It was the month of Caetra.⁽¹⁾ In those days my grandmother stayed in our village home in Burdwan District. Suddenly one night she had a dream that my now-deceased sister Kana was saying, “Granny, I’m really thirsty.” Hearing this Grandma took down the water pot she was carrying on her own head, and slowly tried to feed Kana water without her lips touching the pot. The little girl could not drink this way very easily, and water spilled out of her mouth. Grandma’s sleep broke. At dawn the next morning she wrote a letter to my father: “Please quickly inform me how each of you are. I had a bad dream. How is Kana?”

The very night Grandma had her dream, Kana had died of smallpox. In the later stage of the disease, her throat swelled up and she was not able to drink – water was coming back out of her mouth.

[Author’s explanation:] Pratisáḿvedanika tathyánubhútisvapne [Literally, “Psycho-reactive perception of real events in the dream state” Tathyánubhútisvapne = tathya + anubhúti + svapne]

Footnotes

(1) The lunar month extending from mid-March to mid-April. –Trans.