To sleep perchance to dream… Dreams are taken seriously in Eastern cultures. Now I am not talking about the dreams like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” kind, but the kind that we have when we sleep. Back when I was little, the atmosphere in the mornings at our large joint family depended on the dream that my grandmother had that night. If she had a nice dream, everyone would be happy. God forbid, if she had had a bad one, she would make everyone feel miserable because she would be upset. If she had a real bad dream, she would make “Taher”, yellow rice with oil and onions (something like Chinese fried rice) that would be distributed outside our house. We also would take food, now I am not making it up, to potheads. These were people called Showda (pothead) in Kashmiri whose only job used to be to sleep and smoke pot in a pot house called “Takiya.” There was one near Gaw Kadal bridge in Srinagar, where the food would be delivered. When I was a little older and the joint family was gone, my mother’s dreams became important. She would mull over her dreams for days on, trying to interpret them. I learned some useful tips along the way. Seeing death in a dream was good, fire was good but smoke was bad. Seeing a dead person in a dream was considered bad news. My father would make fun of my mother’s dreams. While I was in Srinagar during the floods recently, my sister Masooda talked about a dream that she had almost thirty years ago. She saw this ascetic, a yogi (Baba Ji in Kashmiri) in her dream. The Yogi was sitting next to a stream with a large pot of water (Noat in Kashmiri). His face was glowing like moon and water was sprouting out of his hair. She did not know until a pundit friend of hers told her next day that she had seen lord Shiva in her dream. The friend asked her whether she had been planning something. My sister told her that she was thinking about opening a school but wasnt sure. Her friend told her to do it because the dream was very auspicious. So she did. When she told me about that dream recently, it sounded so close to the dream of Ali Mardan Khan, a Mughal Governor of Kashmir in sixteenth century. The Governor after seeing Shiva in his dream, ended up writing a poem about it: Huma asli Mehashwar bood Shab shahay ki man deedam, Gazanfar charam dar bood Shab shahay ki man deedam. (I saw God last night; he was wearing a lion’s skin) After my marriage, Arjmund’s dreams became the main act in my family. She however ignores 90 percent of them but takes about 10 % of them very seriously. She will ponder over their meaning for days. I like my father make fun of her dreams. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar’s wife Calphurnia had a bad dream and begged Caesar not to go to that fateful senate session where he was later killed. Decius, who is in on the conspiracy, goads Caesar to ignore his wife’s dream by telling him that if people find out that Caesar avoided going to senate because of his wife’s dream, they will mock him: Break up the senate till another time When Caesar’s wife shall meet with better dreams. Caesar ignored his wife’s dream and as they say rest is history. I should take Arjmund’s dreams more seriously.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:18:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015