She was the last of them to be contacted, Kamala. But she was also the one that got most excited when she began to understand the possibilities. It happened on a winter's night. It came to her in dreams.
One night, after a long day's work, after a long evening walk with Kimba, and after a satisfying dinner, she climbed on to the bed and fell asleep. Deep in sleep, she started hearing a voice. Yes, it was the voice that came first. Unlike the lightning followed by thunder, this was a whisper, followed by a most gentle feeling, that of a feather touching the nape of her neck. Then, she started seeing. It was the feather falling ever so slowly. Falling! And she was following the feather, downwards, sort of flying downwards. Flying without wings. It went on for a long time. She could follow it for as long as she wished. It felt strangely calming. But she couldn't see anything other than the feather and something like clouds around her. She wanted to see. She wanted to touch the feather again. She wanted to know. As the desire built up inside her, she tried to reach out and touch the feather again. Suddenly, the feather burst into a wild goose and it turned around in a sudden motion to look her in the eye. She woke up.
" What a strange dream! " , she thought. She got up to drink some water from the kitchen and saw that David had not come to bed yet. "What is he doing so late? " She walked towards his office room and peeked inside. David was watching something that looked like porn on his laptop. It could have been a movie too. Either way, she didn't want to startle him. So she went into the kitchen and drank some water.
" Why did it feel so real? " , she wondered again.
.....
Kamala was born in India, in a rural village hours away from the nearest railway line. Her parents were office going, middle class and less toxic than the average Indian parents. Yet, her childhood was a sad one. She imagined herself to be an adopted child very early on. It was her explanation for her belief that her parents favored her older siblings. She would sit alone in a corner of the hall and talk to imaginary friends as her older brother and sister watched TV or played games. Even when they tried to include her in their games, it ended up weird. She would often fail to understand the logic of the game or she would not even understand the competitiveness in the game at all. She didn't enjoy competition. It frustrated her siblings and they stopped trying after a while. Also they grew up.
In her adolescence, Kamala realised that she was not very pretty, unlike her older sister or her friends who had already grown up to become beautiful young women. She was jealous of them and eager to grow up. She would grow up and have more lovers and suitors than her sister or any of her friends. She would travel the world and see everything, the beaches, the mountains, the ocean. She would imagine endlessly and write about them in her little notebooks she treasured above everything.
Kamala got married at an young age. Her parents found her a bureaucrat husband like themselves, even before she had completed her college education. Madhavan was much older than her. Initially, she found in him a loving parent she had not known before. She was even happy. She stopped dreaming and writing so much. But then, he took Kamala from her old matrilineal home to an unknown city. In truth, the city had always been there and it was well known. But it was unknown to Kamala. And she blamed her loveless old husband.
" Is the breakfast ready? "
"Will you be ready by five so we could go out for a movie? "
" Did you wash my clothes? "
"Did you iron my white shirt? "
Kamala's life happened between the questions and she started knowing the city at every chance. Knowledge was baffling in the beginning. Then she grew accustomed to its strange nooks and corners. But she was always seeking something else. Something that felt more like love. Something that would help her fly. She would write endlessly. She would dream that she would fly one day, see the whole world, every nook and corner, and know it like she knew her city.
....
It was in the seventh year of her marriage that David came to her home with her husband one day. It was not unusual for her husband to bring his friends home. Kamala actually enjoyed playing the host. She loved giving generously. But, for some reason, she disliked David on their first meeting. Something about his cocky confidence irritated her. His youthful energy and talkativeness was enjoyed by her husband, but Kamala despised it. His white skin and carefully curated appearance triggered something hateful in her. She didn't quite understand why. Maybe, it was the way he looked at her, as if she is a strange magical creature or a scary sorcerer or a goddess in a temple. It made her uneasy.
But it was precisely all that that brought them closer.
.....
Kamala thought about the dream a lot in the following days. She felt like she could see the feather floating in front of her sometimes. Often, during the most unusual times, when she was bathing in a hurry so she wouldn't be late for a poets' meeting or when David was talking about something that didn't really pique her interest and she was struggling to pretend to seem interested or when she had just gotten hold of Kimba after she chased another possum and failed to catch it yet again. It was always in front of her. If only she could grasp it.
She didn't know that it would come to her if she dreamt again. She didn't know that dreaming was her way of seeking. And to dream that way, she had to want it more than she feared it. She had to become fearless again, like a child.