From a letter to the Dakghar maillist, October 1997. Here’s a simple principle from the Punjab that comes to us through the embassy of Rajiv Singh Chhatwal: “Samajhdaar nu ishaara, aur moorukh nu chapait.”
“To the wise man, a sign. To the fool, one good smack.”
In Latin: verbum sapienti satis est. “To the wise, a word will suffice.”
When it comes to me in both Punjabi and Latin I get it one hundred percent.
Last night Dadabhai Naoroji came to see me all the way from the “other world,” (as they like to say in Russian folk tales), and gave me a very good chapait. This was during the course of a complicated economic and political dream which also featured Satyesh Chakrabarty, my economics professor at IIMC; Itmaduddaula, Emperor Jahangir’s chief minister; Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister; Damodar Dhananjay Kosambi, the historian; and, last but not the least, my late grandmother.
In order to drive home the true significance of this event, I should tell you that I almost never dream. In the entire course of my forty-four years at the wicket, I have had exactly five dreams. My domestic (but not, alas, domesticated) psychologist tells me that that is nonsense. You dream, but you don’t remember, she tells me. This subtlety, to the clickety-click engineering mind, is like rain in Spain. If it happens, but I don’t know it happens, then it don’t happen. No sir! Freudian mumbo-jumbo no cut ice with us engineers. Us engineers, we be logical positivists — or whatever else sensible people ought to be.
Daniel Garrett would sometimes drop in on us in the evening. He and I would hang around in the kitchen, drinking cheap Cobra beer, which tasted a lot like Kalyani Black Label from Calcutta, $1.19 for a two-liter bottle, while Abha did the cooking. Our share of the deal was that we should keep her entertained. And wash up afterwards. This was at 716 Heman Street, apartment 3 North, St. Louis, MO 63130, near Washington University. I was a student.
Close by, in a block of apartments on the top of Dairy Queen, lived Yukiko Takahashi, who has since passed away, whose good friend Daniel was when Abha and I met him.
716 Heman, 3N, St. Louis. Looks like I could use some sleep — but isn’t that true of all grad students.
Yukiko was born in Hiroshima and she smoked. One or both together led to lung cancer which took her life within months. Daniel flew with her to Hiroshima. We saw them off at Lambert in St. Louis. Yukiko was in a wheelchair hooked up to tubes and things. That was the last we saw of her. She wrote us one letter from Hiroshima but it went all over the world before it arrived and she was by then gone already.
I met Yukiko through Rajeev Kathpalia. Rajeev lived in a block of apartments on top of Paul’s Books at the intersection of Delmar and Kingsbury, which dear store has now passed into history. Rajeev was studying architecture. Yukiko was a student of Chinese literature. Also she taught Japanese at Wash U.
Daniel studied Japanese language and literature at Wash U. Yukiko was one of his instructors. At night Daniel worked as a doorman at a local hotel. He grew up on a little farm in Texas (Umreeka da jutt!) but his mother moved up to St. Louis with her three sons after her husband passed away. Daniel was the youngest of the three. He’s a dreamer. A wonderful, kind, warm, gentle person. Always full of impossible ideas.
September 29, 2015, 12th and C Streets, Washington DC, Here on a streetside bench in a light drizzle with Daniel.
Before Abha and I married I would go over to Rajeev’s in the evening and we would cook up dinner for the two of us, for there is nothing sadder and lonelier than dining alone. I have actually wept, grown man that I am, stumps mostly intact, when I have had to dine by myself for a few days in a row. Rajeev and I were very good at making chicken tikka kebab and rogan josh and “pajaame-da-paneer”and really a tableful of stuff. Often Yukiko would drop by for dinner. Once Rajeev’s mom came to visit all the way from Delhi and of course we made her our world-famous pajaame-da-paneer.
But she’d have none of it!
The paneer was strained in an old pair of handloom pajamas from a Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan outlet in Vadodara. I had once regularly worn the pajamas, but they had since been put out to pasture. (They had, in other words, been pasteurized 🙂 )
The pajamas were now dedicated entirely to the manufacture of paneer, and were nicely laundered after each use. There was no reason for the least quantity of apprehension. Kathpalia aunty just took a dislike to the name of the dish. The pajamas worked much better than the “cheese-cloth” from the local grocery store, which withered after two paneer-cycles. The pajamas, like Mahatma Gandhi, went on and on. But Rajeev’s mom wouldn’t listen to reason. She had made up her mind and that was that. She ate her roti with leftover baingun and bhindi. Rajeev, Yukiko, and I ate up all the paneer. For the rest of mom’s stay we made our paneer with cheese-cloth and didn’t call it by “that” name.
One day Yukiko called Abha to say that she would like us to meet a good friend of hers, and could they both come to dinner. Abha’s cooking prowess was legend already. That was how we first met Daniel.
Daniel was much into dreams. He was very exercised about the fact that I did not dream. It is such a shame, he said, to just sleep all the time, like a bloody cabbage, when you could get a few dreams in for free. When he put it like that it made sense to me. Yeah, I said, yeah! Free entertainment. Personal cinema. Shots from your life. Mirror of the soul. Channeling. Space and time. Psychological potential. Know thyself. Why not?
It is all very well to decide that you want to dream, but the mechanics of how to go about doing it are not obvious to everyone. So Daniel cooked up a method to help me along. This is his recipe: Before you go to bed tell yourself two things. One that I shall dream. Two that I shall remember. It is that simple. Then it will follow that you will dream and you will remember. The wonder of it is that his method worked, and worked both times I tried. It was responsible, single-handedly, for 40% of all the dreams I have had! Try it, and tell me if it works for you.
When I resolved to dream and remember, there also rose inside of me, unbidden, entirely of its own, a thought that thought I was going to dream up an orgy, a richly sexual feast. This thought, since I had not consciously fabricated it in the laboratory of my mind, since it did not therefore belong to me in any legal or statutory sense, I did not feel compelled to share with my friend, the unsuspecting psychologist who sleeps next to me. In any case she can read my mind. So why bother.
So here are the two dreams I dreamt using the Daniel Garrett Method.
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Sueno Numero Uno
I was locked out of my apartment. I had lost my key.
“Aha!” exclaimed Daniel when I told him. I could hear his Freudian tumblers click.
The apartment was on the second floor of a building that had four apartments on each of two floors. There was no other building almost as far the eye could see. This building was surrounded by a few large trees in an otherwise largely-barren and desolate landscape. Mine was the only apartment that was occupied. I was lonely. I’d eat by myself and weep in my dish.
I went up the stairs and checked the door — just in case I hadn’t locked it when I left. But I had.
Suddenly, there was something behind me on the stairs that I more felt than heard. I turned around quickly but saw nothing. I was anxious. A little scared perhaps. What had that been behind me? Or who? I went softly down the steps.
There, near the entry, on the inside, I saw a little baby monkey, who I would have felt kindly towards if it hadn’t shadowed and startled me. I felt a sudden surge of anger at the little creature. An inappropriate sort of anger, quite unwarranted, like a stab, quickly flaring. I yelled at it. I waved my hands and stamped my feet. I scared the wits out of the poor little fellow. It had clearly not expected this sort of behavior. It just wanted to be friends, but had shied away at the last minute and scampered down the stairs to wait a little while before it said hello again. I could feel his feelings much as I felt my own.
I chased it, and it ran away quickly, not once looking back.
I went out and walked around the building. I felt my fear and anger ebb. Their place was taken by a sense of calm. The trees looked beautiful. How large, how leafy! How beautifully the sunshine filtered through the foliage. How wonderfully fragrant, moist, cool, and dark it felt near these trees. How wide and strong and coarse those trunks. The Neem, the Pepul, the Mango, the Imli. The harsh sun was mellowed and tempered by them. I climbed up one tree and jumped from a branch onto the balcony of my apartment. I wasn’t there long when it was time to leave again. I went out of the front door, locked it, climbed down, and walked out into the oppressively bright sunshine.
Suddenly right behind me there was a great uproar, and I saw that same little monkey, and a whole vengeful army of its bigger friends, right there behind me, baring their teeth, advancing on me. I turned and ran as fast as I could with that whole hujoom behind me, screaming and howling and raising a cloud of dust. Then I woke up in a sweat.
Termino
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Sueno Numero Dos:
I was in a little town in Rajasthan. On the main street there were a few shops, a little Devi temple built into the lee of a tree with whitewashed bricks. There was hardly anyone around. Just me. I was very thirsty. Suddenly the wind picked up. The sky went a few shades darker, the temperature fell by a goodly fraction of a degree. I sensed the approaching sandstorm. I thought I should get home before it struck with full force. There was no time to stop for a drink.
I passed by the shops, went past the temple, and trudged along the street. There I saw a dog and he saw me. We were both happy to see each other. I smiled at him and he wagged its tail. I patted his head and he nuzzled me. Then I walked on. The dog followed close at my heels. The wind was picking up now. The sand was flowing in sheets across the street. I was the only person in the world. This was the only dog in the world. The sand blotted out everything else. It stung like a million darts. We couldn’t see where we were going. My eyes were gritty. I could hardly see my hands. The wind carried me where it will. I had lost all sense of direction. I had lost my vision. I was thirsty and exhausted. The dog stayed by me.
Suddenly, as if by magic, we were at my door. I opened it and stumbled in and shut the sandstorm out. The dog came in with me. I lay down on a couch, my eyes shut, my body trying to recoup some strength, my mind numb. The dog was very thirsty. He put his paws up on my knees and whimpered. I know, I said. I know you are thirsty. Give me a minute and I’ll get you water. But he wouldn’t wait. He licked my face, and asked for water again. That dog wouldn’t wait. An anger rose in me. I am thirsty too, I said. I hit him across his snout, and he slunk away, surprised and hurt, and lay down a few feet from me, his muzzle on his paws, looking up at me as if to say he was sorry.
Suddenly I was filled with shame and remorse. Here was an animal like me, asking for water. And I had behaved like a beast. I went and sat near him on the floor. I stroked his head and his back. He knew I was sorry and he consoled me and told me it was all right, as dogs will tell us. I went and got him water in a big deep dish. Then I went and got some for myself. We were one, that dog and I. He was a part of me. I was a part of him. Then I lay down on the floor by him and went to sleep.
Termino
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Freudian conclusions I will not strain from this thin paneer of my dreams, but I might be persuaded to fry a Vedantic fish or two. “Tat tvam asi”, literally “that is also you”, the Vedantists like to say.
I too sometimes try and look at everything I pass by and say: “This is me. That is also me”. The street, the stones, the people, the pajamas, the keyboard, the starving child, the dying insect. I will not say that this is an easy thing to do. It is not. Especially the dying insect, or a live and vigorous one for that matter. But I will say this, that in as much as I have been able to cultivate such an attitude of mind, to become larger, more inclusive, and for howsoever long, it has brought me peace and happiness in very commensurate measure.
Wood, Egypt, 2000 BCE, The Metropolitan Museum, New York. The broken man, the man I feel to be, unless I try and do myself some tat tvam asi 🙂
– End of story —