Hands Around My Throat

I woke up with a start. The old nightmare and my mobile's alarm had once again jerked me out of sleep. The nightmare had haunted me for about a year now. Today, the nightmare though, seemed to be slightly different from every other time. Partially awake, I looked around my room. My room, my personal sanctuary, has always been a source of peace for me. My room, apart from being large, also has an attached balcony, which is accessible through a set of transparent sliding doors, currently covered by orange and yellow shaded curtains.

In my state of awakening, after disabling the alarm, I was still very confused whether I was awake or still dreaming. This was because the room felt very unreal in a mystical way. The sweet humming caused by the fan and rippling of the curtains was blissful enough, not the mention the faint glimmer of light from the small gap at the bottom of the curtains leading to a state of semi-darkness, which made my room look so unreal.

I looked at the mobile at my bedside. It said 6:45. My first question was “morning or evening?”. Believe me when I say that one year at B makes this question extremely reasonable and sane. Before I could answer the first question, another question immediately dawned; “What day is it?”. What with classes and assignments and sacrosanct deadlines, the need to know what day and time overpowers most other needs in this place.

As I sat up on my bed, I don't know why, perhaps because of the clairvoyant and ethereal atmosphere in my room, I decided to ignore the day and time and concentrate on my dream. I remember watching Alice in Wonderland (Disney's 1951 version) just before I fell asleep. Sometime in the middle of the sleep, I assume, the dream started. It was the usual one; funny and peculiar to start with. The details of the dream were flowing away like grains of sand in an hourglass. I tried to recollect parts of the dream; I think I was standing at the edge of a cliff, playing a violin. The cliff seemed to be quite high and down below was the frothy sea. A good breeze was blowing and I could smell the salty air. A little distance from me, I could see a look-alike playing a grand piano and a bit yonder, I could again, quite astonishingly, see another look-alike playing a guitar. Though they seemed to be look-alikes, I had the eeriest feeling that they were actually me. Then came a younger man, who looked a lot like a younger me. He was writing something onto his notepad. As he passed by me, I could make out the numbers '101' scribbled on the pad.

Then came a content-looking middle aged man. I did not know who he was. He stopped by, heard us playing the music (I'm unable to recollect the tune), smiled at us and walked ahead. Then, came a young girl, who enquired from me about the middle-aged man's whereabouts. This girl, though a complete stranger to me, seemed somehow familiar. I showed her the path that the middle-aged man had taken; she muttered something which sounded like 'the wrong path' and went away. Then, and this is where the dream starts turning nightmarish, came a rather stern looking fellow. This fellow, handed me a world map and asked me to find 'Erewhon'. Thanks to Samuel Butler, I knew that such a place did not exist. I tried to point this out to him, but he just kept pinching me and ordering me to search harder. Then, came a whole bunch of young chaps who were shouting at the top of their voice 'I found Erewhon, why can't you?'. As they approached nearer, the sea breeze stopped. I turned around and saw that the water had disappeared and there was only a dark, seemingly bottomless pit visible. This was the least of my concerns because soon something even more dreadful was happening. I could feel arms, reaching out from the darkness, inching towards my throat. Soon, those cold hands were around my throat, choking me. Almost everytime, this is the part of the dream, when I wake up with a start.

However, today was different. Today, the dream went a bit further. The White Rabbit, from Alice in Wonderland, came hopping by. He held a watch in one hand and a torch of fire in the other. As he came closer, through the light of the torch, I could finally recognise the owner of the hands that were throttling me. With enormous surprise, I found out that those hands belonged to another look-alike of me. But this time, unlike others, I was sure that this was no look-like. It was indeed me, not someone else. Before, I could ask myself, why I was throttling me, I heard a loud bell ringing somewhere. I saw that the source of the bell was the watch that the rabbit had. I tried to tell him to stop it, but before the words came out, I had woken up to bell sound of the alarm on my mobile.

I could not remember more details about the dream, but I'm sure a lot more happened in it. The surprise at the end of the dream today seemed to be an inner visualization of the state I was in. So, I did what I could not in the dream; I asked myself 'Why am I throttling myself?'. I found that there was no convincing answer forthcoming. It was almost an earth-shattering result for me. Every construct in my mind about the nature of the world seemed to have gone for a toss. Then, as if it were a signal from above, a gust of air from the fan had forced the curtains open and sweet sunlight streamed in. The room glittered golden and I realised that I had discovered myself this morning. I walked to the balcony and saw the dew on the petals of a nearby rose. The smell of a rose had never been so intoxicating. I picked up my guitar and started to string my favourite tune. I'm quite sure that I won't have the nightmare anymore.