Choice of a subject, like choice of a lover, is an intimate decision.
Jeanette Winterson’s Weight
I often dream two women: you and my mother. I want to kiss my mother not because she brought me into this monotonous, hostile,and stinking yet prodigious wasteland, but because of the immense suffering she underwent on account of me. I long to kiss you since you are the one who unleashed untold pain on me. Suffering always elevates one’s position in the social hierarchy. Despite being unable to judge my position, I’m thankful to you for the invisible scar you have engineered and stored for me. Since my childhood I have been outright honest in settling accounts. Instead of looking at the professor and expecting any sort of titanic transformation from him in the field of sexuality and gender, I want to kiss you, from the toe to the forehead, beginning from your reddish feet that must be sweet. You know I’m not a cannibal, but I wish I were one to taste your blood. I’m also not unaware of the fact that the same blood circulates through the veins of both of us, constituted by the same ingredients, though your blood contains more RBCs, since you are from the hills. But when I look at you I find myself an alien to my own eyes, a stranger looking at a friend. A constant psychological gaze.
In fact, I find myself utterly unable to comment on Freud’s revolutionary idea that dreams give an outlet to our unconscious desires and frustrated aspirations. I want you to come out of the binary between conscious and unconscious and Freud’s sexually charged interpretations of dreams and read me in an utterly different manner, not like you measure a text in yards, and deconstruct it. Please don’t distort what is inscribed on me through my dreams, even if this is meaningless to you. To search a meaning out of my dreams will be to relegate it to the level of prostitution, to make profit out of it, like entrepreneurs do. You know I’m not a social entrepreneur, as Balram Halwai was. Therefore I want to narrate my dream as plainly as possible.
I and A entered your house. Contrary to our expectations, it was not a typical, Delhi-style well furnished flat or a mansion, but like a small country house with a silver-coloured hand pump outside it. We were invited for lunch or dinner, I cannot recall exactly. There was a third invitee as well, whom I had never seen. Suddenly this stranger disappeared somewhere, which delayed our dinner that made me a bit irritated…
After having dinner,when we were about to leave, instead of bidding a good bye, you threw a condescending glance at me that chilled me , made me almost frozen. Your father was uttering some words of praise for me, but you snapped and burst out in anger: Papa aap ise nahi jante. Achha aadmi nahi hai… In fact, I cant recall all the allegations you levelled against me. None of your friends came to my rescue, nor came A. I took it as an act of betrayal both on your part and on the part of your friends.I decided I would never talk to them, not even look at them. Surprisingly, one of my friends,Shalin, who hails from Kerala and teaches in Bangalore, came to my rescue: Lalit aisa nahi hai…
To my utmost surprise, your dad didn’t believe you in toto, and gave me a chance to defend my stance. But then, suddenly he started rummaging through the contents of my bag. I was left utterly dumbfounded, when I stepped out of your house, choked in tears. I needed an instant consolation but A was nowhere to be seen. I tried calling A2 but somebody else, one of my uncles who I’m sure has never heard of A2, picked up the phone. I cursed A2. Suddenly I woke up, petrified, in a daze, an utterly agitated state of mind, and realized that it was a nightmare, tinged with love.
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