Dreams Drift On

One relearns many things through little children.  The importance of dreams, for example.  Not the kind that come when we are asleep but the ones we actively generate.  Much of the time we are too busy to dream, too reticent to voice them.  But children have no such reservations.  My son has a distinct set of things he would like to do in an ideal world, and he says them all aloud.

Saying things aloud has a different effect from just thinking them.  They seem more concrete, like little rose coloured clouds that take shape in front of us and drift along beside us.  Our companions, not our foes, that serve not to dredge up frustrated goals but to remind us of wondrous possibilities.  If only..

One of my son's most predictable dreams is to swim in any water source he sees.  Thus it is not surprising that he now wants to swim in a lake close to our house, called Sankey Tank.  This is a dreadfully muddy and polluted place, so it is now his dream to clean it up so that people can swim there.

A long list of what he has to do follows - remove the mud and the rocks, take them to a dump, filter the water, add some chlorine and ozone to clean it up and then, finally, to put up some signs.  What kinds of signs should he put, he asks me.

"Please don't throw garbage in the tank.  Use the garbage bins," I reply.

He nods.  And then dreams on.

"I think we will have some more signs -

'Hallo and welcome and how nice to see you'

'Have a good swim'

and

'Bye bye and thank you and see you next week'"

He laughs and claps his hands, and I'm amazed that these dreams did not occur to me.  Now that we say them aloud, it seems as though it may only be a matter of time that Bangalore lakes are cleaned up and full of happy swimmers.