I was self-righteously upset. I went up to the librarian. "Ma'am, the books are not where they should be..." And then, "I admit once or twice I myself have put books back in slightly the wrong place ... but at least I have always felt guilty about it afterwards."
To my surprise she did not see my complaint as an accusation and said, "I totally agree. I can't tell you how important that is."
Taken off guard, I looked at her face, thin and drawn with horned black glasses. I wondered who she thoguht was responsible for the problem - wasn't it her responsibility? "We have such a beautiful library here otherwise. But if you can't find the books, all that money is wasted." And as I said it I saw how well lit and sunny and airy the library was. Airy, yes, that was the word. "All that money is wasted", I said. I was about to add "and there is then nothing left of it for everyone" but held back - it seemed somehow too money-minded and suddenly I thought as well, "I don't know what a librarian makes. Maybe she doesn't make much."
"No, I totally agree", she said, and then she walked ahead of me into the bookshelves to show me something. Her clothes were all white, but a white that was as though seen through a slight fog... a foggy white.
She stood at a bookshelf and said, "For example, this book here has been filed under both Airlines and Section 1.4.02". I marveled just a little at how amazing library systems were and I reached out and picked up a random book.
It was a photocopied book, and I opened it at random to find the chapter title, "Don Bosco School". It presumably was an alumni list. Must be Calcutta - that's the big Don Bosco. But I looked a little closer and it said "Ahmedabad". "This is the alumni directory", she said almost as I figured it out myself. "It also has the listing for Don Bosco Indore..."
>>>>>>>>>
That's just the transcript of a dream I had a few weeks ago and wrote down minutes after waking up from it when it started fraying. Dreaming is an incredible activity. Many dreams are more vividly experienced than real life itself is.
The stitching together of so many subjects breathlessly - in just a few seconds of perceived action - is also fascinating. The library (I haven't really spent time in a library for more than a decade), the photocopied books (something from our IIT days in the early 1990s), the reference to airlines (I take care of the Lufthansa account at Nagarro), the reference to Indore and Ahmedabad (the Proton locations), the reference to Don Bosco (where I went to school till 1989).
The dream plays out like a story created deliberately and rapidly by some devilish genius... At each step the slightest of cues are used to switch context.
Dreams must play some critical role. It is difficult to believe that they are just by-products of our mind. If they are meant to remind us of memories in order to refresh them, then they must be quite a sophisticated evolutionary achievement.
The vividness of the dream of course can also make you question the reality of perceived reality. The only fundamentally different thing about reality is that it follows more detailed laws that don't change.
For example, you wake up day after day to the same wife. :-)
To my surprise she did not see my complaint as an accusation and said, "I totally agree. I can't tell you how important that is."
Taken off guard, I looked at her face, thin and drawn with horned black glasses. I wondered who she thoguht was responsible for the problem - wasn't it her responsibility? "We have such a beautiful library here otherwise. But if you can't find the books, all that money is wasted." And as I said it I saw how well lit and sunny and airy the library was. Airy, yes, that was the word. "All that money is wasted", I said. I was about to add "and there is then nothing left of it for everyone" but held back - it seemed somehow too money-minded and suddenly I thought as well, "I don't know what a librarian makes. Maybe she doesn't make much."
"No, I totally agree", she said, and then she walked ahead of me into the bookshelves to show me something. Her clothes were all white, but a white that was as though seen through a slight fog... a foggy white.
She stood at a bookshelf and said, "For example, this book here has been filed under both Airlines and Section 1.4.02". I marveled just a little at how amazing library systems were and I reached out and picked up a random book.
It was a photocopied book, and I opened it at random to find the chapter title, "Don Bosco School". It presumably was an alumni list. Must be Calcutta - that's the big Don Bosco. But I looked a little closer and it said "Ahmedabad". "This is the alumni directory", she said almost as I figured it out myself. "It also has the listing for Don Bosco Indore..."
>>>>>>>>>
That's just the transcript of a dream I had a few weeks ago and wrote down minutes after waking up from it when it started fraying. Dreaming is an incredible activity. Many dreams are more vividly experienced than real life itself is.
The stitching together of so many subjects breathlessly - in just a few seconds of perceived action - is also fascinating. The library (I haven't really spent time in a library for more than a decade), the photocopied books (something from our IIT days in the early 1990s), the reference to airlines (I take care of the Lufthansa account at Nagarro), the reference to Indore and Ahmedabad (the Proton locations), the reference to Don Bosco (where I went to school till 1989).
The dream plays out like a story created deliberately and rapidly by some devilish genius... At each step the slightest of cues are used to switch context.
Dreams must play some critical role. It is difficult to believe that they are just by-products of our mind. If they are meant to remind us of memories in order to refresh them, then they must be quite a sophisticated evolutionary achievement.
The vividness of the dream of course can also make you question the reality of perceived reality. The only fundamentally different thing about reality is that it follows more detailed laws that don't change.
For example, you wake up day after day to the same wife. :-)
3 comments:
Dear Sir,
Really enjoyed your lighthearted post. Its interesting to notice that even in your dreams you want things to be in place :-)
Regards,
Shoaib Qureshi
:-)
Dear Sir,
You perceived this dream because of the habit of reading and keeping the things organized. The dreams are no different from what we think and do in reality.
Regards,
Proton Robin Singh Vasu (Fall' 09)
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