The Butterfly
We lived in a clay-tile-roof house when I was a kid — a kid but old enough to sleep alone. Out of many fears, I was more afraid the roof would get detached and fly away in the rainy season when the rain and winds were unforgiving. The intensity of the downpour is incomparable with what pours these days, or maybe I was more afraid then. I watched the sheets of rain hammering the streets and the walls from the window. The lightning lit up everything, and I didn’t know that sound traveled slower than light and couldn’t guess when the thunder would roar. I was only allowed to go out after the rain subsided, and I drove paper boats and waited for the mysterious rainbow to appear. As my reasoning power developed and I learned the speed of light and some laws of Physics, my curiosity got damp. And now, not even a double rainbow seems to awe me.
The algae and mosses grew on the compound walls, crawling millipedes, the slimy frogs, the hidden toad, some scary and weird-looking flies and insects, and the snake-like worm all made for astonishing things during the rainy season. It is also the season when caterpillars feed on the leaves before hibernating as a pupa. The caterpillars crawled everywhere; the tiny droplets on the spiny coat made them look hard at work. Once ready, they crawl to safe places to begin their next phase. The best place seemed to be under the clay tile roof; some managed to crawl upside-down and transform into a pupa, and some hastily fell on top of anything under them, including people.
I feared the falling caterpillars; they could fall on my clothes, my head, crawl into my ears, or my plate of food. One of the nights, the rains and the thunder rumbled outside. I went to bed early and wrapped myself in a warm blanket. Halfway into the night, I woke up screaming, ‘butterflies, butterflies! ‘ It was the caterpillars that shook me of the nightmare. I had only seen a couple of pupa that emerged as a butterfly, and I feared the butterflies in the nightmare. I had almost fallen off the bed and had perspirations on my forehead out of fear. The nightmare had terrified me. To add to this torment, I unknowingly grabbed a spiky caterpillar crawling on the wall a couple of days later. The fear had come true; I was screaming out of pain due to the sting, and a smear of oil helped subside it in the evening.
I cannot recall a dream of a ghost, but I cannot get over the caterpillar dream. After all, I still love the butterflies and the moths; who doesn’t? But I fear the caterpillars.
The fear of an exam
It’s close to 12 years since I wrote my official last exam. Now, no one has the authority to order me to appear in any except for those mandatory meetings, which I can still choose to decline, citing another mandatory meeting. The exams were always stressful. The subject or the amount of preparation made a mere difference. I had no courage to skip any, fearing the consequences, and appeared for each of them. I have cleared all my exams, though my preparations were inadequate most of the time. Probably, my poor handwriting hid the answers away from the valuator, leaving him wondering if it was the correct or the incorrect answers, and he had to mark them right to get to the next one and complete his part of the work.
I have this nightmare where I realize that tomorrow is my exam, and my preparations are nil. The subject and the amount of preparation never helped me with the anxiousness I felt in the dream. Invariably, the fear of inadequate preparation feared me. I often had to wake up, realize that I had to write no more exams or I was working now, and go back to sleep. I looked up on the internet to understand what this dream means, but I could not relate it to the unpreparedness the answers indicate. If that dream suggests that I’m not prepared for a meeting in the office the next day, I would decide to go unprepared and calm myself to a good sleep, for I can manage a meeting without any preparations after an experience of 12 years. In the meeting the next day, if I nap and the exam dream flashes, I will still wake up frightened with marks of keyboard keys on my forehead with the same sense of unpreparedness.
The happiness-unhappiness affair
The dreams do not last for more than a few minutes, but it often feels like one long dream stretched during our entire sleep. The mood of some dreams spills over into the day after waking up, subtly affecting our actions. It can make one cheerful or gloomy for the day. And there are several dreams we cannot recall; no matter how hard we try, it just seems to have disappeared like a flicker of light. I don’t mind not recalling those bad ones, but I often longed to remember those sweet ones, which made me smile or happy even at night.
There is a very repetitive dream that is too abstract to put into words. The dream forces me to make a conscious decision that would make me happy or unhappy. The subject that pushed me to make that decision is still unclear despite trying to remember it very hard. The dream is very nagging and frightening. The conscious effort that I make in the day to become better every day has also helped me to decide on the dream that results in happiness. But it is still very unclear if I had made the right decision in my dreams. I wish I could keep a notebook in my dreams to write down what catalyzed the thought of a happiness-unhappiness affair, and I could read it once I woke up. Or is it better that it is left in the dream?
