"Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream."
-William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
♡
That morning, she had a dream.
It was a peculiar dream.
She was walking through a field, yellowish green as far as she could see. The sky was serene; a canopy of white clouds over her. It was heaven.
Her yellow dupatta caress the tall blades of grass with each step, giddy eyes searching for something.
Or someone.
There was an excited desperation brewing within her beating heart; unfamiliar yet warm. The search goes on.
A hand, rough and gentle, hold hers and she walks forward. A flower blooms inside her chest; an euphoric happiness takes over every inch of her body as she follows him.
He was a stranger. Yet she could somehow tell that he was the one she had been looking for.
Meerab could tell he was a man by the broad shoulders that ripples under the airy white kurta and the coarseness of his gentle hand. She could feel the calluses that cover his hands; patches of harshness sorround his index finger.
He holds onto her. Like a puppet on a string, she walks behind the stranger in white.
He was the sun and she was the boy with wax wings.
She should be afraid, shouldn't she? She should be cautious. Her body didn't feel like hers. It was on autopilot; the delirious happiness was stubborn in her heart.
And the stranger? Meerab thinks she recognises him. The cropped hair, the strong back, the shining watch- there was a sense of familiarity.
A name was on the tip of her tongue.
Her heart thumps louder and louder, a mad dance between fear and excitement. Everytime the man squeezes her hand, she soars to the High skys. He was so gentle, as if she might break. An endearing hesitancy in his touch.
She squeezes back, unsurity evident in her too. Whatever it is that scared him, was scaring her too.
Meerab feels like she was smiling, the happiness inside her was outside her too.
Without even looking, she knew there was a smile etched onto his face too.
As their feet moved in synchrony, Meerab's eyes eagerly took in the stranger. The March sun had cast a gentle halo around him. He was like an angel taking her to the path of light.
Meerab didn't know how but her dream-drenched mind tells her that she loved this man. How could that be?!
She doesn't know how. It was futile to find logic in this lucid dream of hers.
At the back of her mind, she ponders on why every touch, every smile, every feeling was so overwhelming, so painfully real in this dream.
It was indeed a peculiar dream.
"Meerab?" Someone calls for her and she stops walking.
But the man in white continues, never once looking back. Meerab wants to scream, she desperately wants to call for him.
But the name doesn't come to her. The beautiful mystery remains.
Tears fill her eyes as sharp pain stabs her heart. She was loosing him, and he was leaving her behind.
