Big City DreamingWith apologies to Dylan ThomasThe city sleeps sprawled across the seven spiny knobs that once were islands. It's sleep is fractured by the growl of traffic. Restlessly it mutters through the few quiet hours it has before the millions wake again. All across the city, people are sleeping. Dreams are rising like hazy wisps into the night.Black water chokes and coughs at Bandra Creek. Curled under a pipeline, a boy dreams on undisturbed by the stench or the trains that thunder overheard. His dream unreels in his head in 70 mm and this time he is the hero.At Hill Road, the old priest sighs in his sleep, missing bone deep the sonorous bells that once called the hour. His dreams open up in fields of green grass through which he once chased truant boys. He remembers the grass running straight to the edge of the sea, and how distant ships marked the church tower and gave thanks for a safe journey home.At Andheri, the young boys sleeps uneasy. It is another bed. He has no bed of his own, and dreads returning to the garage he started life from. He dreams of things - a house painted white. a fridge filled with food. a bedroom. and a vast inviting bed.At Mahim Junction the traffic lights blink across the empty road to the timber traders opposite. Hidden among the serried ranks of bamboos are warm bodies, curled into shelters. They dream of shelter, of hands unscarred by handling timber, of a square of plastic to ward off the monsoon rain.At Dadar, the grinding of the trucks has finally been stilled for an hour or so. Sleeping amidst the odours of fresh chillies and coriander, a vendor dreams of marriage. Even in her sleep her hands are fisted tight around the secret cache of money she has hoarded. She smiles as she dreams because she means to have a real band at her wedding.At Fort, an old man sleeps beside his caged parrot. He has looked at thousands of hands and prophesied luck, good fortune and love. At night, eyes squeezed shut, he tries to dream the same for himself. But his dreams are stubborn. They show him snatches of his childhood, a frozen frame of him hiding in a wheat field, the face of an old friend suddenly remembered.In Crawford Market, a child sleeps under the ribbed roof. Around him are cages filled with the sleeping animals that he tends during the day. He sleeps curled like them. Like them, missing the warmth of a body, dreaming achingly of separation and despair.The docks are clogged with the merchandise of a hundred ports. The watchman sleeps in snatches. Each time the same thing opens in his mind with a glare of red - a man running through the dock, chased by knifes. A union question settled in blood. He sees the man fall and is awake. He has never been able to get past this part of the dream.At Masjid, besides the railways tracks, a woman sleeps beside her husband, and three children. Her dreams are filled with wide open spaces, with air to breathe, with light and grass and flowing water. They are shuddered by the roar of passing trains.At VT, people stop for tea at a roadside stall. Few notice the boy who is curled asleep under a bench. Always he dreams of his brother. Together they play in the lane before their house. Inside his mother calls to him. He hears her so clearly that his dream breaks for a minute. It has been five years since he has seen them and now he understands that he never will. He has forgotten the name of the village and there is no one here who can tell him.At Cuffe Parade a woman sleeps uneasily. She can never remember what she dreamt when she wakes up. She has spent money on doctors, therapists, interpreters. But always she turns restless through the night and wakes with the feeling that some large and important part of her life is out of her reach, locked into the dreams she cannot find her way back into.In the Police Station the Officer on Duty snatches a few moments of sleep. It has been a long night. He dreams of his wife combing her hair. The rhythmic movements of her hands soothe him. She smiles at him and he is comforted.At Jaslok Hospitals the ward is dark and quiet. The patient sleeps deeply, dreaming on the border between sleep and death. He dreams of dark water, of being drawn out and away to sea. He hesitates, realising the choice even in dreaming. Then the water lifts him and carries him away.The city rumbles, slowly coming awake. Across Bombay the lights go on. The early morning trucks grind into the city. Milkmen rattle cans, and the sky swells with light. It is time to leave dreaming behind. To get on with this business of living in the city.Venita Coelho is a television script writer.
