Dream Girl

“It’s strange, I dream the best dreams in the world and yet my life is about as ordinary as any.”

She wasn’t even looking at him.

“If I could, I’d go someplace where dreams came true all the time. Not wishes. Proper dreams. Mine have to be the most amazing dreams ever.”

It was an odd wall that the two of them sat on. It began abruptly but with much purpose, then it ran a few feet before giving up and collapsing as unexpectedly as it arose. From the village it looked like a slender headless shoulder overlooking the river.

A sudden breeze interrupted his monologue. He watched as her soft hair were taken around in tiny waves and slow brilliant swirls, and said to himself, “God! She is pretty.”

“You are pretty. Beautiful.” He reached out for her shadow-face with his shadow-hand.

It made her blush, but she also cracked a frail smile.

“What if we are actually our shadows?” “Have you ever thought about it? I once had this elaborate dream where my body was just that, a body. I was actually my shadow!”

Both of them paused and suspiciously examined the dark outline glued to their lives.

She wondered if she was sitting on the wall because she wanted to; it was possible that she was there only because her gloomy friend craved for a swim? Staring at her shadow ripple across the cold river she couldn’t really make up her mind. What was her mind?

Did his shadow love her shadow more than he loved her? There was no end to this speculation. Was he only playing out his shadow’s love?

Mala was as beautiful as he was ordinary. They were, however, both equally crazy.

“Where do I get these ideas from?”

“I don’t Mala, I just dream them. They visit me at night. Maybe, maybe it’s you who is strange. And because I am with you all day, I get these strange ideas at night?”

“Okay, I was only kidding. A joke? Now don’t go silent on me again.”

Mala was born mute. But he had often thought that even if she could speak, Mala would choose not to. She went about her life in a way that didn’t require her to speak. She had no questions to ask of anything or anyone, no anger to express, no gossip to exchange, no lies to tell, no favours to request for, no words of love to be shared. In many ways you couldn’t tell Mala from her shadow. They were both equally inanimate. But Mala was as uniquely intriguing as her shadow was ordinary.

“You know, I could spend my entire life with you. Would you be able to? I guess you’d be. Ya?”

To begin with, everyone had loved Mala. She was far too lovely for that little village with a strange aimless wall. But then news of her muteness spread, and the admiration quickly turned to sympathy. Slowly Mala’s place in the life of the villagers began to resemble that of the wall. The wall was too big and she too pretty to be completely forgotten. But Mala and the wall served no purpose and were, as time passed, duly ignored.

“Ya??? Hmm. Doesn’t matter.”

She wasn’t even looking at him.

In the village, all the kids went to the same school, and the same teacher taught all of them, irrespective of age, the same lessons everyday for a week. Then the classes repeated themselves. This would go on till the kid grew old enough to get married, or the teacher passed away, or till the river climbed over the wall and destroyed the village.

He met Mala at school. And while she was instantly ignored, he received a lot of attention. For the first few months there wasn’t a day when he returned home without a bruise and a nasty nickname. You could say that theirs was a friendship born out of a process of elimination. They were both removed from the lives of everyone else at school.

He had a large nose, was exceptionally scrawny, and his father lived with another woman in the city leaving his mother and him behind. This nearly drove his mother mad and he was left an orphan for all practical purposes. Mala, however, barely took note of this, and even volunteered to listen to his long sorry tales of missing his father while he grew up and hating his nose.

Since then their friendship had grown. They were forever with one another, in school, by the well, walking past the fields or sitting aimlessly on the wall.

“What if there are people that eat our dreams at night, Mala? I mean, not people, but things we can’t see?”

“It could be true?!!” “Why else would we have such brief dreams before we wake up?”

“Mala, you bum, all you see are leftover dreams!” “The good bit is eaten up while you are snoring away.”

“You DO snore.” “Snoring has nothing to do with being mute!!”

“I’m not dumb Mala, I only have a large nose and no father!”

“But think about it?” “Who could it be?”

“Maybe you can stay up tonight, beside me, and check?”

“I have the finest dreams in the world Mala! The dream-eaters will surely come to feast on my dreams.”

She thought of her own hollow dreams. Even if such a tribe of dream-eaters existed they’d waste no time on her. What would she have to do to dream? Talk?

He thought of the others in the village. All they could dream for was a good monsoon, or a healthy child. They had absolutely no imagination and little ambition.

“Where do you think they’d be Mala? These creatures? They’d meet us don’t you think?”

She was looking out into the horizon. The sun was beginning to set and it cast a long shadow of the two of them over the village.

The gentle breeze returned, and this time Mala smiled widely and let her hair dance in soft flutters. He thought to himself, “God, could she look any prettier?”

“You know, you are the only one I can tell these things to. No one else would understand.”

He closed his eyes, and really wished he was somewhere else, where dreams came to life. Proper dreams.

***

“Poor boy!”

“Yes, the wretched man left the two of them. Did he leave any money?”

“I don’t think so!”

“He seems to be going mad like his mother; have you seen him? He sits by the river, on that wall, all day speaking to himself!”