Sipra Pati
Sometimes I have this dream… that I am strolling through a marketplace somewhere in the Middle East. The sun is beating down its angriest of rays, but the mesh awnings of the shops provide a respite and shadows… Appropriately so, for what would a dream be if it weren’t for shadows! As I stroll through the serpentine alleys of this seemingly never-ending marketplace, I see vendors selling silk scarves, hookah pipes, jewelry, beads, prayer mats, and more; I see merchants trying to woo people with strong enticing fragrances contained in slender vials… rose, jasmine, queen of the night, incense sticks that carry scents from the sandalwood forests of India, and many more that I can’t discern (hey this is a dream… my olfactory senses don’t quite work). The marketplace is crowded with men in white robes and veiled women in black flowing ones. They all pass me… no one as much looks at me. I find myself turning into an alley, which seems to culminate in a wind tower. It is dark in the alley despite the mid-morning sun. As in all the dreams, an old man sits on a wobbly stool with his ware displayed in a wooden wheelbarrow. He takes a pause from his hookah pipe - its smoke hovering around like a cloud. With a small smile, he picks up something from his wheel barrow and offers it to me. It is a lamp – not the most beautiful of things. In that split second that I hesitate to proffer to reach out to his outstretched hand and the unsightly lamp, the old man’s smile disappears, as the smoke from his hookah pipes becomes denser. Soon enough my dream gets all jumbled up and fades into a fog of dissipation, leaving miniscule dregs and regrets upon my wakening.
What follows on my awakening is an overbearing feeling of sadness! I
rationalize and tell myself that it is but a dream – remnants of thoughts and
actions that have sunk to the bottom of my subconscious just like dregs; only
to emerge nocturnally as my body rests. I wonder which thought or action could
possibly trigger such a dream time and again. My only connection to the Middle
East was my only visit to Dubai over five years back. The marketplace did not
find space in either my cellular archives or the camera’s digital one, for it
was noon, and deserted when I visited. What I remembered more fondly was the
desert safari. Four wheel drive SUVs hurled my family and me up and down the
sand dunes of the Arabian Desert, delivering us at the end of the day
exhilarated, exhausted, hot, and hungry at a camp that had an Arabian feast
laid out for our stomachs and a belly dancer to bedazzle us with her unique
dancing-cum acrobatic skills. This was
the Arabian night that defined exotic. And, here I was dreaming of veiled women
and old men in dark alleys!
