Train of thoughts

People spend one third of their lives sleeping. There is an entirely anomalous world, which appears before us when we sleep. A world full of myths, magic and people as real as flesh and blood, which fades away as soon as we wake up. We name it and call it a 'Dream,' a virtual realm where we can play, touch people and experience emotional attachments. It does not come out suddenly from nowhere but is a parallel reality attached to our emotions.

There are meanings to every individual's dream according to their own train of thoughts and fantasies. But in this busy materialistic era we do not even bother to pull out the meaning of our dreams.. If we try we can definitely solve the puzzle of reality from our dreams.

Interpreting and Analysing Dreams
Dream interpretation brings an easy solution to its meaning. Freud considered that the experience of anxiety dreams and nightmares was the result of failures in the dream work. Simple rules to interpret your dreams identify the characters, the environment and every trivial detail you remember and try to reach a conclusion.

Recalling Dreams
Organise the cues in your dreams to sort out the hidden messages. Take a pen and a diary and scribble down all the hints that you think is important. This will as a result bring out many details about your dreams, which you couldn't remember before and may make you nostalgic.

Take some steps for trial:
1. Fix a time for going to bed and make sure you sleep comfortably and avoid taking sleeping pills.

2. Don't get stressed up with so many irrelevant thoughts before going to bed.

3. Ignore drinking alchohol as this may leave you groggy when you wake up.

4. After awakening yourself from your dream sit for a while and recall your dream.

5. As some dreams are so vivid that you get indulge in a happy or sad mood, so justify what does your mood expresses about your subconscious self.

6. Ask yourself did you have this kind of dream in the past?

7. Do you feel any connection between your dream and your real life?

8. Identify places, characters, surroundings and any unusual phenomena.

Soon after this you will see that you are coming up with your version of your dream signals.

Lucid Dreams
Lucid dreaming is a state of trance where you realize you are actually in a dream. Lucid dreamers usually get heightened in their dreams and choose to do something impossible such as flying.

Often people can't sustain in their lucid form because they get excited or hyper. But if they can control their dream by relaxing and encouraging this condition of lucidity they can have access to it the way they wish to.

For instance my uncle added to his experience of lucidity that, ' I had this dream where I see my family, my friends and my dog and there was tremendous rain fall but all of a sudden a giant full moon appeared before me. And after that I felt weird about it and found that I was dreaming and woke myself up.'

The dream cycle
Most dreams last only 5 to 20 minutes. According to Freud more often dreams are, of course, forgotten entirely, perhaps due to their prohibited characters. Up to 70% of females and 65% of males report recurrent dreams.

Dreams have been observed since the ancient Roman times. Dreams were used for healing, guidance, divine inspiration, purification and even self-renewal. To dream is a gift and every individual has his or her own way of dreaming.

By Farisa Khan

House Broken

SPOILER: DO NOT READ IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN ALL OF HOUSE, MD the TV Series

House: I was deluded into thinking that I was crazy.

This line says it all. For those of us who've been faithfully following the conquests of Dr. House, the upcoming season is akin to a rite of passage. The last season was by far the best of the 5. And in the light of season 5, number 6 promises to be, simply put, the bomb. We do believe the final moments of the season finale had given everyone the chills.

In the season five finale, Dr. House, in a twist of events so twisted you have to be high on more than at least three drugs, ends up, for want of a better term, in a nut house. Or a looney bin (political disclaimer, we aren't pretending to be correct and proper). As the promo says, “What happens when the doctor becomes the patient?” Especially when that doctor is such as House. We've all come to love his nigh-infallibility, and had a considerable amount faith in that. Yet despite all that, there he is, fallen like any other mere mortal.

Do we have justification for our excessive obsession with this mad genius doctor? Not in the strictest term, no. But we do it anyway.

Well, enough about our man-love for House. Season 5 synopsis is due. House goes through a dread number of hallucinations, which include a very hot female (a character who happens to be dead) following him around. But on the plus side it gave him access to his subconscious allowing him to possess an indirect total recall of sorts. House accepts this radical occurrence, but cool as it was, it wasn't so cool when the hallucination turned out to be malevolent. And so House and friends come to the conclusion that his abiding addiction to the painkiller Vicodin has finally turned his brains to mush, figuratively.

In the start of season six, House begins a detox program in the psychiatric hospital. We know, it was the Vicodin that shot his normal functions. House initially plans to leave the facility once he's clean, however his attending physician Dr. Darryl Nolan revokes his medical license and only agrees to reinstate him as a medical practitioner on the condition that House undergoes further treatment at the facility.

Right. As if House listens to anybody. Using underhanded methods not uncommon to House, like Blackmail and Special Ops stuff and what not, House tries to subvert Dr. Nolan's treatment. All does not go accordingly unfortunately, and certain events humble House into acceptance of his condition, and that he needs help. The season premiere could not have come at a better time. It's like an Eid gift to all of us from the considerably powerful TV Gods. Indeed, it coincides absolutely. Truly, 'tis a blessing from the Powers That Be, and truly we're all grateful. All hail House.

By Emil and Tareq Adnan

Photo feature

THIRD world countries will be most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of their lack of capacity, poor resources, under development infrastructure and low level of socioeconomic conditions. Climate change is likely to directly impact on the population's livelihood in many ways as well as their employment and income. Many will lose their shelter and profession. The man in my photo was a fisherman. As a rivers dried up, he had to look for alternative sources of employment. He lost his home to Sidr, and was forced to change his profession from a fisherman to a hawker. He is a climate refugee chanting the words:

“I'm marching through the severe drought.

It is the demand to deny the death......”

Photo by Sajib Paul