Had you ever had a dream? In your sleep? So real and so detailed that you noticed rivets in the bus bodywork? Or colour and the pattern of the seats upholstery?.. And yes, seats were dull brown, and a pattern was a quite worn out artist's idea of the leather on vinyl.
And another thing. I traveled quite a few countries in my life, but never visited India.

So my dream was quite detailed and started on a way to the airport. There were some fast-forwards' involved as in the 6 hours since I gone to the bed I traveled to the airport, skipped 3 hours of the Duty Free browsing, watched take-off and landing but skipped some 10 hours of flight and most of the 3 hours connection somewhere in the Middle East. Then there were glimpses of checking-in into a hotel by the ocean, couple of days on the beach, and then there was an occurrence that made sense to: "Why I had to watch that uneventful to the extreme road movie?"

On the fourth day of my India visit there was a bus sightseeing trip to the nearby mountains.

The bus itself was some kind of mixed breed of several Japanese buses from the early 70-th, some parts of the British buses from 60-th, truck parts from different eras, some ingenious riveting of the body panels, and, by the sound of it, very new and quite powerful engine.
Windows... I remember such kind of windows on the old buses from my childhood. But those windows were taken from some "high end" bus from the 50-th... All chrome frames and chrome handle in the middle of the edge edge of the sliding section.

It will make sense soon...

So we are going up on some gently rising plane and are getting close to the mountains. As usual I have a window seat. (why bother with leaving your computer if you can't have a window seat?)

And it is late morning after some fast-forwarding of the first hour of the drive.

At that point I see a group of elephants.

And they did something strange. Something so strange that I almost decided to wake up, turn over and watch some other movie. But, after all of this travel and uneventful sunbathing for the whole night I decided to wait a bit.

Well... Those elephants were going down the steep mountain slope, with huge strides and sometimes jumps. And then suddenly they appeared so close to the bus that driver had to stop.

One elephant, not the biggest of the group, not the smallest, bumped his... (Why am I sure that it was a male one? Dreams are like that, you just know some things) Anyway, he bumped his head lightly on the side of the bus maybe two rows of seats behind me, then looked at me and came to my window. Seeing that he is coming closer I slid a window shut, but for some reason clasp built into the handle was not working. So I was holding a window edge and a clasp.

Elephant, by the way, had tusks that I noticed at that moment. Not the biggest, but quite noticeable. (Did I read somewhere that only male elephants have tusks? Yep... I probably had. Wiki says that in Asian elephants only males have prominent tusks.)

So, he moves to my window and tries to open it with his trunk. But I hold fast. So he tries harder. Other people on the bus... I am aware that there is a full bus of people, but like I noticed rivets in the bodywork, I am only barely aware that the bus is full of people. No faces, genders, names. So people on the bus start screaming and act frightened, even so that only one elephant is touching a bus and tries to open my window. And I still hold it... And I see how the glass is beginning to bend and... I had seen glass breaking. And had some quite nasty cuts on my hands because of the glass chunks flying around. Maybe it is a tempered glass or triplex, but it looks 60 years old. Could be just ordinary glass panel. So I decide that I don't want cuts on my hands this time. And also I am still aware that it is an interesting, detailed, but dream. And I have proven ability to wake up or "switch channels" if things get too dangerous in my dream...

I release glass, and handle. Then strange thing happens. Elephant gently opens the window, sticks his trunk inside, looks at me amusedly, and says in clear unaccented human voice: "Why are humans so afraid of everything?" I look at him goggle eyed and don't know how to answer. Yes in some way it was quite stupid to fight elephants. And there was no serious reason to be afraid of them.

"Okay, give me your hand!", says the elephant not getting any answer from me. I somehow know to move my right hand toward his trunk and notice that it has four short nailless fingers on it.

And then my memory gets blurry. There was some kind of ritual things that the Elephant said and had done to my hand. And somehow I was in possession of the strange stick at the end of that ritual. The stick that was about 20 cm long and 2 cm in diameter covered with the intricate pattern but looking naturally grown and not made.

And there was fast-forward of the rest of the trip after my meeting with the Elephants. Then, back in the hotel, memories again got a little blurry.
Somehow I used that stick. And all became right in the world... Not. But at the least I became woman. And the world around me (including picture in my passport) knew that I was born a girl, matured and became a woman, that somehow got onto a trip to India...

And then my alarm decided that I had enough fun and it is time to return to the real world of The Monday Morning...

And I just hope that Ganesha, Indian Elephant god, will not be too angry that I shared this quite private in some ways story with you. At least he is famed as a patron god of scribes and writers...