The Shadow of Existence
It all began when Teasa turned eighteen and her school final exams were about to start in a few days. Teasa was a kind of girl who used to take interest in some unusual and not-so-adorable topics. She was good at academics, but she never cared for subjects, which she didn’t find fascinating. That night she had with her some letters from her friends, chocolates and a glass of orange juice. She then closed the door of her room and she lay down on her bed, opened her physics book and went through optics. It was written that nothing can travel faster than light. Then, she began thinking of a vehicle moving at the speed of light and her attention was diverted and she looked at the newspaper, which was near her table lamp and all on a sudden she found a picture of a man with his blackish shadow. Close to her bed, there was her table. On the table, there was her table lamp and the bulb was glowing brighter. She took the newspaper and started thinking of sketching that.
It was three in the morning and she was in an about-to sleep state and while watching that picture, due to the effect of that glowing bulb, her eyes went down. The scene of the table lamp and the switch board (to which the wire of the lamp was connected) faded away from her eyes and she slept. All on a sudden she started dreaming. In her dream, she was walking down a street. Then, she saw a boy sitting on the road and crying hard. No one was there to listen. When she tried to call that boy, her voice faded away and he couldn’t hear a single thing. Then, she saw there was a building in front of the child. She couldn’t recognize the colour of the building at once. But she found that the building was made of some glass like material and there were pictures of some black birds on each glass piece. The interesting part was, the picture like structures of birds were moving here and there, but not coming out of the building.
And from the top of the building, there came a cone of yellowish light and the child started crying even harder. Then, the scene of the child and the building started fading away and the building after fading took the shape of her table lamp and the child went away a bit far and took the shape of one of the switches of that electric board. She opened her eyes with a lot of questions in her mind. It was six in the morning. I never asked her how much time the dream had lasted. But I heard that she used to tell that it had lasted for only four or five minutes. The questions were almost unanswerable. Why the birds were black and why they couldn’t come out of the building? Why couldn’t she recognize the colour of the building? Why the child was crying alone on that road? Why the building and the child took the shapes of things which were near her eyes? And, most important questions were - Why couldn’t she see her own face while dreaming? And, she started searching for answers and finally concluded that “Like in real life, we are not able to see our own faces while dreaming”. The second most important question was “What was real? Which she had seen while her eyes were closed or which she was watching with her eyes open?”. And, she thought that she was really present somewhere while dreaming.