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A dream within a dream !





 "What is the most resilient parasite in the world ? A bacteria ? A virus ? ... An idea.. highly resilient, highly contagious..."

True, it's Inception - the movie that baffled one's senses last year, a movie where the viewer has to participate in it's story building process to decide or wonder at its end if that rotating top would stop spinning. The most captivating concept in that movie, to me, was the concept involving a dream inside a dream inside a dream inside a dream. God ! Four layers of dream ! That's unbelievable in real life. I mean, I have never come across any real world person claiming to have had experienced four layers of dream while sleeping. A couple of movie's dialogues however, were very catchy, for example "when you dream, you do not know that it is dream. You think that's reality.", and another one: "Time's slower in dream than in reality.".


Well, let me keep the movie aside, for that wasn't my objective in this blog. However, what I am going to write here is intimately connected to the movie's concept. Now, has any one experienced at least two layers of dream ? Basically, you see a dream inside a dream. I am not sure if such an experience is common to many people so that it's nothing extra-ordinary, or may be it is indeed extra-ordinary. But how do you know you had a dream inside a dream ?


No, I am serious - I have had two such experiences in the last one week, which leaves me so surprised and intrigued with a different kind of experience and feeling. And the most interesting thing is that I remember everything with such sharpness and precision that I am 100% sure that I am not wrong at all. Let me only narrate the second experience, and, I'll be very frank with what I had dreamt ! (By the way, we don't remember anything of a dream most of the nights, I guess.)


I have this dream, which is very strange (of course, dreams are always strange !) that, somewhere - I'm not sure where - I meet a beautiful girl from Peru, named Pamela. This is really hilarious I know, for I've no idea why I'd have such a dream :-). Well, I remembered her face very well in my dream, but on waking up the next morning, the outline of her face persisted, but vaguely. Now, it's almost gone ! Anyways, for reasons unknown, I had struck up a conversation with her, and getting close to each other as time progressed. Eventually, she wanted to kiss me (I know it's silly and funny, but alas ! we can't control what we dream !), and although I was temporarily hallucinated by both our conversation-induced intimate atmosphere and her amazing beauty, I had the sense to push her aside with my hand, saying "I can't do it"....


..... well, with that push, I woke up, realizing that was just a silly dream. But the experience kept me thinking for quite sometime, as I lay down, only to be disturbed by some noise and sounds of laughter nearby. I realized I was laying on a sofa or something like that, on an afternoon, in my grand mother's home. Oh ! I could see all my cousins having loud gossips, laughing and playing all around. That's a beautiful time you see, since the last time when we, the seven of us (the five children of the two elder brothers of my dad, me and my sister) had met together was mid 2004 - more than seven years ago. I always longed to see all of them together but haven't been able to do so since the timings of vacation do not get synchronized.  Anyways, getting to see all of them together was a great fun. Soon I took part in their gossips, making fun of each other, still a little hallucinated and baffled by the strange dream I have had of that beautiful Peruvian girl, and if that was real. The whole setting of my grandma's home became so clear and sharp - the sofa room, the back courtyard, the garden at the house's back, the kitchen where my mom and my aunts were busy cooking something for us - everything was so sharp and clear to me. But alas ! ... my cell phone vibrating beneath my pillow collapsed this beautiful picture of my presence in my grandma's home and soon, I woke up, sitting on my bed, realizing that I am now in Columbus, Ohio, in USA. And it's morning - time to go to my lab.


So ? Oh ! .. so it was a dream that I was having such a great time with my cousins at my grandma's place - the place which I saw so clearly and sharply just a few minutes ago ! .. but then, wait, I saw a beautiful girl too, from Peru... but then, I woke up on a sofa on an afternoon amid my cousins' loud laughter. And now, I am in Columbus. What s**t  !!


It's a very different kind of experience I tell you, the dreaming of a dream inside of another dream. But, I am going to be very, very honest as I conclude this blog, because it will seem silly to those of you who haven't had this kind of double-dream experience, especially because a similar thing happens to the wife of the lead protagonist in the "Inception". After waking up in to the actual 'reality', that is, me sitting on my bed in a cold morning in Columbus, Ohio, I had a quite tough time for the next few minutes convincing myself that it was reality, for I was having this strong feeling that this - sitting on my bed in Columbus, was also a dream after all !





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