This guy (k) meets me in the university where I study (in
real life too). The guy is an Arab, with
a respectable demeanor, a beard which displays his piety (in real life he just
has a moustache). He has just been
selected to a particular research centre, where I have been a Fellow for the
past one year and am continuing (so is the case in real life too). I know that he has just met A (k).
He tells me that in the research centre that I have been a
part of, there is something called “confederality”. “Don’t you know of it, after being there for
a year?” The picture that flashes in my
mind is that of a conference table with a long row of flags of different
nations, and I distinctly remember a flag which was Australia/New Zealand. It seems this is like a group of countries;
and that they have a site and you can upload attested copies of your
certificates there. The copies have to
be attested by your supervisor. The Arab
guy also told me that he has “some more work to do”, by which I understood that
he is trying to make some fake certificates too.
As I was more and more glued to this “confederality”, more
out of a sense of loss, he told me that
he would take me to a place where I could do the needful right away. What flashed in my mind was an empty
classroom with an open and working laptop.
All these conversation was happening right outside the
Administrative Building of the University.
Then he takes me inside the building, and the corridors were dark
(unlike what they are in real life), and of the usual width. After many turns which looked like we were
passing through endless corridors with crowds at every turn, students passing
both ways, he said “Room No. 37” and
then he was not to be seen (this disappearance was not a cause for concern in
the dream though).
I enter Room No. 37.
I see a lot of people there. Most
of them are not students. They are much
older. They looked like non-teaching
staff. In the backbench, more with the
body language of a student, sits my supervisor (same as the real life). But I don’t go up and speak to anybody. I sit, waiting. And then I find out, from a yellow notice
lying around, on which was printed in black letters were, SC&ST Blood
Donation Camp. I noticed that OBC was
not there, to which I belong.
I wondered if my supervisor was SC; I did not know him to be
one. I come out, and on my way I hear
someone saying derisively about the gathering from the room itself, “we’ll need
to do more for the elections.” A lady is
also coming out as I am walking out. The
lady is very beautiful. She is wearing a
white saree with red and golden borders.
She is very fair (like the traditional ghost characters in Kerala movies,
in fact she does look like the ghost character from Ennu Swantham Janakikutty,
but in the dream she is just an unknown woman).
Her bindi was more of a broad line than a circle., and it was bright and
deep red.
After coming out, I sit with a friend who is doing his
Masters. Soon his classmates start
coming out and sitting around. The closest
to me was this girl who was wearing a cargo knee length trousers and green
top. Most of those who were sitting
around were girls. I wonder if they don’t
notice me sitting there. Because I am
much senior to them, and that should be alienating them. But they hardly seem to be noticing me.
I see the beautiful lady at a distance with her daughter who
is just a toddler. I glance at her
daughter. The daughter was wearing a
saffron bindi of the usual circular variety (but it was more of a matter of
fact than a cause of concern in the dream).
I see the woman spraying water out from her eyes. (In the dream, this was not weird. It was just like a normal exercise which
people nevertheless rarely do; let’s say, like Yoga).
There was a friend perched on a tree. I narrate to him the entire “confederality”
episode. At the end of the story-telling,
because the episode was a practical joke, I laugh. I could hear a group of people laughing with
me at a distance. But I think they were
making fun of me and my story-telling ability.
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