It was cold, stone cold... like a glacial moraine miles high. The eyes were itchy, sand grains dancing under the lids, irritating and hurting. I couldn't open the eyes. The head was heavy, a fluid colliding in it from temple to temple. The skull must have been open, for tidal waves were smashing inside the forehead and retreating, sucked by a turbulent whirlpool. There was no movement in the body. Something wasn't right, there was no sensation. I thought of arms and hands but couldn't move them. From under the eyelids I could sense faint light, blue and cold, like looking through the mist. Something sticky was holding them back to open or to move. I could sense a large space in which a blue streak of light ran from end to end. The eyes struggled but no other part of the body even twitched. The cold was crawling all over me from somewhere I could not feel or perceive. Am I dead? One thought at a time was coming in slow motion. Linear and suspended, was I in another world, the other.

Was I breathing? Not sure, but, I was thinking, contemplating, making an effort to move. A sub-conscious activity? Or, was I in a muddled state? Supra-conscious? Can the dead think?

It was so peaceful when the half-open eyes drooped. A sensation tingled the neck which seemed connected to a head. The eyelids opened again gazing straight through the black all around; turning not left or right. Far away there were other colours - mauve, violet, blue, crimson, scarlet, orange, ochre; thick and viscous concentric circles in a cauldron with glistening rim. The colours heaved, choppy ripples separating and merging in chaotic silhouettes. Exerting to focus tired eyes wilted lulling me back to the nether world. Am I dead? Languidly, colours came back to focus. The landscape was a garden with colourful vines and creepers running amok, entwined and separating. Tiny geraniums and bunches of yellow camara swinging lazily on a floating lotus. Droplets dancing over shiny leaves reaching out to seductive nymph-like water lilies in an aquatic dance. There were no trees, or perhaps growing in another direction away from me. I couldn't see trunks, roots or moss. It was spring in full bloom. There were no buds, only full-grown flowers of vibrant hues; open, big.

Was it Milton's lost paradise or Donne's 'Twickenham Garden'? Why can't I see the trees? If it is the dark sky, why aren't there no stars? Am I standing, sitting or lying down? There was no sensation of feet, legs or a spine? May be I was lying face-down, or floating weightless. Does heaven or hell heed the principles of science? Am I wasting time deliberating this non-sense?

My eyes were open but I wasn't awake; for no other sense responded. If these are flowers where is the fragrance? If it is a ripple where is the water? If it is spring why is it cold? Why was it dark all around with only a streak of heavenly-translucent blue?

A butterfly fluttered above or below, my eyes followed its shaky flight resting on the contours of a familiar shape. A pair of delicate pink feet peeping from curling pleats; gold threaded ornate green border was precariously resting on a pebble-round heel, curvaceous like a crescent. The stressed toe pushing out the silver ring; the anklet still stirring as if coming to rest after endless swirls. Yet, there was no sound. It was an effort to move the eyes tracing the other end where a winking navel was escaping in golden skin... resplendent, shinning girdle delicately holding the strings of a skirt below. Overlapping gathers pouring down like a waterfall on a tender rock. The thin waist, like a smooth wind-swept sand dune, was shying behind a mesh-like odhini stretching right up to a puffed hair bun. A lock of hair curled behind the ear studded with sparkling sapphire.

Beyond that was a face drowned in ecstasy adorning mesmerizing dilated eyes, head thrown back as if in haal. A pair of near-conical mounds struggling in two-size small choli. Tired arms raised above to encase the oozing oomph. Turnip-like white tender elbows guarding the assets, the hands clasping colourful dandia-like-sticks midair at a point where they would have clanked. Where was the beat, the music? In pairs, there were many, faces looking away. Each in a delirious state, hypnotic.

It was certain, I was dead. For sure I was in heaven or hell with fairies or houris. The blue light was growing more luminous, the pin-hole expanding, more tubular, widening as if a trap was opening. And then there was a distinct sound of the feet, a rustle, someone treading softly on early fallen leaves, still not dry. A muffled squeal echoed. The eyes locked on to those feet, tried hard to decipher any movement. From feet to pleats to anklets and vibrant surroundings all were still, the spotted queen butterfly was frozen on a stem. Were those the footsteps of an angel or a fiend?

Sure, she was coming for me. Ah, the end was near. Then there was a touch, a sensation in a long while. Was it blood or nectar that trickled down to neck, from where my ear should have been. A cold sharp edge poked, pain lumped and lodged itself in the throat. A breathless, suffocated cough brought an end to the spell. Sunken in a sagging mattress, the spine edge of Gita Hariharan's 'When Dreams Travel' was cutting through my neck while I was transfixed on garishly painted ceiling in an ancient Rajasthani haveli where Shahrzad had finished telling yet another story of power, love, death and memories to Sultan Shahryar and survived another day. Sun had risen over the hills of humid Girwa valley in Mewar. Sweat from my drenched body adding to the artificial lakes of Udaipur. Overdone wall and ceiling frescoes too can be nightmarish.