No Regrets

It's been quite a journey together

Some nights are very didactic if not entertaining. Last night was one such series of dreams. I wake up from one dream only to glide into another as seamlessly as a train stopping at a station and then moving on. They are not nightmares. On the contrary, they are quite amusing.

Only two of last night’s dreams remained vividly in my conscious memory in the morning. In one, I was travelling by a bus with Maggie. Since the bus was overcrowded Maggie and I were in two different parts of the bus: the masculine and feminine halves of Kerala’s buses. Just before my stop arrived, which was near Maggie’s house, some passenger asked me a question. My answer started off a discussion which engaged me so much that I missed my stop and the next and the next. It’s only when Maggie’s call arrived on the mobile phone that I realised my mistake. Maggie awaited me at the right bus stop with her usual smile of amusement and sympathy.

The other dream had a totally unfamiliar and rather wild setting. Maggie and I were on a visit to some nondescript tourist place. While Maggie was getting ready in the hotel room I decided to take a look around and I wandered into some kind of wilderness with a polluted stream on its fringes where I lost my way. The place looked like some religious spot where all kinds of yogis and mystics and beggars and a whole lot of people were engaged in various activities most of which had some semblance of religious rituals. One ascetic with ashes all over his body showed me the way out of what appeared to me as a rugged labyrinth. But I lost my way again and by the time I reached back Maggie and I had missed our bus. Once again there was the same amusement and sympathy on Maggie’s face.

The motif of all the dreams last night was the same: loss due to my neglect and Maggie’s resigned understanding. I have often been amused by the fact that my dreams invariably form a series with a recurrent motif.

What was last night trying to tell me? That I am a big loser? I know that I am a loser but I don’t have regrets. I chose my ways and I blundered many times. That’s right. But I lived my life and learnt my truths. No regrets. Only lessons. And decisions. And we keep moving ahead. If one bus is missed, there will come another.