North Star

Chapter 4: Cloud Dreams

The dream starts off with me flying through the shining air, or maybe swimming. I'm not sure which. I'm hovering in space, drifting on a tide of sleep. All the anxieties - the fears and the worries about my trip to Luxembourg - have drifted away as I fly over soft white fluffy clouds. I'm a bird maybe - in the typical way of dreams, the details are fuzzy, and all I care about is the amazing sensation of complete and utter freedom.

Now that I’m asleep, I’m more awake than ever. I can see it all so clearly. 

I've been a bird in a cage my whole life. It’s a comfortable, well-appointed, gilded cage, filled with everything anyone could ever want - a loving mother and an adoring father, a beautiful home to grow up in, born into one of the most incredibly stunning cities in the world… a lucky life, a truly auspicious situation… and yet, it’s still a cage, of sorts. And I have never really flown out of its cosy confines - at least, not on my own. I've never stood on my own two feet - and this new adventure I’m about to embark on will change that. 

I look down, and far below I can see a distant land made entirely of clouds - an entire pale white cloud kingdom, columns of mist, castle turrets and walls and fortified hills so pale they appear to be carved from moonlight shining on ivory. At the same time though, the scene reminds me of sunny early morning visits to the beach in summer, towers of seafoam swirling on the tide, crashing endlessly onto the sandy shore. The ocean is brilliant and majestic, a grand discovery - but danger lurks beneath the waves. Go too far, and those treacherous tides will pull you out forever. 

On this voyage of self-discovery, I will either sink, or I will swim. And I plan, with all my heart, to swim. Or fly, as the case may be.

Even though I sort of half know I'm dreaming, I'm still confused when I realise that somehow I'm flying without wings. 

I examine my arms, surprised to see not feathers, but Mehndi. The intricate swirls of henna climb up over my hands and up my forearms like the tendrils of a vine, spreading outwards like fractals even as I examine them. Tiny henna ink blossoms are tangled up with spiralling seashell patterns, smiling suns and sleepy moons like the illustrations from childrens’ books. A slumbering crescent moon tattooed just above my wrist opens one bleary eye to wink at me, before drifting back into his unknowable lunar dreams.

How strange. I don’t remember the The Mehndi Ceremony. I guess Dadi must have done it while I was asleep. 

The Mehndi ceremony is for brides, and I’m certain I’m not a bride.I can’t be. It’s impossible for me. A bride needs a groom, and there’s no groom in the entire world for me, and I’m sure there never will be.

But if I’m not a bride, then why am I tattooed with bridal Mehndi, and why am I wearing a wedding dress?

All around me, the bone white clouds shiver and weave themselves together, clinging to my body to form a frosted dress delicate as spiderwebs.

It’s a western style dress, antique and possibly Victorian or Edwardian - a far cry from the traditional dress my Dadi would have wanted me to wear.

She’s going to freak out. She’ll lecture Papa again about how he and my mom should have moved to Durban to raise me, to keep me connected to my Indian heritage, rather than allowing me to become so incredibly, overwhelmingly, ridiculously white.

As I think of Dadi, I hear her voice in my head. 

“Come back down to Earth, Meghana,” she whispers. “You’re still too young to leave the nest and fly out on your own. Nineteen is still a baby. Your wing feathers aren’t even grown out yet. Don’t leave, my babu. Come back now please, enough games. You’re not ready to fly.” 

She’s wrong though. I know I can fly, because I’m doing it right now, even if I’m not entirely sure how.

I look up, hoping to see a pair of feathery angel wings, like those of a dove, or maybe even a jetpack, or a parachute - anything at all that would explain how in the world I'm flying through the sky. What I see instead is almost like a combination of all three.

A translucent, giant sheet of paper billows in the air above me, thin and radiant, filled with light, and somehow, also ablaze. It’s on fire, or rather, it’s fringed with pale gold and periwinkle blue flames, licking at the edges of the sheet without burning it, giving it life and energy and flight rather than devouring it. The strange glider seems to be made of some ephemeral porcelain parchment, in places so thin and flimsy it looks like a gossamer bridal veil, ripples of organza, flapping slowly in the breeze. Fine, spidery text in an elegant golden font is scrawled across the surface. In places the letters coalesce into threads of gold, branching out like veins of a butterfly's wings that criss-cross the parachute. 

I can almost make out the words, so long as I focus my attention on the spaces between them, instead of on the words themselves. 

I strain my eyes to read the fine, shimmering text.

It reads: "Dear Meghana, we are pleased to inform you that...."

Oh. That's nice. It's my acceptance letter, for the Philosophy course at the University of Luxembourg. 

I guess that’s where I’m flying to. Luxembourg. 

I can hear singing from far away, a sad and lovely song, almost like the Italian opera that my gran and grampy love to play every Sunday afternoon while they sit out on their verandah sipping wine, talking about books and art. So different to my dad's parents - Dadi and Dada would never do that. They could never justify sitting around on a Sunday afternoon, doing what they considered to be “nothing.” 

Weekends with Dadi and Dada, when I used to go visit them during school holidays, were always a bustling riot of activity, motion and excitement. Whether we were visiting with one of Dada’s old friends who lives down the road, or walking down to The Chapel Street Spice Bazaar (Durban's best, and most secret, spice market - maybe even the best spice market in Africa, if Dadi is to be believed), or even just rolling up balls of dough in the kitchen for gulab jamun sweets, the fragrance of cardamom and rosewater filling my nostrils… there was never an idle moment to be had.

They’d worked hard all their lives, and it’s no wonder they took some time to warm up to my mom’s side of the family, with their idle white privilege, a million times compounded and magnified by the injustices of a*******d.

Will these two sides of me ever find true, real harmony? How can I become a whole, when I’m still so divided? At my core, I am split asunder. 

Sometimes when I think about how different the two sides of my family are, it makes me sad, because I realise just how different the two sides of me actually are.

I am of two worlds. A misfit in so many ways. And now I'm embarking on a journey to a faraway land, foreign as a fairytale, to take my first steps away from my parents. 

The dream shifts every so slightly as drift through my sad, uneasy thoughts. Everything changes from being bright, illuminated sunlit whiteness in every direction to something darker, closer to twilight. A faint violet light creeps into the scene, tinged with inky blue and indigo, and the clouds far below shift in and out of sight, materialising into actual buildings - an alabaster city in a sea of starbeams. Ahead of me, the horizon darkens to a deep midnight blue. The first glimmers of stars prick out holes in the velvet cloth of night, and I pass into evening, flying with more urgency now.

One fixed point of silvery ghost-light blazes in the dark void before me, and all the other stars spin off their orbit, wheeling around it, dancing frantically. 

That is my destination. I have to hurry.

I have to get to Luxembourg before the plane does. Because I am actually on a plane, fast asleep, and I can't wake up without seeing the city in my dream first. If I don’t know what’s ahead, and where I will be, and WHO I will be, who I AM, how will I know what to become?

"Will you be having the pancakes with summer berries and mascarpone, or the English Breakfast, sir?"

The voice echoes through my mind from far away.

Hmmmm…. Breakfast. I want pancakes...

I can smell the sweet tang of raspberries, warm maple syrup, hot butter….

Half asleep, oblivious to everything around me except for the heavenly fragrance of food, I yell out a single word at the top of my lungs.

“PANCAKES!”