Expressions

Of late bizarre incidents and dreams are happening in my life.
To start with, one day at 1 am, I heard a tap in my door. Thinking that it was one of my neighbors, I opened the door to find a drunken man asking if my name is Fatima. I was quick enough to close the door, but the next day when I narrated this incident to my friends, I got some hard, word bashing for opening my door at that time of the night without asking who it was.
Another night I had a very strange dream, I go to a shoe shop and find a really huge pair of shoes, just then a tall man comes to pick up his order of the exceptionally large shoes, when I asked what his shoe size was, he told me 1.25 meters!!!!! When I said about my dream to my colleagues, their question was, what kind of dreams are you getting? Are you alright?
After the laughing incident in my sleep (see the previous blog), I went home thinking about that incident and laughed again in my sleep. But this time no one was around and I laughed at myself in fact in my dream, thinking about my earlier dream (confusing is it?? But true)
One day, I received a mail from the president of the Doctoral school in my city, asking me to meet him. Since he does not normally send mails like this, (as this is what one of my colleague told me), I lost my one night’s sleep thinking why did he want to meet me? Is he going to throw me out of the doctoral school? After all these voracious thoughts I went to meet him the next day only to find out that he just wanted to ask how is my research going and to know if I need any signatures from him since he is leaving for another country the coming week for a very long period of time. Strange isn’t it??? My colleagues were disappointed by this news as they expected something juicy =)), but a small part of me was happy because, he called me for this chit-chat and not the other students ;)
Finally today, when I was walking back to my lab dreaming in my own world after successfully helping one of my friends with something, I saw a man walking in front of me. Soon my mood changed and I started listing the things I should complete by today evening, when I heard that man call me. He said something quickly in French. French is a language I cannot understand well even when people speak slowly, so I asked him to repeat again, and he said that “I am a handicap, and I am unable to carry this bag, can you carry it for me?” Though he did not appear to be handicap, I said ok, as I assumed that he might be having tennis elbow like my mother which does not allow you to carry anything for a very long time. When I stretched my hands to take his bag, he started laughing loud and asked me if I will believe everything what others say and will not verify if it is true or not? My first reaction was anger, but seeing this guy laugh, my anger dissolved and started laughing at myself. I smiled and said ‘Nice one’ and quickly marched away. But was wondering why do strange things happen to me? Or is it that I am analyzing my life more closely while others don’t?
I blame it on coffee:). Studies show that more than 4 cups of coffee a day will make you hallucinate :). Of late I am living on coffee. No wonder I am hallucinating even in my dreams. From tomorrow I’ll try to drink less cups of coffee and more cups of concentration. By the way, I am writing this blog with a cup of steaming espresso in my hand :)

Ananthi Sankaran