Dreams more real than reality itself

Divya Dutta

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Landing at my favourite destination... the most well planned and clean city... there’s warmth about coming back home... Chandigarh. Everything about it.

Greeting all the familiar people at the airport, chatting up in Punjabi, feeling and absorbing everything that’s been home a few years back... my heart feels elated to be back always. This time the shoot was near Fatehgarh Sahib and I have a distinct memory of the holy shrine here. 

I’ve always been extremely intuitive and my dreams mostly used to be very real and symbolic. Once I woke up and straightaway headed to mom... “Ma there’s a beautiful gurudwara which is on the basement level…so very peaceful, I want to go there but I don’t know where it is.”

My mom took it upon herself to ask all the locals, her employees, patients of a shrine like that... and one day she nailed it. One of her patients told her about Fatehgarh Sahib! She packed me in her Jeep and off we went! I was excited yet apprehensive. Would it be the same place as my dream? What if it wasn’t the same place?

In about an hour and half we were there... white and beautiful... so serene and peaceful... I followed ma like a little lamb... she held my hand and we started descending the steps... my heart was pounding…the pristine white walls... I touched them as I made my way following ma... I had literally shut my eyes as if it was an exam result! Ma warmly tapped my back as if asking me to open my eyes. I did. And it all flashed like a dream all over again…the same shrine it was that was in my dream! Everything about it! I looked dazed and mesmerized. I couldn’t tell real from the dream. It was all so similar...

Ma was surprised. So were all the people who had come with us.

The babaji there gave me the prasad and as ma narrated him our story, he smiled “Rabb di marzi! Aap bulaya bachhi nu!”

I was overwhelmed! Tears rolled down my eyes, it was a catharsis. How surreal was that. That you see a shrine in your dream that you have never visited and then when you find it and visit it, it’s exactly like your dream!

So what was real? The reality or the dream? Or the higher power that creates it All?

Fatehgarh Sahib was embedded in my memory... as I reached the town, all those memories trickled by. This time when I visit the shrine…I’ll still hold ma’s dupatta, follow her like a little lamb, shut my eyes and open them there, the world which does not discriminate between the real and surreal... that which is the divine truth.

—Dutta is a Bollywood actor