Echoes by Proteem Bhaduri

The dream begins again; as it always does, with me boarding the train.

How many times have I raised my right foot and taken that first step within the endless rewind and play sequence of this dream – fifty, a hundred, more? I’ve lost count long ago and really, the number doesn’t matter. The unfailing sameness of the dream – if it can still be called that – does. Like the boldest of strokes to the most trite of lines in an oddly compelling abstract painting, nothing ever changes. If anything, the tiny details grow more distinct and the familiarity with each player in the cast more intimate, with each recurrence. Of course, what also grows each time is the weight of tragic fore-knowledge and my abject helplessness in the face of it. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Yes, the dream begins again with me boarding the train. The car is the same as is the station I board from, as is the faceless humdrum of humanity that shuffles past behind me and around me. I almost feel myself buffeted by the simultaneous charge for ingress into the car, bodies stroking bodies, in a fleeting asexual dance. I see the jockeying for positions as the new entrants seek parity with the ones already ensconced within; the reluctant shuffle of a seated passenger making room and the grimace of those standing, at having to share a precious handhold with a set of unfamiliar fingers.