Dream number 20

‘I am again climbing toward an ambiguous bedroom. There are two routes: one is safe, but long, through grass at the base of a rock butte; I take the other. Each time I take a step, some of the granite falls away. These huge chunks of rock make not a sound as they fall…’ Hobson, J. Allan. Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press 2011.

In thermodynamics an object at rest on a flat surface is stable, placed on a slope it becomes unstable. A metastable equilibrium is reached when the object balances on a peak: it may remain at rest but could as well crash down just a fraction of a second later. The same applies to life on the edge of a society like India. A positive turn is within reach at any moment; disastrous failure is just as likely. A twilight zone where a serene dream may turn into a nightmare.