Taking off: Call it woolgathering, but we all love to steal away from real life to indulge in roving thoughts. We may not even know that faraway look in our eyes when we allow the mind to dip into daydreaming in the middle of a room.

“I’m a dreamer and have often caught myself giggling or looking very happy or upset in the middle of work. My husband has caught me a few times wanting to know what was making me smile,” admits Asmita Sengupta, a senior executive of communication.

Sunaina Roy, 25, a writer, has been shaken out of her reverie many a time. “Sometimes during a play-reading session or when sitting with a group of friends I go off into my own world when I suddenly find my friends calling out my name!” she laughs.

For 22-year-old Ronaan Roy, daydreaming is a necessary part of daily routine. “I walk a lot and that’s when I daydream the most. I’ve missed my station while travelling by Metro or wandered off to a wrong lane — but daydreaming is a need,” he says.

Stuff that makes them: “My daydreams are not just visual, but can be in music and words. I can’t read or write music but sometimes in the middle of a class I find myself daydreaming a tune. I direct and act in plays so I often daydream about my performance long before the actual show and about the success it’ll bring me,” admits Ronaan.

Daydreaming can be an easy escape route to exotic getaways letting your mind do all the travelling. For Sunaina, daydreaming is wish-fulfilment. “I usually go into my daydreams when I’m relaxed. I daydream about all the things I’d like to do, holidays that I’d like to go for or meet friends I’ve not been in touch with. Waking up from the reverie makes me want to live the dream,” she says.

Pondering over the day that went by and the days to look forward to can feed the imagination too. “When I’m bored with work I daydream about exciting food, but I also daydream about the good things in life that seem farfetched. A cosy comfortable lifestyle, my own house and lots of travelling,” smiles Asmita.

The idea of falling in love is a common trigger. Arup Banerjee, 26, used to fantasise about meeting the woman of his dreams. He finds himself daydreaming more now as he approaches his wedding day. “Sometimes in the middle of other things my mind goes completely blank and I start daydreaming about my wedding, a new start and myself as a married man after leading a bachelor's life,” gushes Arup.

Daydreams change. “I would earlier dream about marrying a handsome man, the ultimate romantic, with pots of money who would take me on world tours every month and pamper me like crazy. Now that I am married, I dream of having so much money that I wouldn’t have to work and spend the whole day shopping or at the parlour or maybe designing interiors or making candles,” says Priyankana Ray, a 27-year-old media professional.

Uses: Although disregarded as fleeting thoughts, daydreaming has been the inspiration for many musicians, painters, poets, writers and leaders through the ages. “I do that for a living. In advertising we do it all the time,” says Sujoy Roy, a copy superviser in Ogilvy & Mather, an advertising agency. “It helps us hatch ideas. These dreams have varied subjects. Sometimes they dwell in fantasy, sometimes they dwell in leisure. But I believe in them. One of my recent campaigns was a figment of my imagination and I came up with the idea while sitting idle and daydreaming,” says Roy.

That’s like Coleridge and Kubla Khan, or at the very least, Snoopy (for more, see box).

Many agree with Roy that reveries are creative, sparking off ideas big and small. “It’s because I daydream so much that it helps me surprise people with different gift ideas. I daydream about exotic food that I end up cooking at the end of my reverie,” reveals Ronaan. It could also be about redesigning your home, going on a trip or bagging that dream job.

Sunaina chooses to post blogs on all that she hopes and wishes for. “Every night I put my daydreams into words on my blog called Sunny Days. It makes my daydreaming experience interesting when people react and I get to defend my daydream.”

Asmita may never have acted on her daydreams but she believes: “Daydreaming about something means that I’m surely in the process of making it happen.”

So some may still dismiss daydreaming as silly and useless, but pay no heed. Sit back, cross your legs — or stand on one leg or lie down and contemplate the ceiling — and just let your mind wander.

And remember, you have no less than French novelist Marcel Proust for company: “If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.”

So dream on — just remember that the cake is in the oven.

Famous dreamers — some did well, some didn’t

Thales, regarded as one of the first philosophers in ancient Greece, was an avid daydreamer. He tumbled straight into a well one night while walking looking skywards.

Much of the 19th century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s daydreaming would be induced by his addiction to opium to ease his pains of neuralgia, but it inspired the most memorable imagery. The brilliant Kubla Khan was a result of an opium dream.

Shakuntala, daydreaming about her husband Dushyanta, was cursed by the wrathful ascetic Durvasa that her husband would forget her.

While Newton sat under the apple tree daydreaming, gravity did its work.

Salvador Dali daydreamed from his school days. Those are nightmares that are in his paintings.

Then of course there is Walter Mitty, the hero of James Thurber’s short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the symbol of an ineffectual person triumphing in his mind through his fantastic daydreams. Mitty is a meek man who, left to himself, can be a dashing pilot flying into a war one moment, a doctor saving a life the next and following that, a murderer. (He inspired the popular sitcom on Doordarshan Mungeri Lal ke Haseen Sapne.)

Ally McBeal, played by Calista Flockhart in the serial of the same, is one of the few famous women daydreamers. She could switch to fantasy mode anytime, questing for love. Same for Bridget Jones, the chick-lit heroine who started it all.

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. His daydreaming is cosmic — he is Spaceman Spiff, often when he is at his school desk, which becomes an intergalactic space-pod. He is often captured by an alien guard, which others would interpret as being removed from class by his teacher Miss Wormwood. And remember, Hobbes is only a stuffed tiger doll to the rest of the world.

Finally, there is Snoopy. He is Charlie Brown's pet beagle in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. He has the ability to “speak” his mind through thought bubbles. He often tries to write a novel on his typewriter that begins: “It was a dark and stormy night…”The divide between Snoopy’s world of dreams and Charlie Brown’s real world makes Peanuts.