bhaskar saikia

There are some films that don’t just tell a story—they echo your inner world. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one such film.

The movie moves like a dream—fragmented, surreal, tenderly chaotic. Joel, the protagonist, undergoes a procedure to erase the memory of his love, Clementine. But even as the machine whirrs and the memories begin to vanish, his subconscious fights back. He clings to her—to the small moments, the quiet ones, the messy, imperfect beauty of their love. He runs through the corridors of his own mind, hiding memories like old photographs, desperate to preserve the fading image of someone who once made his heart feel alive.

And I wonder…
Aren’t my dreams a bit like that?

There have been nights when I’ve woken up breathless—clutching the last thread of a dream that felt too real, too raw to lose. Sometimes, it’s a place I’ve never been to, but I know it like my own skin. Sometimes, it’s a person I’ve never met, but I carry the weight of their absence like grief. These dreams don’t follow logic. They’re stitched from emotion, longing and echoes—just like Joel’s inner world unraveling on that memory-erasing table.

There’s a particular ache that comes when a dream begins to slip. You try to hold on—squeeze your eyes shut, replay the last scene, trace the outlines of a face already dissolving in light. That’s what Joel was doing. That’s what we all do, in one way or another.

We are memory hoarders, dream gatherers, holding onto the people who’ve marked us—even if only in passing.

And maybe that’s the magic of Eternal Sunshine. It reminds us that love, once felt deeply, leaves a permanent echo. You can try to forget, to wipe it all clean, but the soul remembers. The dreams remember.

When I close my eyes now, I wonder: how many of my dreams are just old memories dressed in surreal colors? How many of them are my own subconscious trying to hold on to something I’m not ready to let go?

Just like Joel, I’ve tried to preserve certain dreams. I write them down. I relive them in words and poetry. Some mornings, I can still hear a voice from the dreamscape calling my name. Some nights, I willingly drift into that realm again, hoping to pick up where I left off.

Perhaps we’re all running through our minds, hand-in-hand with memory, whispering, “Please let me keep this one.”

And maybe, that’s enough.