Good dreams and bad dreams  

Our dreams are conceptualised by a few individuals and institutions. The concepts are tossed in the air, and left to float. As the ideas hang in the air for quite long, we read, internalise and then own them as our own. So after a while we start desiring about those dreams, and loose eons of good sleep over not able to fulfil these dreams.

Two things that come up in my mind, let me start with the first: are these our own dreams? When I was young did I dream about it? For example, while on my way to Mumbai from Nasik, I read the hoarding saying ‘impossible dreams made possible’ showing ‘home loans and car loans’ It implied that the bank knew about my (and my other class fellows’) dreams. It is not the only bank telling you that your big home-2-3bhk apartments, bungalow, second home, and all that can be made possible with a small loan from the bank.

And mind you, we could really be dreaming about driving in a car to our own house, and drinking tea, and relaxing on the sofa. The picture perfect!

But are these our dreams? If the answer is affirmative, then rest assured, the banks will have a good top line-bottom line (and all those pretty figures) and you will be spending more time in the office working to augment your earnings, and at home, working on your finances.

If the answer is affirmative, and it is, it means we have stopped dreaming about our own dreams, and outsourced these to the financial institutions, at a premium. It also means we have been horded into believing that all our dreams are common-without any individual characteristic attached to the dream. It also means we have stopped thinking about ourselves and left it to others to think about the most important things in our life. Pathetic?     

The second question is more fundamental, and it pertains to the changing definitions, perceptions, concepts of the dreams, and, this is paramount, the reality-check on the access to homes!

During our growing years we all lived in homes, and never dreamt of having our own homes (at least I did not). For every individual home is the need, (where one goes after working in the field, office, or spending time with friends and relatives) and as good as or on par with a square meal. One doesn’t dream about day-to-day needs unless these have become exotic, too sparse to acquire, and hard to find.

One needs a car to commute to work place, and if the public transport is good, there is no need of using a car. But even where the public transport is bad, as in Mumbai (getting into the local is bad but getting out is worse!) the unidirectional traffic renders the use of car useless. So buying and keeping the car parked at your place is a luxury, and a liability.

Here we are not discussing the utility of the car as a commuting medium. No, we can do it later; owning a car is a dream looks like we have become barren at the ideating level.

Over the years, have we substituted insular ambitions with dreams? Larger houses, bigger cars, second homes, and all these are insular ambitions (or these were a few years back). Are we confusing insular ambition with dreams?  (This is for debate!)

If the ‘state of affairs’ has become so that we have to dream about a house (as most of the people from cities and metros do), it is serious, and as a community, we are doomed. We could be industrious, but it tells on the governance and the policies of the state that the needs have been turned into dreams. Today I was reading Hindustan Times, in which Dhirendra Kumar writes, “Naidu pointed to the obvious anomaly that despite a housing shortage of 19 million units, there are around 11.09 million houses vacant in urban areas.”

So against this backdrop if we dream about a house, it is a bad dream, if at all we dream about a house! For, we are forced to dream about the house.

Our energies, at least the youth of the country’s talents should be channelized for more-better-diverse dreams. Those dreams could be anything, from gardening, to playing an instrument, from writing to scaling the mountains. These are good dreams, and a culture needs to be cultivated, nurtured where the youth is free to think and decide about her/his dreams. Not that the youths are not doing this, but the percentage could be minuscule while the vast majority is moving with a monkey on the back on a railed road, boot-straps stringed to the rails.