Dreams are more real than reality itself, they’re closer to the self.
                                                                             – Gao Xingjain

 

I dreamt,
I had failed
To return home.
I dreamt,
I didn’t know
Why I had failed
To return home.
I dreamt,
No one was looking
For me.
I mean,
No one got a word
To report:
I was missing.
No one called me
On my blackberry.
How could they all
Possibly remain unfazed
That I had failed
To return home?
Days and nights passed.
Months passed.
I failed to return home.
I dreamt,
I was homeless:
In search of shelter.
Clearly preparing not to leave,
The dream stayed on,
Scorning at my ambiguous fate.
I was homeless:
In search of shelter.
I was in search of connectivity.
I was alone.
I was lonely.
I was groveling with beggary.
‘Was it this for which you lived?’
My dream asked me.
The perils of the question
Made me a sick body.
I was mute – incapable of words.
And then,
Something in my deathless silence,
Came through and through…
Something from my deathless silence,
Broke my captivity.
Just in a blink,
In a single blink,
The dream released me
From my nightmare.
I was awake.
I was awake!
The light whose way
I had lost –
Tapped at my window.
The sky subtly made me forget –
My dream of being homeless and alone…

 

Dubai
2012

                          

Geeta Chhabra

 

From the book: Smash My Glass by Geeta Chhabra.