The road to nowhere: 359

The sweltering heat made it impossible to have his forty winks, drenched in sweat. Imaginch did not know who and what to blame – the El Nino or La Nina. Both being Spanish citizens, continental hopping did not appeal to him.  He did the next best thing- squirmed left and then right and then left on the bed, curled and stretched to end up with cramped leg muscles.

Getting nowhere near the comfort zone, he blamed the very reluctant and delayed onset of REM cycles. Subconsciously, he had used the operative word ‘delayed onset’ preferred by weathermen to be vague in order to escape from the heat of the population being scorched by relentless heatwaves. The weathermen did not dare to include “what has gone up would come down eventually or try forcing the clouds to shed the hoarded rain, if you could?” in their bulletins.

Somewhere in the no man’s land between El Nino - La Nina combine and the REM cycles, the ‘delayed onset’ of sleep reluctantly enveloped him. His last thought before drifting off in to sleep was about the probability of a power outage playing spoil sport. Not wanting to look in the mouth of the gifted horse, in this instance - on falling asleep, Imaginch promptly sidelined his concern about probable power outage, to let the REM cycles do the rest.

Since he had lost track of time, he did not know how long he had slept. As a super senior citizen, he could sleep when he wanted to, eat whenever hungry and do it in whatever order he wanted to. He had no office to hurry to and no schedule of activities to follow.

He had a reputation in the family - to dole out stinging comments right out of an acid bath. The family members suffering under similar spell of El Nino-La Nina induced REM cycle disturbances, and ‘delayed onset’ syndrome became wiser and simply let him have that much freedom. Sanity sans sleep was not a comfortable option for them!

At the fag end of a particular night, Imaginch picked up a slight change in the atmospheric pressure around him. Still not fully awake, an audio-dream started playing in his mind. His interest perked up as he heard his friend intoning, ‘Don’t expect the road to take you wherever you want to go; instead take that road which goes wherever you want to.’

Hearing his friend’s voiceover forced his subconscious mind, caught there in the no man’s land between the layers of dissolving sleep and wakefulness, to ask, “Are you awake, what is time now?” Instead of a straight answer, he heard his friend saying, “If you have not asked me, I know what it is. Since you have asked, I do not know how to explain it.!”

Still struggling under layers of sleep, Imaginch’s subconscious mind became curiously irritated, to hear the explanation that was sure to follow.  That much his subconscious mind knew about this friend, while hedging its bet on whether it would be about time or something else.

Predictably, the recital started with “As a kid, I used to imagine that the road in front of the house would take me to unknown places filled with amusements. The windowsill provided a perfect perch to watch it whenever I wanted to. At that time, this ruse helped me to postpone doing the homework. But the road had other ideas and the only place it took me was to the school and back. The amusement part was an occasional sighting of a vendor with a stock of balloons or sugar candy in different colours. One exception was the ice (frozen water) in orange or brown colour and the milk-ice (milk powder+ water?) on sticks. The vendor blew a horn which always sounded funny and off key to my ears.”

Imaginch sleepily murmured, “Why this story at this time?”  Turning philosophical the friend said, “Clearing your doubt may not bring clarity but it may leave you with an appearance of clarity”.  Concerned about his friend’s frame of mind, Imaginch waited for the narrative to continue 

“Secondary and higher secondary education meant another school and travel by a different road.  I had hoped that change would take me to places but it turned out that I had to ride a cranky old bicycle to school. A puncture or the chain jumping the rear gear or chainring, was all that the road had in store for me.

In front of the school, vendors sat or stood with push carts selling Indian black berry, Indian jujube or plum, wild date, strips of raw mango cut to resemble a linear gearwheel and fried or steamed ground nut in paper cones dispensing more paper per ground nut. The local ice factory products came in insulated boxes mounted on bicycles. I could only yearn for any of them as the concept of pocket money was not encouraged in my house! Window shopping was the only amusement I enjoyed.

During that grind of schooling, I upgraded my focus to dream about a college set among sylvan trees and the branches of well grown trees forming an arch of welcome on the road leading to the campus. Where I got enrolled, that college sat inside a dusty bowl of earth and only overgrown thorny bushes stood on the sides of the road watching my progress to the campus.  But this desolate geographical feature did not deter me from hoping that there definitely would be a road, to take me to places where I wanted to go.

With a degree in hand, I aspired to land a job that would throw open the routes to take me to foreign countries. I had a bag full of these dreams dwarfing the efforts an avid philatelist collecting rare stamps or a phillumenist colleting label of matchboxes. The job market, breathing like a beached whale under global economic stress, threw up a position. I grabbed the offer as it was from a subsidiary of an international conglomerate.  The company gave me a hand grip loaded with samples, brochures, a box of classy looking business cards and an order book. You guessed it right, as a sales rep.

Weighed down by the grip and with a heavy heart, I trudged along the roads, climbed stairs and gave my spiel singing the praise of the company’s products. Whether the order book got filled up or not it helped me to improve my oratorial skill.  To keep my dreams alive, I took the logo of the parent company as equivalent to an international travel visa and the stairs I climbed as the travel to exotic places in foreign countries.

The food laden carts on the roadside, take aways from crowded joints and a mess hidden away in bylanes became substitutes for food courts, cafes and restaurants filling up the gaping blanks. My hopes kept crashing like waves on those beaches in those foreign countries. I don’t know where I had missed that road that would take me to places where I wanted to go?”

By this time, Imaginch understood where his friend was going with this rant and still was eager to know about the roads that have not taken him to where he wanted to go.

His friend continued, “A few years after toting the grip of a representative, I decided to strike out on my own. I was confident that my combined Technical, Commercial and Sales experience would surely put me on that road. It did but within the same localities where I had studied and worked as a rep. I understood the mistake only after painting the ledger book in red. An unmistakable signal to actively search for opportunities in a foreign country to once again become an employee.

But other events like marriage and kids intervened. The desire to find that road that would take me to places had hit a roadblock. The ledger book in red slowly grew into an economical nightmare. I took a diversion and found the route to fly into a country sitting over lakes of oil. Settling down in the job, I thought this would be my dream opportunity to let the roads there take me wherever I wanted to go. After a few months I brought my family over to collectively sit over lakes of oil.

I belatedly understood that the fragile world economy was not built to tolerate hiccups.  Regional flare ups, blockades and missile hurling overhead gripped the world in fear of an economic hardship, spreading like a cold without immediate cure. The triggered cascades weakened the financial foundation of countries, though a few managed to reap some windfall gains. But in ordinary households like mine it hung over an inconvenient and incurable cold. The cautionary signal blinked a warning, urging me to take another road that might take me somewhere but not to where I wanted to go.”

Becoming partially awake Imaginch, asked him, "Why this call, all of a sudden?" 

"Not getting sleep with all those aerial disturbances. I regret chasing a dream and landing here following currency signs instead of road signs." 

Why the audio-dream from the friend, who rarely contacts? Is he also affected by El Nino - La Nina effect along with the aerial show? Is the audio-dream a trailer and request to listen to his further woes? Imaginch could not hold it any longer. Since his friend had disturbed his sleep with this audio-dream, he wanted to unsettle him. 

"Initially you followed a road map that did not lead where you wanted to go. Afterwards you tried to follow another road map that took you where you did not really want to go and now you are standing at the crossroads.  why don't you reconcile and believe that the roads have taken you wherever you wanted to go? Why don't you call it a dream come true?  Imaginch finally fired the question, “Why don’t you come back?” 

Imaginch being a close friend, there was no scope to misunderstand the advice, delivered with shades of anger. The friend replied “Now, having understood that roads by themselves do not take you to wherever you want to go, I will decide soon.”

With the last layer of sleep dissolving without a trace, Imaginch got up to invite the new day! He wondered, “Was it a midsummer’s night dream” or Shakespeare’s “A midsummer Night’s dream”?  Was the audio-dream a reminder of his own failed dreams or because he was closely following the international conflicts wherever they were taking place, to keep his time ticking through the day?