“Dream come true” is a very widely used idiom. It means you have finally got something you have wanted for a long time. But have you ever felt that your dreams are literally coming true, weirdly enough? I mean the ones you have in your sleep. Because I’ve had that happening for quite some time now and it freaks me out at times.

I had a dream the night before Women’s Day about my neighbour and her family getting stuck in the elevator during a power outage and standing there in the dark for a while. I woke up later and by noon, went out with the ladies in my building for a Women’s Day lunch at a nearby restaurant. And on the way up to the restaurant, there was a power outage and we were stuck in the elevator, standing in the dark.

Now this may look like a simple coincidence and nothing worth thinking or writing about. But when such coincidence is the last in a string of coincidences, it is quite enough to think about. The cause of worry has been that some of these have not been as simple or as probable as the one I just mentioned.

I think I started noticing this “phenomenon” at the time when Hari and I got together, many years ago. It started with a rather simple coincidence. Our parents were super happy and super supportive of the idea of us getting married that there was absolutely no issue they had with anything we did – going on long trips together, staying together, nothing at all. Since we wanted to feel the excitement of doing something with the utmost secrecy, Hari flew down to Cochin for a weekend from Hyderabad without telling anyone. I went from Trivandrum to Cochin too telling my parents that I was meeting some friends over the weekend. The night before I left, I had a dream that I got a call from my parents that they are also in Cochin and Hari and I were sneaking around the city, scared that we would bump into them (not that it was anything to be scared of). The next day when Hari and I were having lunch at a restaurant near our hotel, bam! I get a call from Amma saying they were in Cochin too. We didn’t bother sneaking around the city; instead we spent the weekend in our room, very happily. 😉

Hardly a week after this happened, I had a dream that a whale had washed ashore at a small beach in Trivandrum. I vividly remember the excitement of people lining up to see something so huge and strange, considering the place. I told Hari about it and he had a good laugh. A few days later, I got a call from him asking if I had read the news. I asked, “What news?” “A dead whale has washed ashore at a small beach in Trivandrum”. That was the first time in my life that I was speechless.

From then it has never stopped really – both the “dreams coming true” phenomenon and the resultant speechlessness. The list is just too long to cover here. Sometimes it is as simple as what happened in the elevator or a stupid fight with someone or something someone would come and tell me later. But sometimes it is quite alarming. In March 2017 I had a dream about one of my pregnant cousins. She was due in May. But I dreamt that she gave birth in March, much earlier than expected. Just a week later Amma told me that she was admitted in the hospital for having early contractions and that she was almost fully dilated. Thankfully the doctors were able to stop her from delivering the baby and had her on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy. She gave birth to a healthy baby a month later. But the weird coincidence rattled me to my core.

Every time I go to Hari with one of my dreams and later an account of how it came true, he tells me not to worry about it as it is just a coincidence. But he is also quick to add, “Don’t dream about me okay?” Thanks be to God, none of my dreams involving death have come true… yet. I do hope I don’t end up being a real life version of “Iyer the Great”, a remarkable character played by Mammootty. And if I do, please God, let me have only happy dreams.