Dreams are our first connection with the magic of the world. They come to us cloaked in a strange half-light, theatrical and real at the same time. They echo some of our most unusual thoughts and fantasies and tie together disparate places and persons. They are like modern art and literature. Only rarely do they have a plot and a concrete representation. Instead, they are textured fragments, snapshots of events, collages of images. In our dreams, we are the omniscient and the omnipresent. We know the motivations of the different characters, and what they will say or do. Sometimes we remember our dreams in full detail. At other times, we wake up with the cognition that we have dreamt something beautiful, sad or dangerous. We try hard to frame the image so recently seen, to capture the thought so recently heard. But often, we are left between knowing and unknowing, at the threshold of our night and day.

And then there are the recurring dreams some of us have, centered on one theme or event. And always, when we awake, we wonder at the dream and ask why it comes to us repeatedly. Many times, that is the nightmare...

I used to dream of tigers when I was young. Terrifying, gigantic and always numerous, they surrounded and eclipsed my house in orange glory.

But the strangest dream I ever had was this. I dreamt that I was the old widowed queen of Jaipur during India's freedom struggle. In my palace before surrendering to the British, I have one responsibility - to tell my family about the curse that is upon us. The curse is that we are in danger of literally stepping into the "other" realm through little haunted pockets of air. These air pockets are our ghosts, following us wherever we go. If we step into them, we will be lost forever. The only way out is a kind of self-awareness, or willing yourself to understand that you are in one of these pockets. Once you are aware of the danger, the ghost ceases to exist. In my dream, I remember struggling to explain to my brood of children and their wives this phenomenon. But it is so tactile and so abstract a concept that they fail to understand it. My dream ends with the surrender to the British.

I could interpret this dream in many ways. I could say that it stands for the fact I am always struggling with my strangeness and in explaining myself to others. The ghost could represent my numerous fears - the only way I can overcome them is to be aware of them.

But to interpret a dream is to take away all the charm of the medium. In a rational, scientific world where nothing is sacred, I need my dose of magic to survive.