Dreams - the trauma and drama

I'm sure everyone of us have dreamt of something horrendous at some point or the other, some strange person chasing behind to kill you for a reason unknown or an ugly monster trying to strangle you to death.. or maybe you falling off a cliff into abysmal space... but trust me none of it comes close to the recent dreams that is tormenting me.. nothing comes close.. except may be one time when i dreamt of a person who was very close trying to suffocate me :P

A few days back, i got a call from my manager in the morning, she complained that i missed picking up an important customer call who was trying to reach for assistance on the support phone. Its a 24*7 assistance phone and every person in the team has to hold the phone for a week. So, I hurried to reach for the support phone to see if there were any calls and i see 50 missed calls! Damn, how can i be so irresponsible. Manager is on the line and i have nothing to tell her.. guilt and anxiety overpowers me and i'm lost for words. In that trauma, i open my eyes wide to see a dark room around! good gracious, i was only dreaming and worst still, that day i dint even have the support phone with me :-\  ofcourse, I double checked before i went back to sleep again :)

Just yesterday i got another call from my manager with the same complaint while i was driving. Frustrated about my negligence, with lot of guilt i apologized and told her that i would call back the customer and work on the issue. Just when i cut the call, i realized (bloody hell!) i dont have the support phone with me! Cursing for the mixup, i called her back and asked her who told i was on callout, because i was not! She thought for a while and before she could respond back.. some strange horrible sound rang right next to my ear! yep, my alarm..

Two incidents within a span of 2 weeks on the same subject.. i hope these dreams are not hinting something bad. Any dream analyzers out there??

Abhinaya in dance - a lost cause?

Recently, in one of the abhinaya class, we were all trying to be yashoda who wants to see her son's beautiful face(krishna) and so is trying to lure him to come to her (krishna nee begane baro).. and trust me, its not an easy job. While we were struggling, one of the student, who obviously was also finding it difficult to do, raised an interesting question in class - why do we have to do abhinaya? who in today's world will call her son like this? It looks so fake...

Fake is a very strong word in my opinion but lets stick to that word for now. Yes, if you switch off your imagination for a moment, it is fake because in reality you are no yashoda, and krishna is nowhere to be seen.

Now, lets take an example of a recent movie, Haider. I'm choosing a movie because that is most accepted in today's world. So, in the movie, the hero realizes that his uncle got his father killed and his mother is now married to him. Guess what happens in the immediate next scene..  you see shahid kapoor dancing with a bunch of other dancers in perfect synch trying to express his anger -

In the name of god, which human being would do that in reality? I mean when you realize that your father was killed by your uncle, would you gang up with a group of dancers, choreograph a dance(or maybe first learn dance), work on the synchronization, work on the lyrics, music and then perform in front of people? why do we not call it fake then? Infact when i watched that movie, the song seemed so apt for the situation, why? why such an unrealistic action seems so perfect?

Because, the song invokes necessary emotion, although the expression is through dance, the anger is brought out elegantly and ofcourse shahid has done a great job. In the same way, whether its yashoda or any other mother, love towards her child is same, may be the story is old, may be the way of expression is different. But isn't that what makes the dance beautiful, the imagination of how yashoda would call her son. How would she lure him to come near her so that she could see his beautiful face and hug him.

I distinctly remember a performance by Dr. Padma Subramanyam in one of the dance festivals. Shiva in disguise as a mendicant comes to his devotee's house to test him and asks for his son's brain curry. It was a solo performance and she brought out the emotions of the three characters, (father, mother and son) so beautifully that one could easily make out which role was she playing at any point. When the father finally cut his own son's head, i was literally in tears and not just me, I could see so many people in tears(for those who debates that i cry for almost everything), such was the influence of her abhinaya.

Now considering that in reality, no father would be so idiotic that he would kill his own son just because some beggar asked for his brain soup, how could it move so many people?

Abhinaya, in its enormity, has the capability of transforming the audience to a surreal world and if the dancer could connect to them and ignite the emotion with her story telling, the story becomes real. However, the challenge is how well you connect with the audience with your story telling and ofcourse how much are you convinced with your story.

In an attempt to prove that the story is old, irrelevant and stupid in today's world should we lose out on the imagination it kindles in people's mind? Or should we retain the emotion it brings out and put our creative mind to work to see how we can change the expression to make it accessible in today's world?