Fantasizing reality...

It was there in the popular Hindi film "Bunty aur Babli". So it was in "Finding Neverland" and more recently, "Bridge to Terrabithia". It wasn't "real" in the real sense but then what's so great about reality anyway?

Dreams and fantasy...

No matter how convincing Mr. Lawrence Fishburne looked in the cult "Matrix" when he offered to show Neo (Keanu Reeves) the real world, somehow fantasy isn't something I've been able to dismiss as being too childish or naive. I know I am luckier than most when I have the time, the comfort, the means and everything else so that I can write this post. I know that the world isn't a pretty place for everyone and for some the suffering is so extreme that taking their own lives seems easier than the prospect of living another day. I know all this and not merely from a "cozy living room" point of view.

I've known people who wouldn't waste any time in shaking you out of anything that they feel is an inch far from the truth. People for whom life is nothing but a process of coming to terms with one tragedy after another. Of realising that this doesn't work either or that no one really cares or that there is no point fighting as nothing would really happen. People who have written an assumed sad end before they even opened the book. Life for them is nothing but awakenings after awakening into the light of dark realities that surround us poor mortals. These are the sort of people who would ask before lifting an adorable little baby in their arms..."...you sure he won't pee on me?"

I remember quite a long time back in one of the many cities I've grown up in, we had abandoned structures where we guys used to play "Commando Vs Aliens". We made "walky-talkies" out of junk and never left on a "night petrol" without our Leo Mattel rat-a-tat guns. It was fun to lay a "siege" to an enemy bunker and to "snoop" on enemy communication. Trust me, we were dead serious about it!

Fast forward to this day. Well, I've come a long way from the days of "...over and out...". After a couple of degrees and having worked for around 3 years, I guess I am now expected to be rational in my thinking and pragmatic in my approach. And by all means, I am. One hundred percent, I am all of that! But to say that I am so all the time would not be entirely true. There are things that I dream of doing someday, stupid things that I just have to do sooner or later. To direct a movie for which I've written the screenplay and script for is one such thing. Of course I don't talk about it often. But when I do, the vivid picture of how I'd like to do it, the concept, the subject (keeps changing though) etc. overcome me and I narrate the whole thing in a manner that betrays the fact that I've actually gone over it umpteen times in my head. There quite a few more such fantasies that I am living for. Who knows how many of them would get to qualify as "universally accepted realities" but for me they already are as real as it can get...

I'm not really promoting schizophrenia here but to sometimes take "time-out" from the 9 -to- 5 lives of ours and live in the many dreams we all have, isn't that bad an idea if you ask me. And don't get too worried over doing it, fortunately or unfortunately we have enough "realists" around us who would spare no time in shaking you back to "their" version of reality.

A little piece of trivia to end this post...Star Wars started as fantasy set in the future where cool gizmos and gadgets could do unthinkable stuff. Today, except the "teleporter" (beam me up Scotty), everything is a reality.

Every body's "reality" I mean!