A Rainy Night

Chapter - 1

The rain was very heavy in the midnight hours, the spattering of raindrops on the windowpanes evokes an unfamiliar sadness, biting cold slides and slowly reaching the bodies curled in foetal position. They search for a blanket and finally finding it on the edge of the bed drift to the subconscious world again.

Abhijoy was sitting at his study table writing his thesis on Dreams, due this month. In the whole neighborhood, only his room was glowing in the light, a person outside could see the halo light makes outside the window. He gets up from the chair feeling an urge to smoke and have sex, opened a flap of the window, stood there smoking, staring into the darkness.

Initially, he wanted to rent a room away from his family to avoid the disturbance caused by daily affairs but his reason objected to the idea of considering his stay, to be more fruitful for his thesis. He can use his family members as patients and interpret their dreams, exercising his familiarity with the chores they do, which will help him in verifying the limits of the Jungian or Freudian theories.

He closed the window, moves to the study table. On the table, a laptop is resting, behind it three bulky registers withholding information of Abhijoy's and his family's dreams, notes from the essays he had read, and the childhood dreams whose impression is still imprinted on his mind. 

He returned to the chair again and closed his eyes recalling the countless hours spent in Central Library reading the well-known to well unknown books, published papers, journals, but after much exertion, it seems to him futile to reach any conclusion...

From the beginning, it was well believed that dreams were directly linked to God. Dreams contained messages and were revealed to only sacred priests consecrated to interpret them. It is known that Prince Rama had dreamed of chasing a golden deer, who tackled his darted arrows swiftly, eventually vanishing, and Prince Rama found himself lost and stranded in the forest. The very next day similar situation transpired.

Saul of Tarsus who later became Saint Paul earlier persecuted the followers of Christ, but after seeing a dream in which Christ appeared and asked the reason behind his hatred towards his followers. He became the most devout and changed the course of Christianity.

Greeks had their own tradition of interpreting dreams. Every greek text, from Hesiod to Homer; the three tragedians— Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides; philosopher Socrates; comedian Aristophanes; they all had established the authority of dreams depicting the incidents and stories in which dreams played the central role.

Oreste's dream of revenging his father's death against his mother; Oedipus's dream of marrying his own mother and begetting children from the same loins he himself came, constant bitter dreams of Penelope about Odysseus, these writings had changed the manner people thought in the eras. Dreams ruled the psyche of people, acquiring a status infallible and sacred, and became an intermediary to communicate the wrongs and rights. 

But on more rigorously examining the history of dreams, we can see the true motive they served for the ruling class. The dream was linked to God so it remains unchallenged, and the institutions of religion took its benefit, exploited the very idea. 

The priests were consecrated as someone who gets a vision from God and according to which gives direction to the people, this way religion kept dominating the lives of people by promulgating its own ideology in the garb of dreams. The free and liberal world we live in now was a hard work of centuries by the heretical thinkers who opposed the status quo...