lucyoncolorado

In which I explain the difficulties with getting PIO status in India to my brother-in-law...

My brother-in-law and I are sitting in his living room. I'm telling him how the Indian government has changed their tourist visa laws. Used to be, you got a long-term tourist visa that allowed you to stay in the country for 180 days at a time. After that, you had to cross over to Nepal or some place for a day and then come back into India to continue another 180 days. Now, that option is no longer available and a tourist must stay out of the country for a longer period of time between 180 day spurts.

He argues that the government has created this rule because so many people were living in the country on tourist visas by taking advantage of this system. "Lots of burnt out hippies are just hopping the border twice a year and living here indefinitely." I acknowledge that this is true, but I argue that if the bureaucracy were not so corrupt then such a thing wouldn't be necessary for many people. For example, I'm fully eligible for residency PIO status, have all the appropriate paperwork and paid all the necessary fees and yet my application was caught up in the inefficient system. I spent days running between FRRO and immigration offices only to deal with one "stone-walling babu" after another. Eventually it just became easier to remain on a tourist visa and take a biannual trip to Singapore or Nepal than to deal with the bureaucracy or pay the bribes.

My brother-in-law tells me to calm down that I'm working myself up over nothing important, especially since I don't even live in India anymore. He says every country has its problems, and at least the Indian government is not trying to run the world with a massive and corrupt war machine.

OK... about this dream- it is pretty boring but what is astounding to me is the detail of the conversation. There was no action in this dream, just conversation, but it was so precise and detailed. In the dream, my brother-in-law really used the words "burnt out hippies" and "hopping the border" and "massive and corrupt war machine" and in the dream I used the words "stone-walling babu". Also, all the details of the change in immigration, including the number of days a tourist is allowed to stay in India and the recent change in policy, are true. I'm just really surprised at my dream's ability to sustain such a detailed and accurate conversation, especially since this is an issue that has not concerned me for over a year!

In which I attempt to make four children sleep in bunk beds...

I'm in my bedroom but there is a bunk bed where my own bed normally is. Four toddlers, two boys and two girls, are running about the room. They have worked themselves up into a hyper frenzy that I find very annoying. I'm trying to regain control of the children and I'm telling them that it is bedtime. They are all blondes. The two girls have curly blonde locks and little red skirts and the boys have short blonde crew cuts and wear overalls.

After a lot of shouting and threatening punishment, I herd the children into bed. The boys are on the top bunk and the girls are on the bottom. Just as I'm turning out the lights, one of the boys suddenly leaps off the bed with his pillow and starts screaming at the top of his lungs. He randomly hits things with his pillow. One of the girls starts to cry but the other two children also jump up and start a pillow fight. Feathers are flying everywhere.

I'm livid at this point and I lose my temper. I yell at the kids that they are being brats. I yank the boy who started the pillow fight up off the ground by his arm and throw him onto the top bunk. I do not intend to hurt him- I'm throwing him onto a soft matress. But his head hits the wall and he rolls over backwards, twisting his neck.

I panic. I think that I've injured the child. I rush to him where he is laying with a twisted neck and start to cry, but he looks up at me and sticks out his tongue. He is not in any pain and he gets up and starts running around in circles, playing with the pillow feathers. I make him calm down and stand in front of me where I inspect his vital signs to make sure he really is OK. His neck is red, but he is not harmed.

Then I explain to the children that they are crayons and that the bunk bed is a crayon box and that it is time to stop coloring. They all lay down on the floor straight, stiff as logs with their hands by their side. I pick them up one by one and slide all four of them into the top bunk as if I were sliding crayons into a box. I put them in alternately head to foot. They are inanimate objects now and do not move or make a sound.

In which R and I discuss Chilean goldfish...

R shows me a picture of a man holding a giant goldfish. The fish is the size of a small car. I ask him if it is real, and he says that it is a Chilean goldfish. We go to the Facebook page of the man in the photo.

The website explains that Chilean goldfish grow up to be 25 feet long, though the average size is only 2 feet. R says that Chilean goldfish are not really goldfish. They just call themselves that to fool people. He says this is sort of like how Chilean seabass is not really a bass.

In which I'm really sorry about something...

I'm outside a beach house under a full moon looking at the house stilts. R is up in the house, and I'm downstairs in the sand crying. I'm full of regret about something but all I can remember is the feeling.