Dreamcatcher - What does it do you?

When I hear this name, it rings a bell somewhere in my unconscious state, every single time.

What a strange name this is.

I first heard this name few years back in a news paper big bold ad "Dream Catchers - your new destination in town" for a quaint little cafe around the corner. The name struck me with a whirlwind of emotions and I drifted with it.

I came back longing for something - is there a word that describes the feeling when we want something and dont know what it is.

Few days later, I looked up for its meaning. Yet again, the word and its meaning, history, geography everything came engulfing me like a storm that takes you away...

I was lost in a series of unconnected thoughts and images like a relay race only, one after another.

My summer vacations of school time when all the summer noons were spent outside under the tree on a mat playing some games with stones, we called them gitte or gutte played with 5 stones. We are playing with pen and paper, my favourite game of name, place, thing animals and I am winning and grinning, some kids play snakes and ladder, while others enjoy a big swing ride on a makeshift swing of old tyre on a large tree. I can still hear that laughter and excitement when the swing went little too high.

Another thought took me to my ancestral village where some of our summer holidays were spent. I can see myself with my siblings and cousins are playing outside or sitting idle. My elder sister and her friends trying to cook food in a kachcha chulha (makeshift stove of bricks) with some stolen ingredients from naani's kitchen. Oh how much I love and miss that smell of smoke right out of that.

I am now inside the story of Shantaram (one of my favourite novels of all time), looking at Lin and the situations around him in bombay, the slums, the beach and sand, leopold and everything scattered around...

I am sitting atop my fathers shoulders and going for my holy dip in sangam, allahabad. I am two years old (I was born in Allahabad) and feel on top of the world. Everything looks small from here. My father slowly walks towards the river, takes me down and give me a quick dip and I am out shivering yet happy.

and just like that my reverie is broken. There is this feeling of complete void for a moment before I get back to living once again...