The Dream

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do 
~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

Are dreams a peek into the unknown? I can’t really tell. I was lying sick in my bed on a beautiful April morning and I dreamt these slices of dreams, which stuck like barnacles to each other. There was this deer that walked upto me, from nowhere, pointing to its hind leg, suggesting something is amiss. Unsure of what to do I began to dream-talk to the deer, in a reassuring way, not certain if it understood my language. His actions suggested that the limb needed attention. Why have you come to me, I doodled in my dream? But when I patted the deer, lovingly, it smiled. 

At that my dream broke. I looked into my phone, lying by the bedside, to see the time. A flurry of messages greeted me. ‘I had a minor accident this morning and hurt my leg. Nothing serious except for torn pants and some scratches on my knee,’ read one. I sat up like a befuddled Penguin wondering if there is a thing such as psychic dreaming? Are we connected in a telepathic way? Are dreams guardians of sleep, as Freud said? What is this bond, this union? Makes me reckon if Edgar Allan Poe, that great romantic, was always telling the truth when he said ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.'

Sameer

Jailed for ever

The state is doing everything in its capacity to elevate Shabir Shah to the status of Nelson Mandela. Infact Shabir has now clocked close to 25 years in jail since 1978 when he was arrested for the first time. In between he has been out a couple of times before being quickly bundled-off to bastille. Amnesty International calls the likes of him POC – prisoners of conscience. Simplified it means the state holds you down for non-violent expression of a conscientiously-held belief. Of all the major dramatis personae in the Amarnath land row, Shabir was singled out and incarcerated. Released in Jammu, the day before, he was promptly re-arrested. It is still one and a half years before Shabir completes a total of 27 years in jail, the number of years Mandela spent in the Robben Island prison. Perhaps broken jail-terms don't count.

George Galloway, the maverick British MP, thinks Shabir is a case fit for Nobel peace prize. I reckon the grey in Shabir’s hair is elegant.

© Sameer

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