Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream....

....I ever dreamed before.

Well, maybe not the absolute strangest. I've had some really strange dreams. Often the really strange ones are nightmares, and involve the grisly murder of someone: my mother, my baby sister, and Bart Simpson are the more memorable victims.

But in this one, I was in Naan 'n' Curry on Telegraph Ave. (cheap Indian restaurant in Berkeley) for the first time, except Naan 'n' Curry wasn't an Indian restaurant. Instead they sold swords, guitars, and guitar accessories. They also made freshly-baked manju (a type of Japanese cake) filled with either red bean paste or green tea paste.

So the owner of Naan 'n' Curry was a jovial, plump, middle-aged Indian dude with a mad streak of generosity who enjoyed giving huge random discounts to students and massive Banghra parties. The amount of discount depended on how much the owner knew and liked you.

I am standing in line to buy a cloth for cleaning my guitar, and the student in front of me is charged only $1.02 for a samurai sword. The owner is about to charge me $6 for the guitar-cleaning cloth, but gives me the cloth for free eventually: it's just a matter of fumbling in my wallet and being slow enough with producing my citibank mastercard to allow him enough time for his generous nature to kick in. Then who should emerge from one of the doors in the wall but Ann Huss, a tall blonde woman who was my Mandarin professor at Wellesley. She appears to be sopping wet from head to toe and laughing.

It's the next morning, and for some reason, I'm taking a morning class which meets at Naan 'n' Curry. Everyone is munching of freshly baked manju, given freely by the establishment. Ann Huss is there again, but this time, as the teacher for the class. Then all of a sudden, the owner emerges from one of the side doors and goes, "Ann! You have to see this! Only for one minute! This is amazing!"

We all peer through the door to find that the passage leads directly into a river in India. We are confronted with a lush and verdant landscape populated with villages and elephants and temple ruins to explore and clamber over. Music blasted at full volume over the entire scene: the song, "Relax", by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

"This NEVER happens," exclaims the owner with a mischievous grin. He is obviously lying. Ann Huss knows this.

"Just this once, Prof. Huss!" we all exclaim, trying to get her to adjourn the lesson and party, even though she's obviously "partied"in such a way at Naan 'n' Curry before.

"Well, all right," she says reluctantly. And in a line, we all follow the owner through the door and directly into the river. Professor and I have to take off our sneakers mid-way through the river (everyone else is barefoot already for some reason). As I take off my sneakers and place them on the ledge of a temple ruin to my right, I find that the heel of my right sneaker has been broken off for some reason.

So we're clambering all around the landscape, music still blaring in our ears, and I realise that we're still in Berkeley, but that it seems to have been taken over by the Indian countryside which has sprung up in and all round it. The inhabitants of Berkeley still live in their houses, but now have to navigate their way around elephants and fields and trees and crocodiles to stay on the sidewalk. Ann Huss then turns to me and says, "This is a nice public space...since my apartment now leads directly into this space, I'd be willing to sell it to you for $1,500."

And then I woke up.