As Sai became disenchanted by not being able to persuade Gyan to abandon his Gorkhaland movement and Father Booty got extradited from Skkim ; all the anecdotal plots suddenly became too tortuous to follow. A feeling arose that instead of reading “Inheritance of Loss” I should have been rather watching the episode of LOST which by the way was left in cliff hanger at 5th season’s episode three with Jack and company stuck in 1973 at Dharma Camp. But the idea of watching DVD vanished into thin air when cruel realization of looming load shedding that will turn my Tv dead for next 4 hours hit my mind.
Disaffected by what seemed like the never ending energy crisis, I contrived to take siesta under greatest energy source of all, the sun. With insolation that had fallen to minimum due to approaching winter solstice accompanied by chilly wind, the sun god remain unkind. But still it was warm enough for my skin to kick in a feedback mechanism that eventually released enough melanin to act like natural sunscreen. With increased melatonin in my blood, magic started to take place inside the hypothalamus producing the hallucinogenic incidence of uncontrollable sleep. All of sudden as if being under the spell of that green angel Absinthe my mind delve into the uncharted peaks of Kanchanjunga. And before I knew, I was inside the booker prize wining novel floating along the mist surrounding Cho Oyu akin to when Alice went through that looking glass. The dampness in surrounding air and the musk of oak woods in library were as tangible as it really could be. I could clearly discern the scattered pages of national geographic strewn haphazardly on the table. Meanwhile the mutt was also lying under the chair of judge. And unexpectedly, as if sensing my presence it began to bark on the top of the voice. As if dragged by some intractable and unforeseen force I was pulled apart from majestic of Sikkim and suddenly found myself lying prone on my terrace. The usual suspect for the misdemeanor was Rocky barking at top of his voice spurred by no good street children making cat calls towards it.
Acquiescently I turned over yelled at the mutt on top of my voice. Hearing my remonstration, he quickly whimpered and stretched his legs to take a nap. And before I knew, it began snoring, a typical “ swana nidra”. As for me, akin to taking heavy doses of caffeine, my sleep was lost to oblivion and what left behind was shred of temptation to again witness the grandeur of Cho Oyu. I longed for the Lucid dream. The class of dream that was pioneered by Frederik van Eeden, where one can control the flow of dream and do what one pleases to do. I myself have been fortunate to experience such dreams few times before, even out of body experience and believe me experiencing it is real fun. For instance many years ago, once in middle of one of my dream I suddenly realized that I have a power to control it, and not wanting to lose the golden opportunity I floated to place where the girl I had crush on lived and I kept on chatting with her as if there was no tomorrow. But the sad thing is that was probably the longest and perhaps the most memorable conversation I ever had with her. So my advice is if there ever is happenstance of experiencing it, then cherish it forever. But unfortunately experiencing it is not like calling a cab; it is more analogous to finding a gold mine in your backyard. Some say meditating before going to sleep can induce larger frequency of lucid dreams, but in middle of day after having lunch I was in no mood for meditating. So, abandoning all hopes of floating inside the book, I turned supine.
All of sudden something caught my eye. Up in the azure sky where clouds floated aimlessly, something else was also moving in random. Like beads of iridescent speck it glided to and fro, bulk of intangible unidentified flying objects. More I tried to focus on it harder it became to isolate it. As if obeying the Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, that states electron’s position and momentum simultaneously cannot be computed precisely without compromising one another thus nullifying the possibility of existence of absolute zero, the floaters were also irresolute and there appeared no absolute rest. After a while I came to realization that Brownian motion was actually being exhibited by nothing else but dead cells floating in aqueous humor and owing to diffraction of sun light around its periphery all the shimmering was being manifested. So much for the romantics of UFO. This is what science has led us to, a world devoid of innocence where floating in dream is relegated to movement of dead cells and dreams like Gorkhaland and Utopia is subverted to cruel reality of subsistence.
