can hear the buzz of the morning market down the road. This is enough to wake up the light-sleeper that I am while Naren hasn’t flinched a bit from his slumber. Lucky him! As I throw the blanket off me, I wonder where we are. The blanket is too white and plush for the cheap travel hostels we usually check into. Did we book a resort this time? I drop the stray thoughts and move to the window.

I look up, down, left, right and start drumming the window. I am bored already. But what else can I do? Damn! Naren is still sleeping. I look up at the sky again. I love watching clouds build up, glide away and take shapes. I really believe they are hiding a kingdom or many behind them.

And just then, from nowhere, I see a tiny speck of something heading towards me, cutting through one cloud after another. Heck no! It’s cycling towards me. It’s growing closer, bigger and clearer and I can’t believe what I am witnessing. It’s a man on a cycle. He’s cycling in the sky. It’s real human, not a kite, I repeat.

“Hey! He needs to stop pedalling or he will crash into my window,” I mutter. But he’s on another trip. He hurtles straight towards me, takes a sharp right turn and waves at me with his right hand. I am not sure if I am more amused or confused with this stunt but I am certainly concerned: “What if he falls from the sky? Why did he take his hand off the handle?”

And as if to show off, he applies brakes. He is right now hanging in the air on a cycle and taking in the view of building tops, water tankers and folks collecting dry laundry from the clothesline. I just noticed that he’s got his cycle helmet on. Thank goodness! But before I can slide the windowpane open to talk to him, he starts cycling again, perhaps because the sun is burning hot and it’s getting sweaty for him. He disappears in the clouds in no time.

I rush to wake up Naren but he’s so deep in sleep that I drop the idea. I decide to slip under the blanket as well, to while away my time.

Two hours have passed. It’s 8am now. We are awake but still lounging under the blanket. So I start telling Naren what I saw. But he isn’t looking intrigued, not sure why. And then by my sweet luck, I see the evidence cycling towards me. Literally! I can see the man cycling in the sky again from our room’s window. Even Naren can. The man is hovering over the hill station in rounds, unmindful of his loyal audience that I am. He’s too far to make a small talk. Off he vrooms from our sight. Damn!

“Did you know about these aerial cycles? When did this technology come out? I haven’t read anything such in the news. It would be so cool if I can track this guy down for a story,” I quiz Naren, who is still strangely disinterested in this man or his cycle.

Anyway, let’s get ourselves some food. I am hungry.

We are driving down the narrow road that’s delightfully flanked by eateries. It’s time to find a parking. There’s a spot on the right, so we turn in there. As Naren brings the car to a halt, I wonder what is our car doing here? Did we drive all the way down? My thought bubble is bursted by Naren’s call for help. He wants me to step out and see if the ‘butt’ of his car is getting too close to the wall.

I step out and see a man is trying to park his cycle next to us. Even he’s struggling for space but he’s done it finally. He removes his helmet, tosses his sweaty hair up and smiles at me. I stop dead in my tracks. “Oh god! He is the man on that cycle,” I gasp for breath. I want to yell in excitement, you know, because my big, exclusive story – my scoop – has walked right into me. But I decide otherwise. “What if this guy has been written about already? I’d look like a fool,” I counsel myself.

So putting up a cool, casual and ‘What’s the big deal?’ front, I ask him, “Are you the same man who was cycling in the sky today?”

“Yes. Did you see that?” he confirms my discovery.

“So for how long have you been doing this? I mean, riding in the sky? And did you develop the cycle yourself?” the journalist in me takes over.

“It’s been a few weeks. I mostly ride above Ulsoor but sometimes I veer away by a few kilometeres to come this side. I have developed this cycle technology with a friend. He’s an Indian but currently in Europe,” the young man, in his early 30s, opens the fact-sheet.

“Ulsoor? Ulsoor is in Bangalore. Does that mean I am in Bangalore and not at a hill station at the moment? Is that why we are driving around in our car?” I question my dream, in the dream.

“Ulsoor is right next to where I work, so how did I not discover this story earlier?” I am upset with myself but I have no time to dwell up on trivial things. I need to act fact or some other reporter from Bangalore might catch this story first. I can’t let that happen.

“Hey! You didn’t help me,” Naren startled me by putting his arms around me. Yup, I totally forgot about the parking. “Naren, he’s the man we saw cycling in the sky a few hours ago. He was piloting his project this side,” I fill him in with whatever details I’ve gathered as the sky cyclist looks on, rather uncomfortable with the limelight coming his way.

“Sorry, I forgot to ask your name,” I turn to the cyclist.

“It’s Ramesh,” he responds.

We ask Ramesh to join us for lunch and we find ourselves a wooden table to sit, overlooking a valley. “Has your cycle story been covered in any newspaper so far?” I ask bluntly because it’s now or never. “No, not yet,” he informs me. I can’t describe you the joy and relief I felt hearing those words.

“My name is Barkha Kumari. I am a journalist with Bangalore Mirror. I would like to cover your story,” I make a pitch. (PS: I saw the dream when I was still employed, which, you know, was many moons ago :p)

“No, no. I am not interested,” he shoots down the idea.

“What?!” I recoil in shock.

“Ermm… May I ask why? Is it because your technology is still in the testing stage and you want time to full-proof it? Either way, I can tell you it’ll be a fun read. I plan to write a mood piece, more of a first-person account of watching you cycle through the clouds. We’ll try to do a video shoot as well. I think it will go viral,” I try to hard-sell the pitch.

“No, it’s not that,” is all he says.

“Okay. If you aren’t ready for this yet, can you please share your contact number so we can stay in touch and follow up on the story later? Believe me, it will definitely be a Page 1 story. I can already imagine my boss coming up with the cleverest headlines,” I chuckle while he is looking mad at me.

Season 2 Netflix GIF by Gilmore Girls - Find & Share on GIPHY

“Fine. If not for a story, can we stay in touch so I can come to your workshop and understand your technology better? I love geeky stuff and my office is very close to Ulsoor,” I change my strategy.

“No,” he goes again. This time, he’s getting up from the table – to leave.

I corner Naren and tell him, “What’s wrong with his guy? Why is he behaving this way? Am I coming across as desperate? Can you please talk to him instead and explain that I see value in this story and his technology and would like to stay in touch? If not the contact number, email ID would also do.”

I get up from the table and go and stand a few feet away. Ramesh has got me angry. As a journalist, I love telling a good story but if the source/subject is going to act pricey for no good reason, I won’t stoop low. That’s clear to me.

I can hear that Naren’s negotiation isn’t going down well. And just like that, a few minutes later, Ramesh gets up on a whim and heads to the parking spot to get his cycle. He leaves, but this time he’s strangely cycling on the road and not in the sky.

I am watching all this coolly, from the corner of my right eye as if I don’t care. Of course, I care but I can’t let this show. I have self-respect.

Naren and I get back to the table to order some lunch finally. I pull out my phone to fix my mood – to scroll news, watch cat videos, answer messages, and hmm… also to stalk this one Ramesh from the thousand others on social media. After responding to a message on WhatsApp, I start scrolling down the contacts aimlessly because I am in no mood to talk to Naren or anybody. I have hit the bottom of my WhatsApp contact list, so I start scrolling up. And guess what I spot?

I see a photo of that Ramesh guy in one of the profile circles. “What?! I have his contact number already. How?” my heart is racing with both excitement and revenge. I show the photo to Naren with a smirk on my face. We share a good laugh and start digging into our lunch.

Will Do Love You GIF by Shalita Grant - Find & Share on GIPHY

What do I do with this number?

Do I call him up?

Do I leave a message?

Or, do I drop the story altogether?

Please don’t ask me because I have woken up from my dream. But what I can surely tell you is that, where there’s a story, there’s a journalist. We are as good as detectives 🙂

Anyway, that’s that. If you’ve also seen geeky dreams, please share in the feedback section below.

What the fish!

Bengaluru-based journalist Barkha Kumari has finally added a feather in her empty cap. Her newly-minted blog ‘Diaries of a dreamworm’ has made it to the list of Top 50 Lucid Dream Blogs. The list was compiled by Feedspot.com, a website that ranks blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels in niche categories. “Not bad at all,” was Barkha’s first reaction on learning the news via email. She was chuffed to see her blog on the 23rd position. “50th would have been a little embarrassing,” she told her partner over a chuckle. After the news sunk in, she drafted a ‘Thank You’ note, which read something like this: “Thank you to those who’ve read all my posts so far, those who’ve bookmarked them or one at least and those who don’t plan to read it ever but won’t block me out either!”

Yes, it did happen. As recently as last week. And I want to celebrate this moment by giving a fellow dreamer and a dedicated follower of my blog a chance to share her wild, very wild dream that she saw last month. So drumroll, actually snore-roll, for Shriti Mazumdar. She’s a dear school friend and an IT professional, who moved from Chennai to Chicago after marriage.

Her dream checks all the boxes of a good lucid dream. It’s got real people in unrelated circumstances, time-travel, self-talk, and of course, an end that came too soon.

It’s also my first time writing a dream biography. Yes, I interviewed Shriti for half an hour to milk the details of an otherwise foggy dream and then weaved those fragments in a chronological manner.

I think it’s shaped up well. Give it a read.

I am not in the US. I am not at my home in Chicago. Where am I then?

What?! I am back in Ranchi. I am standing in the middle of the PG hostel I used to stay in during my grad. I have come in with an overstuffed backpack and a jumbo trolly bag after what feels like a short vacay but is actually nine long years. The PG Aunty is puzzled at my arrival. She’s not even a bit excited to see me back.

“Aunty, I want to go to my room,” I demand as a matter-of-fact. She hesitates and then leads me into the PG hostel that is a typical Punjbai home, complete with tall ceilings and huge columns and balconies that wrap around the house on each floor.

I reach my room. It’s latched from inside, so I knock on the door. “Who’s there?” comes the question from one of my roomies. “Hey, it’s Shriti,” I say, and with that and only that, the door opens by itself. How strange!

I spot Barkha. She’s flopped on the bed bang opposite to the door, in her PJs, reading something. Right to her is Reetu, another friend from the same school that Barkha and I went to. She’s lounging in her maxi, thrashing something on the keyboard. The bed next to Reetu is empty. I turn to my right and see Preeti on the bed, in her tees and jeans. Preeti is another of our school friends, BTW. The three are doing what they are doing as well as chit-chatting in between.

“What’s happening? These are not my roomies from Ranchi. Where have they gone? And where the hell is the fifth bed? My bed, my bedding roll and all the stuff I dumped on it when I moved out?” my brain is gonna burst with questions.

Barkha, Reetu and Preeti are as confused to see me in the room as I am to discover them in this hostel. After exchanging blank looks for a few seconds, they launch the questions: “How was your trip?”, “Isn’t it so hot outside?”, “How is everyone at home?”… And more, which I can’t comprehend. They are speaking at once. It’s just noise to me.

I leave the three to their indistinct chatter and turn to Aunty who’s standing right behind me, at the door. She looks guilty, perhaps because she removed my bed from the room without informing me. My back is hurting from all the travel and the bags that I have been lugging around. I need a bed to crash. So I ask her again, “Aunty, where is my bed?”

She points her finger to a room across the common hall and I get going.

“Thank god,” I am relieved to see my bed finally, only that it doesn’t look like the hostel bed that I used for three years. It was cheap and made of plywood. But this one is royalish, it’s double in size and it’s even got storage boxes. It’s actually the diwan-bed from my house in Kolkata. “That’s okay. It’s still my bed,” I mumble to myself. My initial euphoria dies down as my eyes fall on the pile of clothes, books and whatnots on top of it. I scan the room for the culprits – the occupants who aren’t my roomies and, I swear, will never be.

“If it is their stuff on my bed, then where is my stuff?” I am fearing the worst now. “No wait! Maybe it’s inside the bed storage,” my eyes light up with the idea. And so, without any further ado, I push their stuff to one side of the bed disdainfully and lift the metal handle on the storage box to open it.

“Yuck! Eek!!” I scream out loud. Yes, my stuff is there, those carton boxes and books, but also someone, living and breathing. It’s a brown, shiny, squishy, slimy fish kind of creature sitting on top of my things, almost half the size of my bed. And what’s worse? It’s chilling in there. If it was trapped for any unfortunate reason, it would have slithered away the moment I lifted the bed but no, it turned towards me coolly, ignored me massively and went back to snoozing.

And what about me? I am wide awake. I feel DISGUSTED. Was it a fish with a squid-face? Was it a cross between a slug and an octopus? Or… Was it Demogorgon, the monster from Stranger Things?

Over to you, Barkha.

Q: What could have inspired the dream?

A: I binge-watched all the seasons of TV show Stranger Things a month back and I guess the tacky, slug-like monster ‘Demogorgen’ from the show stayed on in my mind.

Q: What would you have done if you really discovered this creature inside your bed?

A: If this happened for real and the situation worsened, I would have pinched or slapped myself in hopes of snapping out of a plausible icky nightmare for sure. But yes, my immediate reaction would be to deal with it with some professional help. I would not run away because I would still want to access and retrieve my stuff after cleaning and. of course, sanitising it.

Q: What’s the first thing you did after waking up from this nightmare?

A: This was a very manageable one, more of a disgusting dream than a nightmare on my scale. The sheer weirdness of it helped me not overthink it. I woke up, snubbed it as a weird dream, scrolled through some news on my phone and dozed back thinking of something entirely different.

Q: Did you try to interpret the dream?

A: There had been a phase of my life where I attempted reading famed fat books of sexist authors in hopes of unraveling the meaning of my dreams. But I regretted doing it. So much so that I gave up. I rarely analyse my dreams nowadays.

Q: Does it hurt to recall a nightmare?

A: Some definitely do and those are the ones I work to erase from my memory. But this dream was more weird than a nightmare, so I was okay sharing it.

So dreamers, what’s the first thing that you do after snapping out of a nightmare or a wild dream?
Leave your comments below.

It’s all on the house

April 14, 2020 | Bangalore

For some migrant workers and security staff of apartment complexes who have not been able to go home during the lockdown, the city’s apartment residents have turned guardian angels. From providing free meals to giving them shelter within the apartment complex and crowdfunding their weekly ration, they’re doing it all.

Ajay Kanhal from Assam who works as a security guard at Springfields Apartments along Sarjapura Main Road, is currently staying at the apartment Club House along with over 15 security, STP and complaint cell staffers – all male. The lodging is basic. Sets of bedding and blankets are laid out in a well ventilated hall, at a good distance from each other. Toilet/bathrooms are attached. Three meals and snacks are provided for free at the restaurant above, informs Shankar Agarwal, who’s in-charge of the security management at the apartment complex.

Kanhal, a 30-year-old security guard prefers this to staying in his rented room. “They (residents) treat us like family. From toothpaste to towels to sanitisers and food, everything is provided for us,” he says. Koramangala’s Raheja Residency has accommodated 40 of their security guards, plumbers and electricians in quarters inside the campus, along with WiFi access.

Housing the frontline staff was important, says Kashinath Prabhu, general secretary of Bellandur Jothege, a forum of 75-plus RWAs. “Without public transport, the staff would have found it difficult to come to work. If they came by foot, the police would ask them why they were unnecessarily moving around. Three, social distancing is as important for us as it is for them.”

Did the “skeletal staff” object to the idea of make-shift stay? HA Nagaraja Rao, president of Bangalore Apartment Federation, says, “There was no pressure. Whether they come to work or not, we are paying them full salary. But the staff members staying back are all bachelors or they’re living in the city without families or they are migrants who could not travel to their state (mostly from Orissa and Assam).” The housekeeping force comprises mostly women and they are allowed to come in and go.

Arranging food was important too since eateries in the city have been shut. Paul Thomas, secretary of the association of Bellanadur-located Akme Harmony, agrees, “Once their food was taken care of, it was easier to retain the essential staff. The association hired gas cylinders, burners and vessels as well as two cooks and bought the groceries in bulk while residents pitched in with cutlery. In two days, the community kitchen was set up at the party hall.” In some instances, residents are themselves taking turns to make tea, snacks and even meals for their staff.

Others are crowdsourcing the rations. In Platinum City in Yeshwanthpur, inmates have been sponsoring 25 kg of rice to four kilos of tea and sugar and 10 packets of biscuits on a voluntary basis while a couple of people go to the bazaar to shop for groceries. Badal Behara, a 44-year-old plumbing supervisor, is in charge of cooking duties. Far away in Sarjapur, 23 residents of Rainbow Drive raised Rs20,000 to sponsor basic grocery kits, comprising 10 kg rice, 2 kg dal, one kg salt and one litre oil, to their support staff and three stranded constructions workers.

Says Rao, “As doctors are essential service for us so are these security guards, housekeeping staff, plumbers, electricians and STP supervisors. We need them and we need to ensure their safety.”

The hands behind the mask

Barkha Kumari | April 14, 2020 | Bangalore

Clay masks and sheet masks were the old normal. In a Covid-19 era, homemade cloth masks are fighting the global scarcity for protective equipment. This comes after the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Indian government circulated a manual to make reusable masks at home and multiple state governments, Karnataka included, made it mandatory to wear masks in the public. According to the manual, double layer of a pure cotton fabric is about 70% as effective as a surgical mask in capturing small particles.

And so, 69-year-old Kamini Mehta is sewing single-layer masks – both the adult and kid size – at her Vasanthnagar home. “We are all locked up at home, with nothing much to do. So if I can help, why not?” says the DIYer, who’s made 300 pieces so far. She got the fabric – 200 metres of cloth and few bed sheets – from entrepreneur Preeti Tandon, who sterilised them in boiling salt water, sundried and ironed them before giving away. “My husband is a doctor, so we also have an autoclav machine at home to sterilise medical tools,” she shares. These masks will be donated to the poor in and around the area, by the Citizens For Citizens (C4C) group that she is part o and that is founded by Rajkumar Dugar.

Not so far in Indiranagar, Shobhana Jayashankar cut out face masks for a dozen security men, construction workers and residents last week. “I learnt sewing recently and had scrap fabric on me,” says the dog groomer.

The bangaloreMASKproject is another initiative to make masks, started by Janna Hennig, a German national staying in Whitefield, and other city folks. An online project, it has how-to videos to make three types of facemasks –a three-layered, washable cotton mask, a no-sew, single-use bandana and a plastic shield mask recycled from water cans. Instructions come in 10 Indian and 14 foreign languages. “We have got over 4,00,000 requests!” she tells me. Since it’s an open source project, she can’t say how many people have started making masks off her website, but her own circle of friends and tailors have doled out 3,000 units, she claims.

People from the textile field have pitched in too. In over two weeks, Shwetha Shettar, Reena Krishnan and Smitha Murthy have gone from roping in 15 out-of-work tailors to make 10,000 cup-shaped masks to turning their own home into packaging units and their family members into ‘mask models’. “One apartment complex in Bellandur alone placed an order for 5,000 masks. We have also got orders from corporates and a service club,” textile designer Shettar shares.

While they are selling masks at Rs30 apiece, Deepa Kumar sent out her first batch of 500 double-layered ‘Adira Face Masks’ on Friday, charging Rs120 for a pack of two. “For every pack sold, we plan to donate a pack to the needy,” informs Kumar, who runs a garments business out of Jayanagar and who’s got six tailors making these protective covers in two sizes.

But despite their network of tailors and wholesale dealers, operational challenges remain. Right from the shortage of elastic, cellotape and packaging material to the unavailability of delivery agents or times when tailors get caught by the police because they stepped out to meet their ‘masterji’ to when people make awkward calls like “Can you make the mask in a certain colour or pattern?”, Shettar sums up.

Not just professionals, fashion design students of Vogue Institute of Art and Design, Dobballapura, made 1,500 masks at their home, which were later distributed to vendors, shopkeepers and people who could afford them.

However, what’s commendable is that most of the production is managed remotely – over phone or video calls.

The curious case of COVID

‘Why am I having weird dreams lately?’ No, I am not asking this. Why should I? I have been dreaming of weird stuff for as long as I can remember. However, a lot of people across the world are having vivid dreams lately – since the lockdown began, since we went in quarantine, since the new normal set in. I really am not making this up.

Google searches for ‘weird and strange dreams’ have doubled since last year and people have reported dreaming about ‘ordering 30 egg sandwiches for their colleagues only to realise they shouldn’t be going to work at all’ to ‘storing music in jugs of water’ and ‘running away from tsunami’.

Experts are calling it ‘pandemic dreaming’ and they say it’s a way for our brain to process the barrage of new information, feelings and experiences that’s coming our way as we tackle the novel Coronavirus. It’s a well-established fact that most of us don’t often remember our dreams, but the anxieties of life in isolation and disruption to our normal sleep-wake cycles seem to be changing that, writes The Guardian.

Closer home, in Bangalore, I found example of a pandemic dream on a blog called Grains of thought. It’s run by Malcolm Carvalho, who’s a techie by profession, a poet and a cyclist by passion and a serial dreamer for no fault of his.

So here I am reproducing a dream that he dreamt on Day 8 of India’s Lockdown 1.0, in a manner he knows best – a poem. It’s called Highway Hostility.

Last night I dreamed I was riding my bicycle.

In my dream,
the bicycle had no handlebar,
and I do not remember what I did with my hands,
Also, I was relearning to ride the bike
on a highway.
I had forgotten to balance,
and yet I did not need to.
The bike could stay upright
all by itself.
I only had to pedal,
I did not even need to steer the bike,
which would explain the absent handlebar,
if one wished to make sense of a dream.

I continued pedalling,
moving further and faster on an empty highway,
up or down a slope I don’t know,
until I crashed head-on
into a car
which had its parking lights on.
I remember
the car was red
and that the motorist who jumped out
looked at the dent in his car,
then at me,
then back at the dent
and then at me.
Having ping-ponged like this for several dream-seconds,
he stopped,
rubbed the back of his neck,
and mumbled angrily.

I could not figure if he was threatening me
or asking for compensation.
Then I noticed I had a twisted front wheel,
and asked him
if I could hitch a ride back home in his car.
He balled his fists,
took a few paces towards me
and mumbled incoherently again.
This time, I did not try guessing the words.
I breathed in deeply and said,
“Sir, you aren’t quite audible
with the mask on.”

And I moved back
until a meter
again separated the two of us.

Please stay back for a few minutes because I am about to grill Carvalho about his dreams 😀 And, yes, feel free to share your pandemic dreams in the comments.

What could have inspired this bicycle dream?

When I wrote this back in April, I was losing control of things around me. It felt like no one knew where we were heading and what we had to do – neither the government nor the healthcare organisations. I guess the bike in the dream reflects this – It has no handle and I have forgotten how to balance it yet I am able to ride it. The dream could also have resulted from the paranoia that had set in around wearing the masks. Or maybe, on a deeper level, I just missed riding the bike and was apprehensive about how it would to be ride amid social distancing, and if the road rage would be any different.

Do you generally dream a lot or is it a recent development?

Yes, I am dreaming a lot these days – I think at least one vivid dream every week. I remember some of them in a bare-boned manner, and I fill in some details as and when I narrate the dream.

So you like narrating your dreams? Yay!

I share most of my dreams with my partner. The others, I find them either embarrassing or too vulnerable to share.

Do you marvel at your own dreams and beat yourself up to make sense of ’em? I do – all the time.

Completely. Often, I can’t figure out why someone who I have not met or thought about in a long time randomly pops up in my dream. Or why the dream was set in a place, say near a river, which is so far removed from where I live.

Lastly, tell us about your most funny, serious and surreal dreams.

I’m at work one morning at this office that I no longer work in, and my partner shows up with a friend. Turns out the three of us had planned to go out for a movie, and I have completely forgotten about it. I sneak out, telling my colleagues that an emergency has come up and that I need to head out. But I will surely be back by lunch!

I have this recurring dream where I haven’t passed my college degree exam and I need to appear for it again. In the dream, I am in some small town, so I need to give up everything I have been doing there and head to Mumbai and start studying for the exam which is not too far away. It’s almost like resetting my life back to when I was 22.

It’s a dark night and I’m alone on a bridge, shining a flashlight at the still water body below. I see a group of turtles swimming. Every time I try to follow them with the flashlight, they disappear and appear in another dark part of the lake. I’m confused and I look around for someone to explain what’s happening. Then I see a school friend walk towards me on another bridge, and both our bridges merge not too far from where I stand. I don’t know if we meet.

Hi Barkha, meet Barkha

In my first blog, I had promised I would write down my dreams as I remember them – no cuts, no add-ons allowed. But pardon me already. Today, I am going to jump to Part 3 of this dream because neither Part 1 nor Part 2 has any relation with Part 3 or even one other. My dream was so mixed up that Naren and I refuse to believe it was actually one dream. Maybe I saw three different dreams back-to-back?

I mean, look at the chronology.

Part 1: My mamma is a home buddy. She doesn’t like to step out except for her evening walks and trips to sabzi mandi (that’s right outside her apartment). So I make a full-proof plan to have her visit my as well as Sharad bhaiya‘s office, that are not too far from each other in a town that I simply can’t recognise.

Part 2: I have moved to a new city and my younger brother, Kuku, and his wife, Preeti, have trailed along to find me a decent accommodation. Long dream short, we have found ourselves a shady flat and we are now running away from baddies. I am angry with advocates passing by as not even one is stopping us to ask what the matter is.

Part 3: I have got an email! I am at a book launch!! I am living my dream!!!

Did I see one dream? Or three? What do you think? Let me know in the comment section.

But before that, may I go on with Part 3 of my dream? Please?

I’ve got an email. It’s from a Sindhi girl. I met her early this year, in Bangalore’s Sindhi Colony while celebrating Lohri. She is a lovely, helpful girl.

Sindhi girl: Hope you are doing well. We are looking for a copy editor for a project. Would you know a relevant person or would you be interested yourself?

Me: Sure. I would like to know more about it.

Sindhi girl: Why don’t you come over to XYZ hotel in the evening? We can discuss in person.

Me: Okay. I will be there!

It’s evening. I am at the XYZ hotel, waiting for her on the second floor.

There she comes, dazzling in a party outfit, smiling from ear to ear. But what’s that in her hands?

“Here it is. We’d like you to edit this,” she hands over a fat book to me.

Hell!

“What about the money? Is she expecting me to do it for free? No, no, no… I might be new to freelance journalism and writing, so what?!” my brain isn’t liking this project a bit. Honestly, I am not being arrogant or condescending. I am just concerned that she doesn’t know how the writing business works.

So I tell her, “Okay, if it’s a clean copy, I will charge Rs2.5 per word. But if it requires heavy editing, then Rs4 per word.”

She is looking clueless and I am not surprised. “Oh! I didn’t know about these rates. Give me five minutes. I will go and check with the boss on this,” she offers, sweetly.

Fine minutes are up and she’s back, this time with her suited-booted boss. “We’d need more time to think about the proposal. Thank you for dropping by,” the boss sends me off.

———

The hotel’s got a sprawling lawn and I am standing there. “What’s this?” I respond to the sight in front of me. There’s a big shaamiana and an even bigger crowd, tables look pretty with flowers and candles and a dais is set up with two chairs.

The Sindhi girl appears from nowhere and fills me in, “We are having a book launch. Feel free to attend. Take a seat.“

Okay! I find a seat beside my school friend Sniggdha, who I am not at all surprised to run into. Neither is she. I tell her about the writing project I was here for and how Sindhis being Sindhis, take their own sweet time on money matters. Our joke and laughter is cut short ‘cos I can see the Sindhi girl staring at me, visibly offended. “Shit! Did she hear that?” I curse myself and quickly turn to my friend to fix the situation: “But it’s a good thing, you know. Every penny matters. We should spend it wisely.” I hope I was loud enough. Phew!

PS: I have no control on my dreams but I strongly discourage stereotyping of communities and cultures

The Sindhi girl is now on the dais, welcoming the guest of honour. “Please put your hands together for award-winning journalist Barkha Dutt.”

What?!!

Before I can react further, I see Sniggdha, my schoolfriend, taking the second chair on the dais to talk to Barkha Dutt about her new book.

I am feeling dizzy. “What’s going on? Why is Snigddha interviewing Barkha Dutt?”

I quickly learn that the book is about a man and his struggles in two different corners of the world – East and West. I can make out from the book cover, he is lean and tall.

Barkha Dutt and Snigddha are discussing the first half of the book, which is set in Asia, and, for some strange reason, the tête-à-tête is coming to an end.

Or so I thought.

——–

The Sindhi girl dashes towards me with an urgent request: “Hey, can you please interview Barkha Dutt about the second half of the book? Please.”

“Me?” I am startled, I am excited and I am unsure at the same time.

“Erm.. Okay, I will do it,” I cut to chase because I need time to read the book. I can’t interview Barkha Dutt without preparation. I am a journalist. I want to make the most of this opportunity. I want to ask difficult questions – not the obvious types, you know. I want to impress her. My brain is heady and silly with possibilities.

It’s break time. I am walking back and forth near the dais, with the book in my hand. With my eyes buried in the book, I extend my left arm to pick up my mug of water from the edge of the dais. “Hey, it’s mine,” comes a familiar voice. I turn my face and see kohl-eyed Barkha Dutt grinning at my goof-up. I am embarrassed but she’s chill!

The time has come.

Barkha Dutt takes the seat and I take mine. Suppressing the fangirl in me as best as I can, I pick up the mic and turn to her to say, “Hello Barkha, this is Barkha. My name is Barkha Kumari. And in what happens to be a coincidence, I am also a journalist. Nothing like your stature but still a journalist.” We share a good laugh and the audience joins in.

The Q&A begins.

“The book is about one man straddling two worlds but to me, it reads like a story of two men. Your protagonist behaves one way in Asia and in a totally different manner in the West. Why is that?”

“Is your book also a commentary on the systemic gaps in these countries?”

And then, in an attempt to explore the bigger picture, I pivot our conversation to the Black Lives Movement and COVID-inflicted migrant crisis in India.

The session comes to a close with a rousing applause from the audience.

Barkha Dutt and I get down of the dais. “The questions were good,” she encourages me. I take the compliment hesitatingly and return one to her, “You are doing great work with MOJO Story. I have been following the reportage.”

“So where are you working?” Barkha Dutt asks me, as we walk away from the dais.

“I am on a break. I am looking for a job,” I say simply.

“Oh!” Barkha Dutt exclaims and then starts searching something in the pockets of her kurta. “Keep my card,” she says with an easy smile and leaves the scene.

——–

I am awake now and I am smiling. Cos’ never have I ever wanted my dream to come true so badly.

But before I get on with my day, my late breakfast and my never-ending job hunt on Gmail, LinkedIn and Twitter, I will leave you with a trivia 🙂

The closest I have come to meeting Barkha Dutt was inside a restroom at a Bengaluru hotel, where she was hosting her ‘We The Women’ show. She had excused herself from the main stage to fix her makeup and drink water while my friend Radhika and I were there for the usual business. Radhika did nudge me to go and introduce myself to Barkha Dutt. “Hi Barkha, this is Barkha”. It would be a fun intro, you know. But I dropped the plan because she was in the middle of a big show and let’s not forget, we were in the middle of a restroom!