Of Dreams and Dust

By Oindrila Ghosal

“The Trader of Dreams”

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who traded dreams for sleep.”

“How little?” Neerja interjected Mohan’s narration.

He clicked his tongue. “As little as we are. Save your questions for later. Let me finish my story first. So, where was I? Yes, there was a little girl who traded dreams for sleep.”

“Why?” she interrupted again.

“Because she couldn’t sleep.”

“Why? Nobody told her she can close her eyes and fall asleep?”

“Will you let me proceed?”

She sighed and continued filling the skirt white with the chalk she had sneaked from school.

The other listener, Chetan, curious about the new story that Mohan had fitted in between introduction and conclusion all night, expressed his irritation at the constant roadblocks to the free-flowing storytelling. “Either you focus on what you are drawing or keep quiet, Neerja.”

She did not protest. Mohan waited for two minutes to ready himself for any ember of a fight that might have erupted, and started again. “She had no one to call her own in the world. Her parents had left behind a big house for her. She lived there. Alone…”

He would have gone on with the premise had a shadow not covered them in a grey umbrage. They, except for Neerja, craned their necks to the gape of the mine they had walked into. Their eyes, confused, stared at the fuzzy outline. The silhouette—peering down at them—hands on its waist—neither ignited startle nor was startled. Instead, the cropped-hair figure climbed down the rocky short neck of the mine and joined them in the circle of mellow sunlight.

She smiled at them. Neerja, swayed by the caricatures she was scribbling on the rocks, remained unaffected. Mohan and Chetan exchanged glances and then scanned intently the scratches on her dusty bronze face, tangled hair—misshapenly chopped, and the dirty pink blossoms appliqued on her browning white frock. No, they were sure. They had not seen her before. The two immediately darted at each other’s eyes the confirmation, but in the meantime, completely forgot about smiling back at her.

Chetan, however, was the first one to break out of their locked eyes. His voice, seeped in chivalry he was yet to be schooled, asked, “Did they send you to find us?”

“Who?” Her confusion wrapped in softness, echoed alongside their breaths.

“Who sent you, then?”

“I came in.”

Having recovered from the initial dumbfoundedness, Mohan chipped in. “Who are you? We don’t remember seeing you before.”

“I am Pearl. I stay in the orphanage—across the fields.”

“Do people stay there?” blurted out Chetan.

“I do.”

“You are not a ghost, are you?”

Smiling, Pearl walked upto Chetan and tousled the hair he had set with water at school. He laughed like a braying donkey at the tickles on his scalp, so much so that the spectacles plummeted on his lap.

Her fingers halted at an absolute standstill when the laughter was unbearable for her as well and she crept back to where she had been. “I suppose you have not heard stories of ghosts tickling?”

Chetan, still unrecovered, kept laughing in small episodes.

As the leader of the pack, Mohan knew he had to step in, though unceremoniously. “We believe you. But what we do not understand is why did you step in here? Where is your basket?”

“Basket?”

“Where you store your collected mica scales. You come with one in the mines.”

“I do not have one.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“To trade dreams for a night.”

Mohan and Chetan looked at each other over Neerja’s hunched back. Words had locked themselves inside Mohan’s chronicler mind, and Chetan was convinced she was surely an accomplice of the ghosts who frequented the mines—the malicious ones his grandmother had warned him about.

Their juvenile bodies had forgotten to gasp—leave alone an exasperated sigh. Neerja’s chalk scratched aloud incessantly on the rocks. Only Pearl’s expectant eyes moved around. If, somehow, they were attached to a sensitive siren that buzzed each time they moved, the cry would surely have been menacing.

She swirled her eyes above their heads one last time before digging her hands in the pockets. “I can offer you these in return.”

She fished out two dried-pressed wreaths of wildflowers and held up against the stream of light for them to see. “What are these?” asked Mohan. Chetan, sliding the glasses behind his ears, nodded his head in agreement.

“I don’t know. I only have these at the orphanage.”

“What are we going to do with these?”

“I don’t know.”

“And,” added Chetan, “why should we sell you, our dreams?”

“Because I cannot sleep at night.”

Her glittery eyes slipped down their creased eyebrows. “Just one—take one of these leaves and flowers.”

“The leaves and flowers are not enough.”

“What else, then?”

“How about you take us to the orphanage tomorrow?”

“Same time?”

“Yes.”

“Now will you give me your dreams?”

“I shall,” Mohan slipped in without thinking.

She, grinning from ear to ear, handed him the wreaths and rushed out of the mine before they could blink. With her departing rush, the sparkling dust stirred briefly and then settled again. And they rose as if a from slumber.

Noting everything like a silent witness, Chetan asked at last, “Who do you think she is?”

“The girl from the story,” Neerja whispered on his behalf.

“But why did you agree to sell your dreams, Mohan?”

“Because I think she was engaging us in a silly story.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know. We will find that out tomorrow.”

It was the unannounced end of the storytelling session—they knew. Slowly, they stood up, dusted their backs, wore their school bags, picked their baskets and walked out of the mine.

***

“A Night Without Dreams”

Mohan was sitting with an ache in his tummy on the cot. His eyes were fixed on the glistening small of his mother’s back, where, while standing in line to submit his day’s pickings, he had briefly seen the leaseholder touch her waywardly. She was crouched by the burning oven on the other end of the room. The wafts of the warm brown skins of the roasting chapatis were tugging at the secret he was hiding in the vacancy of his insides.

He pressed his tummy with his glistening hands. The ache still did not ease. He wondered why he had to guard the secrecy. His mother had neither warned him of a girl roaming across the mine-fields in a mousy frock nor of stepping into the precincts of the orphanage. Even in broad daylight and from a distance, its haggard, skeletal frame had scared them. Yet, his conscience had agreed to the visit. That same conscience was now telling him that the secret would not be safe with his mother.

While his mind played around with logic, he tried tracing the circles of the wreaths in the pocket of the navy-blue trousers, pegged on the unplastered wall in front. 

“Mother,” he bellowed in an attempt to escape from the mounting unease.

His mother turned around her bony, glistening face. “Give me a minute. Your chapatis are almost ready.”

He bit his lower lip. “Will you tell me a story?”

“Which one?”

She dusted her hands on the greasy green saree and walked towards him with the enamel plate in her hands. The glistening chapatis and the glistening chunk of jaggery dazzled his glistening eyes. 

“The one in which you ran a race at school and went off with father on a train to reach here.”

“You have heard it so many times that you always fall asleep midway.”

He quickly cupped his palms over his closed eyes, and in the glistening colour-riot behind them, he found a thick dollop of fatigue but no dreams, no sleep—not even a morsel peeping at the edges. Upon confirming, he freed his eyes from the grip and looked at her with the twinkle in his glistening eyes.

“Not tonight—I promise. Can you show me the medal you had won that day?”

“It’s somewhere in the trunk, Mohan. It will take me all night if I have to look for it. Tomorrow, I will be checking to see if I saved enough for your fees anyway. Remind me right then.”

***

“The Happiness Pill”

By the time Mohan reached the mouth of the mine, his friends from different sections at school, Neerja and Chetan were already waiting for him—swinging their bags on their backs.

“Did you sleep last night?” Chetan’s unmasked unhurriedness sprang on him.

“Not a wink.”

“Is she…”

“It was fear, Mohan,” Neerja dismissed their doubts. “Admit you were scared after listening to her.”

Chetan argued, “But my grandmother says that when she was a little girl, she was asked to avoid the periphery of the orphanage. She would not even dare to pick fallen mangoes from there on the stormy nights. And that girl said she lives in the orphanage.”

“What if she is lying?”

“None of you spilled the beans, did you?” Mohan’s doubt overrode Neerja’s suspicion.

They briskly shook their heads from side to side.

“Are you sure she will come?” Neerja spoke again.

“She said she would,” reminded Mohan.

“If she doesn’t, we can tell stories for a little while and go back home,” suggested Chetan.

“Why did you agree to join us?” remonstrated Neerja.

“So that I can forget everything during the Diwali vacation. We are leaving for my mother’s maternal place tonight.”

“I’m glad you came,” Pearl’s greeting caught them off guard.

Concealing their fright behind an uneasy smile, they faced her doll-like eyes. “Should we leave right away?” offered Mohan.

“Of course.”

She took two steps to the north-west and instructed them, “Do not lose sight of me. Stay close.”

“If only she did not flit through the air,” giggled Neerja and Chetan in hushed-whispers.

Mohan, pretending to check if they were close behind, ran his eyes across the earth, scooped-out in places, and the people working in them to fill their overhead baskets with the glistening mica scales. When his glance shifted, Neerja and Chetan repeated the same in their respective guise of tightening a curled-around plait and fixing the glasses on the nose.

Happy at keeping the little secret from one another, they paced in a close-knit group behind her, outside the otherwise comfortable ambit of free-falling questions. The glistening earth stuck to their shoes. The glittery air, pungent with the warmth of the iron chisels and shovels swinging at the deposits in no measured beats, coated them thickly in the glitters of the underworld—as if garbing them in the necessary attire to the orphanage.

When the battered gates guarding the dense overgrowth were a stone’s throw away, Pearl abruptly stopped. “We shall walk in as a chain from here on—together hand-in-hand.”

They did not have a question to ask and promptly organised themselves—Mohan, holding Neerja and Pearl’s hands, and Chetan holding onto Neerja’s other hand.

The connected kids walked on the laid-out gravel through the flung-open golden gates. The rotting name-board with the washed-out letters from rain and heat, covered to the upper border by the untamed grass inflorescence on the outer boundary wall, did not grab their attention. They marched past the stacked cages of hamsters and roosters and the stooped-over, light-haired maiden from a faraway land, closely inspecting her bed of tangerine daylilies by the bend of the road. 

Pearl did not stop to wish her a good day and neither did they. They streamed by her open sketchbook of botanicals, but they could not clearly see her pictorial documentations. The pull at their hands, starting from Mohan, was so strenuous that if they had resisted to stop for a while, they would have surely parted ways with the limb.

They crossed the portico and the hall inside and climbed up the winding stairway in the centre. She surely had no time to explain who dusted the yellow tweed on the sofa or played the piano by the window. There were feathers on her feet. She only loosened the grip at the landing slightly and pushed their way through the ajar door. 

She chirped, “Mrs Clementine!”

As the small-waisted woman turned around, her perfect set of ivory teeth, framed by painted ruby lips, glistened at them. “Well, come in, Pearl and friends. I hope you did not disturb Miss Eulalia in the garden.”

“Not at all. What have you been up to, Mrs Clementine?”

“The usual—grinding and grinding the molecules.”

“How far along are you with them?”

“I am done with a batch. I shall start with the next when Miss Eulalia turns in the fresh samples,” she noisily dragged her chair away from the microscope. “And who are these kids with you?”

“I befriended them in the mine.”

“Good girls don’t sneak out. Anyways, such beautiful faces! I hope you enjoy your time here at the house.”

Pearl’s newly found transfixed friends barely moved. 

“How is Arthur?”

“The usual—sleeping in the cot.”

Pearl explained, “Arthur is Mrs Clementine’s son and he has not opened his eyes since his birth.”

“Miss Eulalia says he is just a little kitten—soft as a kitten,” laughed Mrs Clementine. “What are your names?”

“He is Mohan. Next to him is Neerja. Chetan is at the end of the chain.”

She studied the contours of each of their faces distinctly as if trying to read their stories hidden in the folds of their skin. At the end of her survey, she dug her welling azure eyes again in Mohan’s and gently caressed his temple. “Children of your age should not know what sorrow is. That tastebud is not meant to show up its head now. It’s a crime. But since you are not a stranger to sorrow anymore, I can help you forget the aftertaste. Open your mouth.”

He complied. She smiled while her other hand probed the iron tray by the foot of the microscope. At last, clasping the coveted find, she titled his neck a little. “Hold your tongue out.”

On his furrowed, taut flesh, she pressed out the silver contents of the pill and pushed his mouth shut. 

“From now on, chase happiness like butterflies,” she prayed. “It’s a sunny day today—perfect for children to go out and play.”

Pearl bid her goodbye. And just the way they had strolled in, they fluttered out. However, on descending two steps, she let go of Mohan’s hand and continued downstairs. On the creaky, rotten wood, the kids were confused to find themselves. They looked around at the bleakness stained by mould and the bats sleeping on the decaying beams of the roof.

“Wait,” Mohan blabbered. “Who was the woman?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Do you stay here alone? Where are the other kids?”

“They are not allowed visitors.”

And she raced out of the hackneyed door.

A gulp rushed down Mohan’s bitter tongue. He turned to his friends on the step above—glaring at him with dread in their eyes. The decision spread like lightning among their irises—they had to leave for the fields and then their homes. There, the question of why they had not been children was awaiting them. 

***

“The Butterfly Effect”

A week had passed since their unspoken escapade and the start of the vacation. Chetan was miles away in his maternal hamlet. Neerja was treading on the wheel of chopping grasses in the morning and picking mica scales in the afternoon. His storytelling sessions had been temporarily adjourned.

Now that he was compelled to pick those scales round the clock alongside his mother, the stories were snoring in his head. Also, with his audience not in attendance, there was no point in frequenting the mine. And so, there was no way for him to know if Pearl had come. There was not even the lurking possibility of visiting Neerja through her chopping either, without his mother knowing. After his father had died from snakebite there, she had strictly prohibited him from visiting those grounds.

This morning, he had been sent off to fetch a pitcher of cloudy, shiny water from the aquifer kilometres away. On his return, when he crossed the tamarind tree she had planted when his father was still around—wobbling the earthen pitcher on his rounded head—he found a bicycle parked under their window. He knew the strapped sandals that paddled the wheels.

Curious as to why he had visited them again, and that nothing ominous stayed behind after he departed, Mohan carefully alighted the pitcher by the fore-wheel and peeped in through the open window—balancing his feather-light frame on his toes.

Inside, his mother was standing crumpled, and the betel-leaf chewing, potbellied moneylender, reclining on the cot, was flipping the medal she had won a decade ago before eloping. 

Trembling, he could not eavesdrop any more. All the emotions except sorrow poured in his heart. Should he have poked his fingers in the eyes at the loss of the protagonist of his mother’s bedtime fairy-tale? He staggered a few steps backward. She must have discovered the note the teacher had sent back with him that he had stuffed in his trousers, he feared. That morning, she had counted the fragile notes again and again and cried that they were twenty rupees short. 

He gulped. The bitter lingering taste had long faded. He struggled past the parched bark of the tamarind. Strangely, outside the network of spreading roots underneath, mobility shredded the strings of inertia winding his legs, to pieces. He quickly flipped to the direction of his motion and ran. He ran uninhibited to the mine, to Pearl. He knew she was sitting beneath the pool of mellow light.

Presently a doctoral student at Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education of Cancer, Navi Mumbai, the author finds her muse in words (from crystalline matter of fact tone of the research articles to the free-flowing narrative of fiction) to weave her own tangle of jargons to fall back to and for anyone who resonates with the same. The formative years in Sikkim have seeded the hyperactive imagination entwining the bibliophilia. The early adulthood in Kolkata and Hyderabad as an undergraduate and postgraduate student of Zoology and Animal Biology and Biotechnology, respectively has kindled in her to be impressed by and appreciate historical and speculative fictions even more. So far, Kitaab has published three of her short proses – “The Harlot’s Veena” (15.08.22), “The Asylum” (31.10.22) and “The Jungle within Me” (12.03.23).