You asked me, in one of your otherwise forgettable emails, a small nondescript question - 'Why are you tired of dreams?'

How can I be tired of dreams? It's only dreams that perhaps sustain me. I keep on dreaming, imagining utopian, idealistic situations, where there is equality, peace and love all around. I see the daily intransigence of us humans - the most intelligent, despicable, passionate, hypocritical and selfish race to have walked on Earth. How ephemeral your world appears, while my world is very surreal, quite romantic and simple.

We talk about equality.

What equality is it that allows us to treat those without money with utter disrespect? We do pity them but isn't that disrespect too? Should we not, rather strive to provide them with respectable ways of earning?

What equality is it that forces the Muslims to feel so fanatic about their religion, that they can destroy temples to build mosques? What equality is it that makes the Hindus retaliate by destroying the mosques and building temples in their place? What equality is it that makes a Hindu boy scared to marry a Muslim girl? What equality is it when a Sikh lady is killed in Manhattan, the only thing that links her to Bin Laden being the colour of the skin?

What equality is it that makes a lady feel that she is being visually raped each time she walks down the road? What equality is it that men consider a female boss to be hurting their male ego? What equality is it that makes a man feel that his wife staying at home is doing work, which is of a lesser stature than the bread earning that he does?

What equality is it that makes women want to wear trousers and have short hair, to feel equal to men, losing their feminism in that endeavour? Have you observed how beautiful a lady would look; were she to stick to her long hair, a well-draped sari and a demure look? In an age where women feel it their birthright to go to pubs and dance and smoke and drink, do they understand that they are losing out on feminism? Don't get me into those meaningless arguments of good and bad, moral and immoral, since I have left those things far behind. I merely expect that men should be masculine and women, feminine. I just expect that in an immature understanding of equality, we should not be left without feminism and masculinity. What equality is it that men still feel that 'the woman' is their birthright; to please them in bed and rear their children? Why can't they really vibe with their spouses in a way where trust, affection and love would be the basis of a marriage?

It might be that you would object to these orthodox notions of mine, seeing things around you where such things don't exist. But have you ever wondered that what you see around you is a partial truth? It's not always so when it comes to private lives, behind closed doors and unlit bedrooms. And what about the larger majority of rural India?

We talk about peace.

Should we be allowed to? Can we justify what happened in America, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in India, in Godhra, in UP? Take any place and you have the erstwhile lack of peace. I had seen the riots of Mumbai when I was in the twelfth standard. I had seen the brandishing of swords, the gutting of Muslim shops, the patrolling of police, the acid bombs hidden in gutters. I had walked along curfew-imposed roads, and sat beside a fire with a hockey stick, securing the sleepless residents of our society. At that time was immature, did not really understand that all of us don visages and under them we are still linked by the same red blood.

This is one lack of peace, which we can see in all spheres of life. But then there is another one that we fail to recognise - the peace of mind. We are always running, sometimes running towards some ephemeral goals, sometimes running away from things, which we do not wish to confront. Money, more money, then power and then the inevitable corruption that power will lead us to.

Our needs arise as money increases, and as needs increase, the need for more money increases. It's that vicious circle in which we keep on revolving till we leave from this world.

Shant saki ho ab tak, saaki, peekar kis ur ki jwala,
'Aur Aur' ki ratan lagata, jaata har peenewala,
Kitni icchayain har jaanewala, chodh yahan jaata,
Kitne armanon ki bankar kabr khadi hai madhushala.

(Someday, you might have the 'good' fortune of listening to the meaning of life through Madhushala - a beautiful composition by Harivanshrai Bachchan - the way I perceive it. The poet wrote it by getting intoxicated with life; the son sings it with devotion towards his father's verses. And I need just you to sit in front of me.)

But that meaning of life keeps on misleading us, it keeps on running away from us. Priorities change and with it money, fame, power, ambition, make us somehow disjoint from life's true purpose. Don't ask me what is the meaning of life, for I don't know. But somewhere all the basis of our run, seem to me, to be too superfluous. The materialistic lure, the political ambition, all these lose their significance when Descartes says, "I think, so I am." We seem to have lost that ability to think, to 'stand and stare.'

And lastly love - the most transient, misunderstood feeling in all. How easily people say those three words "I love you," without ever understanding the concept of love? Many a times love is based on lust - a whiff of vicarious pleasure down under. And even if it's not so, it is quite selfish. Love is synonymous to selflessness. The only selfless love that I can think of is that between a mother and a child. Rest all, have tinges of selfishness to it.

Marriages based on love, which lack the maturity to accept that the expectations before marriage will turn out to be acceptances, post marriage, do not last long. It needs a lot of effort to throw away that romantic, "star and moon" dream, to get along in the practicalities of life. I have seen marriages deteriorate with the passage of time as the skin-deep beauty fades and the realisation does not come in that the person they loved has changed with marriage. Love then seems so ephemeral.

Yet love it is that holds us together, keeps us hopeful, that yearns for the bright morning after the torment of night, that brings a whiff of fresh glory like the smell of Earth after the first showers quenching a long thirst.

To some extent I feel I can't love another human being, and somewhere I feel I can love any human being. Sometimes I feel I should not marry at all, sometimes I feel I can live with any woman, and just sometimes, I yearn for somebody special - I don't know if she ever exists.

Perhaps, it would be difficult for me to understand what love is. Love for me is too pure a feeling, a feeling of selflessness and for an utterly selfish, egoistic person that I am, to understand love becomes even more difficult.

And even if I manage to come out of my selfishness and look at things objectively, I would always understand love as something that does not expect anything in return - not even the apparently 'simple' expectation that people have of reciprocation. So, for me, love may not always be two-sided, for if it is, then it takes away so much fun from life. Marriage based on love then becomes a very far-fetched reality.

If I were to love somebody, that girl would be the last person to know of it. But then I can love anybody given my way of loving, since there is hardly any expectation. I love the way birds chirp. I love the way a river flows. I love the way the sea thrashes the rocks on its shores at Nariman Point. I love the woman's expression when she breast-feeds her child. I love the man who smokes- keeping it a secret from his wife. I love the Sahyadris for the sheer green challenge they portray in the rains. I love Karna for his generosity. I love Duryodhana for his wickedness. I love Krishna for his flirting. I love Radha for her devotion. I love the udders of a cow. I love the father for his strictness. I love the poet for his poetry. I love the painter for his perspective.

I can love 'LOVE' itself.

Love should arise from this soil; it should be ecstatic as if on the tip of an arrow to break the barriers of minds, bodies and souls; and it should arise like the morning sun - different at each day, yet the only static thing to happen for ages. If it did exist, the love of Radha and Krishna would have been the most pure, most selfless of them all.

Love should not demand love; it should command respect and equality.

Men term women to be more materialistic. But have they ever wondered that a woman wanting to have the same sari as her neighbour or the same expensive jewellery as her cousin sister, is not always for her own joy? There is a feeling of jealousy and that feeling is sometimes tinged with the feeling that her husband should not be in any way considered to be less in any context than that of her neighbour or sister. How many men can understand this to be love of the woman and not a bickering to get irritated by? A woman might spend hours choosing the right colour of the curtains for her home, while a man might just smile it away and buy those with minimum effort or perhaps live without them.

Have you ever seen how a bachelor's house - untouched by a woman, is transformed into a home the moment a woman touches it? Sex cannot be the aim of love - it's one of the means of attaining pure love. For men it is glands, for women a duty. It should not be so. Till such a time that such a thing does not happen, it's better to restrict oneself to affection.

My dreams can go on. Neither can I stop them, nor can they be ever realised. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to get people with whom I can share all these thoughts, all these dreams. Not that they should be shared, for I live in a utopian world - what you call a private world, where I would want to see my dreams manifest to realities and I alone am very weak to do that. I am a commoner. I dream of the extraordinary, but I know I too am part of the utter mediocrity of the human race. And in my travel, if I do get somebody to share the dreams with, I get quite entwined with the person rather than the dreams and then the person becomes very important.

I never dream that I would meet such a person where dreams would retain their importance. But I know for sure, that one day I would surely meet such a fellow 'passer by' and then with utter inevitability, we would reach a crossroad; from where our journeys would bifurcate.

Till then, perhaps, I can always hope to seek joy in that person's company. Travelling, for me, is far more important than reaching the destination.

And so it happens, like two logs of wood meet in the sea and a wave breaks them apart. But I am optimistic that there would exist people who would share with me the same passion for life - the same 'joie de vivre' and understand as I understood one day that 'Life is Beautiful' - a gift from a mystic traveller for whom I was a mere 'agantuk.' If I can pass on this gift to a few persons, I would feel that I have lived my life.

Do you fall in that category? Do you still feel that I am tired of dreams?