When Dreams Meet Reality: The Beauty And Ache Of Fleeting Encounters

When does a human start to dream? The continuum from baby to adult is so labyrinthine that we hardly remember when we first begin to indulge in fantasies. We learn“Now I Know My ABCs” and“Five Little Monkeys” in classrooms or during an evening snuggle with mum. But no one teaches us to dream.

I suspect the earliest seeds of dreams are sown in our tender minds by none other than our mothers, when they promise to bring us the moon - or Chanda Mama (a Hindi poem that translates to 'Uncle Moon') in the Indian context - if we finish the last spoon of oatmeal. As time tills the fertile soil of our minds and the petrichor of romance stirs our budding senses, our dreams evolve from Uncle Moon to Prince Charmings and Lady Cinderellas. Sooner or later, life becomes a carnival of dreams.

From a young age, I kept a bucket list of dreams, big and small, ticking off every milestone I achieved. It's my wish to check as many entries as possible before I kick the bucket. Princess Diana, cross. Hillary Clinton, cross. Arvind Kejriwal, tick (though the meeting was a fiasco). Maneka Gandhi, tick - again, a fiasco. Priyanka Chopra, tick. Vidya Balan, tick. The Louvre, tick. The Swiss Alps, tick. Pangong Tso Lake, tick. A roaring chopper, tick. Bacharach on the Rhine, tick. Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson, cross, but hoping to meet in the ether world.

At one point, unbeknownst to me, a social media personality crept onto my checklist and stayed there, invisible, for almost a decade. Then she sent a friend request, only to unfriend me no sooner than I had accepted. Since then, she has been playing hide and seek, chatting for a couple of minutes - or seconds - occasionally, before disappearing into oblivion.

“When are you free to meet?”

“When are you free to talk?”

Despite these one-line exchanges, we existed like the North and South Poles. Beyond the few words in her status and bio, I was in the dark about her. I still am. She might be in the same boat about me. Just as a battle of words erupted between my heart and mind about the wish to meet her, she rehashed the old query:“Free to meet this Sunday?”

My heart leaped with joy:“Go celebrate her!”

My mind was sceptical:“Hold your horses, son.”

“But why? You always wanted to meet her. It's a dream come true.”

“She's an enigma. You never wanted to meet someone you adored.”

“Chuck the lame philosophy. Principles are there to be defied.”

In the run-up to the weekend, I was a nefelibata in every sense of the word; or like a kid promised a trip to Disneyland; or like a fan waiting to see his Bollywood heartthrob.

Then came another bombshell.

“Actually, Sunday is my hair wash day!!! It's time-consuming and boring. I don't blow-dry my hair, so the meetup depends on how fast it air-dries.”

“No issues. If I can wait for a decade, another week or month is okay. It's always been my gut feeling that we would meet one day. Maybe tomorrow, maybe another day.”

“Are you flirting with me? Plan cancelled.” She sounded a tad waggish.

“I lost that skill long ago.”

“I don't think so.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

Thankfully, Sunday was sunny enough to dry her long curls. There was no candle, nor a rose, as we eased into our seats at a corniche restaurant. The mise en scène was bland, the ambiance aromantic.

“Let's introduce ourselves,” I said, explaining my journey from student activism to journalism.

“You may have known me only recently, but I've been reading you for years, admiring your writing,” she replied.“My love for the written word is immense, and not everyone understands that. I admire what you do.” She then talked about how she's yet to learn the last alphabet of PhD.

“How come your trademark frizz-free curls are shorter?” I asked, trying to change the topic.

“Oh my God, I am under surveillance. I have this eerie feeling that you've been staring at my hair for too long.”

I looked at her passionately. Here was a foppish lady who wore the rainbow in full nine yards around her, and who set social media ablaze with her effervescence. There was a full moon in her blush; her eyes were a pair of Novas peering from a monsoon cloud of mascara; a milky way spanned her face as she curled her lips into a smile; and her dark dreadlocks seemed to drip ecstasy from the dark welkin of a quiet evening.

“Stop staring.”

“I'm seeing you to undo the enigma that is you,” I said.

She placed the dinner order. While she grappled with the skillet chicken, I fiddled with stir-fried baby potatoes as if playing marbles with a childhood friend.

The night was still young when she called it a day, saying,“I gotta go.” It felt like she came, she saw and she left - a date too fugacious to fill the soul. As I dropped her off in a poorly lit back alley, and her shadow merged into the darkness behind the parked vehicles, I sat behind the wheel, thinking aloud,“Why the hell is she so beautiful?”

And I hoped, and re-hoped, that she would read, and reread, the John Greenleaf Whittier quote I had scribbled in my latest book I signed for her:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'”

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