Its a been way more than year since we started living with this pandemic. Masking up became a normal way of live since last April. As we step out to world outside we go armed with mask, sanitizer and follow 'social distancing'. The office firmly returned back to home, shopping became more and more online. Eating out became ordering food outside and picking it up or even better getting it delivered at home.
The world around us changed quite a bit, however in my dreams nothing really changed.
While pandemic has been raging on for a while, it had never invaded my dream world.I'm a fairly decent sleeper and mostly don't remember my dreams. However every now and then I do have a worth remembering dream which I probably remember enough to think about it in the morning. Mostly it just goes blank very soon and I don't even share it with my wife or anyone else. Despite the total change in the world outside, the world in my dreams remained fairly the same. Last week however all of this changed, I had a dream which in my case usually has some normal stuff along with some bizarre things that never happen in real world. So in this particular dream I was living in some apartment which was a bit like a couple of apartments when I lived in India. A friend was visiting and he was asking me to come and join him for something. I step out of the house and he insists that I quickly come with him and join him for some cool thing. I demur, but do consider the option as well and he starts walking ahead through the lobby which is exceptionally large and palatial. He presses the elevator buttons and everything around us has the appearance of my current employer's Dallas downtown headquarters buildings. It is all nice marble and tall columns and the place looks swanky with those cool lighting in big corporate buildings. All that is fine but suddenly I realize I'm not wearing a shirt - happens in dreams right? - well at least here I'm still at my doorstep and just stepped out a few yards outside in shorts and a vest. Also luckily I happen to realize I'm not wearing a t-shirt and tell my friend. I go back and reach the bathroom which is the master bathroom in my current house. There on the large counter is that t-shirt which I was supposed to either pick up and keep in the shelf or wear after a bath - but somehow I keep forgetting about it for several weeks now and my wife has been asking for a while. I go and pick up that t-shirt wear and it and grab my phone and head out to join my friend outside.
I just make it back on time when the elevator door opens with a ding sound and there are a couple of folks in it. I'm about to get in when someone reminds me, you forgot your mask! I look around and folks in the elevator are wearing a mask and I turn back to grab my mask. The dream ended there but must have happened early in the morning because I had vivid memory of this dream when I woke up at 6 AM. I did ask my wife and a couple of others and no one reported seeing masks or covid in their dreams. I tried thinking after this and was sure I never had seen masks in any dream before. So this was quite something, a sign of how long we have been in a pandemic world that even dream world is encroached.
