The concept of me

"These days I just can’t seem to say what I mean. I just can’t. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can’t even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It’s like my body’s split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We’re running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her."

-- Haruki Murakami

Everyday when I leave home, I choose the clothes I wear and my thoughts, and my belief...

The kind of mask I don on is quite fluid and mobile,

It becomes the very essence of me, at least for a while.

The confusion comes at the very end of the day,

When I am not sure of what I am today.

What to believe as my own,

when I can assume any identity I am shown.

It's quite like this thought I get each day,

When I look at myself in the mirror...

Is it me staring back or merely a reflection? 

Azure

Through the sunlit corridors, the dream came back to her.....she remembered waking up restless but the essence of it gradually slipped away with morning light. It had been five years since she left the world outside these walls, she didn't miss much, she didn't need to, the medications gave her a false sense of peace. She had another session with her doctor today, she didn't look forward to it....the talks brought back memories of a different life, a different time.

To imagine an asylum in a place like Goa was quite incongruous, but in the Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, on the outskirts of Panaji, the health of its patients are taken very seriously. So amidst the picturesque beaches and the quaint roads of North Goa, it was ironic to find a Institute quite like any asylum anywhere....She couldn't really complain about the place, a modern building but it had wide open spaces. One couldn't really hear the sea, but she would often hear the vacant cry of the seagulls and the waves breaking against the shore....she could almost see the wide expanse of the sea, blue and infinite. Maybe it was the medications that gave her such vivid images while the life around seemed dull and colourless. Later in the afternoon, she was ushered from her gentle world of reverie to the harsh bright reality of her analyst's chamber.

"Did you have the dream again?" She looked at him, puzzled that he had felt the need to ask her the same question everyday but she supposed any doctor would ask the most inane questions as if to make one feel better which of course didn't work, at least in her case. "Yes," she murmured, dreading the next query.

"Could you describe it for me?"

Sure she could, but she didn't really understand how that would help her.

It was the same corridor, except it was washed of all colour...are dreams in monochrome? She saw herself laughing, holding the hand of a small child, a boy with soft blue eyes. They ran through the corridor, the walls dissolving behind them, she could hear the sea beyond them....

"So you were leading him to the sea?"

She nodded, struggling to fit in the harshly lit office with her soft light washed dream.

They were on the shore, the sea was blue and deep, quite inviting, the tangy smell of salt and fish mingled with the shrieks of the sea gulls, tantalizing...she was teaching him how to swim, she could see how much he enjoyed the sea, as much as she did...and then there was a gap in her memory, everything seemed blurred and faded...
"But this is new, you remember teaching him how to swim?"

She nodded again and then she was struck by a sudden image, less fractured than before....

It was the same boy, now grown, almost a man but still a boy, laughing with his friends in the sea...and then it was all blue, as if engulfed by a gigantic wave....
"Would would like to talk some more?"

She looked up, remembering those laughing eyes, "He dies, right? Is that how it ends?" she asked resiliently, her voice shaking.

"Who dies?" Again a redundant question but necessary.....how?

"He dies..." She remembered him now, his soft palm in her hand, tugging at her heart,"My son..."


The picture was complete now, she knew why she was here and why she dreamt of the same thing every night...she didn't know yet why she was made to remember and relive them again, the lost moments, the gaps in her memory...a vicious cycle of repression, medication and therapy...she was awake for now but for how long? Maybe the dream won't haunt her anymore, or would it?


"To sleep: perchance to dream"- Hamlet