February 11, 1875

Under Oriental Skies

I had a horrible dream last night that I must now recount to you, that is, to you, my diary, my other self. As I sit here beside my window looking out into the snow-swept Simla highlands, I begin to feel that my soul is but a loose unity woven out of various bits, pieces, and fragments forever threating to break loose from its centre. A centre for which it desperately yearns but which it can never possess, for the very moment that it has attained it this centre has already moved away. Thus I have become the site of many a battle within myself, some past ones which have left me permanently scarred and whose memories linger on within me even when I do not seem to be able to accept them as my own, and some present ones which bring to me the dread of forgotten stories as well as the promises of a future redemption.

I dreamt that I was in an India that I somehow did not re-cognise. Gone was the dark, melancholy and comforting greys and blacks of Simla, I was now in the midst of the heat and the dust of an Indian town in the stifling summer of the sun-baked plains. An old man in a red turban beckoned towards me to enter his house, and I gingerly approached him. He smiled at me, suddenly grasped both my hands, shook them warmly, and led me into the first room. There on its bright yellow walls I saw a Swastika painted in a gaudy red. I felt that I had stepped into a sizzling cauldron of fire, and I shrieked out in utter panic. I desperately wanted to wake up from my maddening dream, but try hard as I did I could not break free from the coils of sleep. I ran out of the house into the sun-scorched village-square where a group of thirsty people were buying lime-juice from a young boy. I waited for a long while for my turn, hoping that he would soon turn towards me and serve me. An old woman walked up to me and told me that if I kept on waiting in that manner I would have to stand there for the rest of eternity. And as I stood there contemplating the meaning of 'eternity', three loud voices shouted at me to move on or stand out of the queue.

Since this morning I have wondering about my dream. The India of this dream is so different, so unfamiliar, so elusive from the one than I have known and grown up with these past few years that in my dream I found myself returning to her as a stranger who approaches her from the outside for the first time. India is a strange beguiling woman who entraces you from afar with the promises of exotic wealth, only to shroud herself at the final moment with a thick veil of impenetrable Otherness. I felt that I had become exiled at home, separated from my own countrymen and countrywomen across a great chasm of incomprehension.

In the garden there was a trail of black messy footprints carved into the beautiful virgin snow. The trail suddenly stopped near the winter-struck speechless trees, as if the person had been suddenly lifted up into the sky by some strange celestial, or perhaps demoniac, power.