THE DREAM BALLOON

From Eleanor Roosevelt to APJ Abdul Kalam, from Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe to Terry Pratchett, many eminent personalities have quoted ‘quotable’ lines on dreams. Nearly everyday, we wish our loved ones good night and sweet dreams at bedtime. So a country where dreams evade its residents despite everything being available in abundance, definitely sounds miserable. It is here that Rajakumaran, a young boy and the book’s protagonist, lives with his father who is a farmer and little brother, Kannan. Unable to talk to their dead mother who regularly visited him in his dreams, Kannan is woebegone. The dreams suddenly disappearing from their land forces the king to declare an emergency. The Rajaguru performs a few rituals and shares his insights that only a prince can save the land from the ordeal by defeating a giant who had seized all their dreams, who lived in a fort atop a hill in a faraway land.