I awoke with a shudder and felt for my son sleeping next to me.  As tears of relief flooded my eyes, I woke my husband up. The time was four in the morning – the date May 12th 1965,   the place – my father’s bungalow ‘Bhavani’ in Bangalore.  

Soon after, I woke up my brothers, father and sister and told them about a dream I had. They decided to do do somthing about it as I was so upset. There was a sump made for the construction of the house.

It was about 5 feet long, 3 feet  wide and  3  feet  deep. As there was water shortage, it continued to be used by us to store water for washing clothes, utensils, gardening and filling bath water.

I had dreamt that my chubby, curly-topped one-and-half-year old son had fallen into the water and was floating and lying still on it. My brothers got two long asbestos sheets that covered the sump very well.  That done, we all went about our work, happy that things had gotten sorted out so easily. At  six that evening, I mixed my son’s Ostermilk and went looking for him.

When I couldn’t find him in the house,  I went to look outside near the gate, and not near the sump which is the place I normally go to first because I knew we had covered it securely in the morning.

When I didn’t see him, I did run to the sump after all and screamed… for I could see his face below a portion of the asbestos sheet that had been moved. Yes, he was floating...just as in my dream!.. I picked him up and I don’t know what made me hold him upside down; but that’s just what I did.

Meanwhile, the other family members came running when they heard my scream. We removed his clothes, changed them and took him to a doctor near by. She said we were lucky he had not had his feed. His stomach was empty and it had filled with water and I had found him just in time.

More importantly, he was floating in the part left uncovered by the asbestos sheet so I could spot him immediately. The next day, the maid told us that she had moved the asbestos sheet just enough to put in a bucket to get water for washing the vessels in the afternoon.

She had not put the sheet back in its place nor had any of us thought of telling her why we had covered the sump. Now my son is a young man with a lovely family and has a healthy respect for the dangers that lurk in water! But can anyone explain how I had the same image in my dream just the previous night? That is, indeed, really, really eerie…