Dreaming a Story

I was attending a wedding, aware of various kinds of gaze. Now, this thing called ‘gaze’ has become the hot word in scholarly circles. They adjectify it with ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, ‘appropriate’, ‘invisible’ and the other novel fancy words by suffixing old, harmless words. Basically, they have taken the word and turned it into their wish fulfilling device. God forbid if an academic reads this, I assure you reader, I will be burnt alive with, as Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger’s, ‘vitriolic invectives’. They would mark me insensible, uneducated, elite, blinded with superficiality and the works. I wish I could say aloud, “I don’t care”, but that, dear reader, would again, mark me as someone ‘who didn’t have reasoning enough’. Hence, at various risks of being wisely read, I thus write. Call me foolish, call me courageous, I would prefer ‘a call of the heart’.

I re-begin: I was attending a wedding, aware of various kinds of gaze. Now this is a wedding which is yet to take place, precisely, in a week’s time. Hence, clearly, I was in a dream, or, reverie, at the most. I was still the same person, looking sufficiently likeable, dressed in a smart saree, my hair worn in its best shine and the accessories calling for compliments. I was a house-guest at the groom’s side, hence introductions were in order and judicious pride was taken in informing about my accolades at the work front. A college professor is still, by far, one of the noblest (read, convenient) career choices, if it clicks in areas like location and age of the college. These days, I would go ahead and add that I write too. It has taken me a year’s confidence to come up to that stature, to believe in myself. When people responded, I was handing them my visiting card, one which only held the link of my blogspot.

Of pretexts that must be told, one is that I was once married, and rather early, which means I am now ‘available’, another of those layered gazes. I am of a vital age, having just crossed the thirties, and if I am not over-estimating my ‘value’, had I not have a history of sorts, I would be a goldmine of a prospective bride. You see, reader, my charm has increased with my age and the silver streaks on my hairline have only added more charisma to the ‘curious’ gaze. In that dream, some of them whispered in my ears of aunties going beyond control having mixed their drinks. I tried to pacify them in my faintly alcoholic breath. I was part of a ritual, just beside the bride and the groom and acknowledging appreciation for the piris that I had painted. I was blushing, like the vibrant red in them. They contrasted with the royal blue, like that of my saree. There was a secure symmetry about the entire event. The gazes around held me in ‘pity’, ‘envy’, ‘jealousy’ and most of all, ‘sympathy’ – just to prove my case I will now write the lines in their head – ‘She should have been  married’, ‘She has no problems or responsibilities’, ‘What a prime college she teaches in! What a fine supervisor she has!’, ‘Alas! She will never get to know the holy emotions of motherhood.’ And these, not for once made me insecure. By now, I am used to such kinds of gazes – looks that are beyond looks.

The marriage rites began, and suddenly newer rituals appeared in my dream. Like in an assembly line, while in school, scores of my classmates, in their white Mekhlas, jumped like frogs, perhaps attempting a dance, and paused right at the mandap, looked right at me, turning their heads in a synchronized right and once again, passing gazes of ‘Look we have posted photographs of our sons and husbands on Facebook!’, smiling, and with another frog jump saying ‘What have you done?’, went ahead. The dance sequence continued for two more turns, till I woke up saying ‘I am going to get married’.

By the time I changed into my costume for the day, an invigilator, a badminton player, a driver, the dream vanished. At each red signal, I scanned through the car windows around me, ‘gazing’ at what kind of man I would like to marry. Unfortunately, and extremely sadly, none interested me. Oh yes, one on the hoardings, Jishhu Sengupta, did. This is a recent phenomenon; my hormones are activated on seeing his stubble and bare shoulders. At the risk of sounding an omnivorous eater this time, he is wildly ‘haveable’. I continued ‘gazing’ from one end of the city to the extreme other. Some men had bellies touching their steering wheel, while others spat on the road. These were my reasons to come out of my reverie.

I decided to do something good with the intensely graphic dream I had, and rather than giving up my life, my decision and my independence to the institution of marriage, I thought, ‘let me write!’ Agreed, this removes me from the dreams of a woman – that of mothering a fathered-surname child, or posting photographs of a ‘complete family’ on social media, or of ever getting to know of responsibilities concerned with a domestic life vis-a-vis the politics of a professional one, but what does it give me then?

Time, for one. Time to be whoever I want to be, even commitment-phobic, for that matter. And time to do what I was born to.

To turn dreams into reality, and if that fails, into a story.