Dreams Swindle

He loved the green woods that surrounded his village, river Kunhar that ran deep down in the valley – dividing it into two. He loved eternal silence in the ambience and the sunsets. He had always loved watching the valley from the courtyard of his large house right on the ridge – up in the mountains. The roaring sound of the river would intrigue him. The pleasing sounds of small water-falls and brooklets around his home would enchant him. Shiraz was born in a small village on the periphery of Balakot town where he spent his childhood. He loved the place as a child and as a grown up adult, now, the love had only grown mature. It simply never waned.

On his successful completion of college level education at Balakot, his father – a reasonably well-off businessman, who ran a chain of hotels in Kaghan valley – decided to send him to Karachi. With no difficulty, Shiraz got admission in the most prestigious Business Institute of the city. When he missed the high mountains, river Kunhar and most of all his mother and father, he would reassure himelf that after all it was a matter of a few years. On completion of his MBA he could always go back to the valley and help his father run their business.

Shiraz had always been fond of telling his friends the tales of the magical beauty of his valley. The fairy tales would never end. Sana, who shared the academic session with Shiraz, would insist him to repeat the folktale of Prince Saiful Malook and Princess Badi-ul-Jamal. The fairy tale would invariably catapult Sana into a state of trance. She used to ask innumerable questions that Shiraz would try to reply patiently.

And then Sana, captivated with the fairytales of Kaghan Valley, lost her heart to it. She had got a prince of her own. Her imagination had no bounds now. She would fly in the clouds, all clad in fairylike, gleaming white gear, hand-in-hand with her prince. She wanted to believe all the fairytales to be true. For Shiraz, the valley that he had loved all his life started appearing somewhat bland, now. He had to have a fairy of his own. Sana and the valleys would, together, make his ‘love-equation’ work. One without the other would appear incomplete. Time flew by. The two got their MBA degrees. Sana was employed with a multi-national company. Shiraz’s decision of going back to the valley and assisting his father run the family business was unequivocal.

Shiraz must discuss Sana with his parents. Sana would discuss Shiraz with her parents. Shiraz decided to visit his village. Long back he had bought Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddharta. He took it out of the bookshelf and sat to read it. It threw him in a different world. “Do the people get back into this world after having died?” “Will I come back to this world in some other form after dying?” “Where shall Sana be if, at all, I am re-born”? Immersed in thoughts, he slid into sleep. That night, in his dream, he saw himself and Sana, clad in white, collecting colored stones from the banks of a river. The river that he saw was wider than Kunhar and the valley it ran through was greener than his own. The clouds above were closer to him than they used to be in his village. Then he saw himself and Sana, with collected stones in their hands, flying through the clouds. The dream went on. He never would like to wake up!

What woke him up were the hysterical cries of his mother. “Come out Shiraz. It’s jolting all over!!” her mother was crying. He jumped out of the bed and tumbled. The book – Siddharta – tossed up and disappeared. The ceiling of his room came crashing down. And then he didn’t know anything. His mother stopped shouting. And Shiraz stopped hearing. For him there was no sound no words. Every voice was silenced and every light extinguished. He slid back to his dream. The landscape of his dream was, albeit, altered. There was no river, no clouds and no mountains. The colored stones that he and Sana had collected were lost. Fairy like Sana was nowhere in the sight. He couldn’t understand what had happened. All he could feel was flying through a dark tunnel. “Sana would be waiting for me at the end of the tunnel” he hoped. His house on the edge of the ridge was razed to the ground. The wreckage of the house was now sliding slowly down towards the river. All one could see were clouds of dust. All one could hear were cries from everywhere. The thundering noises of falling roofs and tumbling houses were horrifying. But Shiraz had flown far away. The devastation caused by the earthquake bothered him no more.

Far away in Karachi, on the morning of 8th day of October, Sana, ignorant of the imminent devastation that would soon turn the valley of her dreams upside down, arrived in her office at 8.30. As per the promise made to her co-worker and a new friend Anita, she had brought the photo album – the snaps that showed Shiraz and Sana together. “Cool! He is so handsome! Outclasses you! Doesn’t he?” Anita remarked sheepishly. Sana blushed. Both of them continued discussing Shiraz. And then all of a sudden what Sana realized and Anita didn’t was that in the photographs before them, images of Shiraz were slowly, yet perceptibly, fading away! Sana couldn’t believe it. Not quite understanding what was happening, she got frightened. An unknown fear wrapped her existence thoroughly. And as she entered her cubical, a tear slid past her cheeks and dropped upon the scattered papers on her desk.