beyond lucid dreaming: daydreaming?

I've been having a month of almost-daily lucid dreams. At the start of October, it was so extreme that I would wake up multiple times each night, at the end of a dream, only to lie there and drift off to sleep and wake up from another dream few hours later.

It reached a point where I was almost wishing the dreams would end, or at least reduce in frequency.

Luckily for me, the frequency seems to have reduced. I don't wake up in the middle of the night any more, but I do have the occasional memorable dream that I half-wish I could blog, but for the lack of inclination.

Thursday night, (or more like Friday morning) though, was different.

I was back home in Borivali, with the parents and brother. We were sitting at the dining table. It was evening, slightly before dinner-time I guess. We were expecting friends over: Natasha and Komal, my friends from college. And also, for some reason, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar, the Bollywood actors.

I had a wireless mic, and was running a radio show of sorts. I'm not sure what the show was supposed to be about, but in between talking on the mic (it was one of those weird mics that I've seen cricket commentators use on TV, that have some sort of hood to block out outside sounds), I'm assuming there was music being played, but I wasn't playing the music.

Natasha and Komal arrived, and we had dinner together.

Somehow I skipped the bit where the actors arrived, but after Natasha and Komal left, I started taking questions on the phone (I must have had earphones on, though I don't remember them, and I wasn't using a phone myself - was I being patched onto the calls that were taken at radio station?)

Somewhere at that point, I woke up, and I was lying in my bed.

But the dream continued.

I got a call from the actors, who were both in a car together, driving to wherever they lived. They wanted to answer some of the questions their fans asked on the show.

When they were done, I announced that it's now 10:30pm, and time to wrap up the show for the week, and that I'll be back on next Sunday, as usual.

My parents asked me if people actually listened to such trash.

I told them that unlike a few decades ago, Sunday night is mostly either spent watching TV or eating out, so we have very few listeners - among the lowest listeners of all week. And apparently the show is quite popular among people with nothing better to do.

They started reminiscing about how back in the day (before they were married or even met each other), Sunday evenings would be spent with their respective families around the radio, listening to the songs, singing along, and even dancing.

I told them there's nothing that stops people from doing the same even today - and I might ask listeners to give it a go next Sunday.

That's when I checked my watch and realized it was 5 minutes past my second alarm, and that I had to end the dream or I'd be late for work.

It was weird, dreaming while awake, and yet feeling so detached from the dream that I didn't feel the need to influence it (unlike most dreams that I think I try to influence when I'm somewhere in the waking stage - but then again, those dreams end when I'm awake!)