A VERY FILMY GENIE IN THE BOTTLE

It is said that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. WRONG !!! Imagination travels faster than anything ever known to man. The mind can be in Sherlock Holmes mystery one moment and Alice’s Wonderland the next moment. And my imagination was always in hyperactive mode, be it any stage of my life. My father loved this trait of mine, as it was my inheritance from him. He used my over-imaginative mind to his benefit sometimes, though it was always for my good.

He and I were bonded in the soul, and so he could read my mind and my thoughts real well. It always left me wondering how he knows exactly what I was thinking. I always used to ask him, “Papa, how do you know what’s going on in my mind ?” He would pull me to his lap and tell me in my ear like a top-secret – “I have a transmitter in you that transfers all your thoughts to me.” I was hell-bent on finding where is the transmitter but couldn’t figure out no matter how much I thought on it. One day, owing to Hindi movies, I decided that it is inside the Birthstone Locket I am wearing. I was scared shit, thinking he will figure out all my naughty thoughts and buried the locked in the dirt, happy with myself. But the experiment failed, he still knew my mind. It took me a couple of years to realise he had it in my heart.

My next stupidity was when my Mum scolded me badly. I would cry and run to Papa. She would occasionally land a slap to make me stop creating a nuisance or to make me read my lessons. My mother’s tongue wasn’t sugar-coated, and she said some acidic words to me now and then. I, again influenced by Hindi movies, believed that she was not my biological mother and I was adopted or may be her stepdaughter. I was possessed by this thought and wanted to clear my doubts. One day when she scolded me in front of a crowd, I couldn’t find Papa’s lap as he was on a tour and I cried in my aunt’s lap. She coaxed me so lovingly that I told her my doubts, she was flabbergasted to know my thoughts and told my mother, who in turn again scolded me for having such stupid imagination. I became the laughing-stock of the family.

Next example of my abstract mind was given when my father invited some of his colleagues to dinner with our family. Three men came, all tall and burly; they were from Chennai (then Madras). They all had dark complexion and big moustaches, they smoked cigarettes, laughed robustly, and my father entertained them with drinks and food. I was scared to death of them. I was sure they are all evil men (again, Hindi film takes credits with stereotype villains, the hero is never a smoker or drinker, think retro), who have come to my father to trap in him some criminal activities and are bound to bring trouble to my father. They had brought large folder and thick files to be audited and signed by Papa (he was a C.A.). Just when he was about to sign them I stopped him and told openly, “Papa don’t sign it, they will make you sign on some wrong papers, they are bad men”, My father was embarrassed, and all three men laughed loudly on my madness. Papa apologised to them many times, but they gave me excellent chocolates before leaving, which I never ate, as I never believed they are laced with chloroform.

Till date, there are numerous absurdities I have done as a result of living in fantasy land. I like to call myself Visionary, Lol. From seeing ghosts that were never there to chasing thieves around the house in the middle of the night with a Rolling Pin in hand, just because I heard a Thudding sound, I have done it all. I have even gone as far as believing that someday I will find a long-lost brother in some trade fair to wondering if the man who lives next door is a smuggler. At one point I believed that I am a Genie that lives in a bottle and another time I lived under the notion that I am a reincarnated soul of an English queen. In days I was obsessed with Harry Potter I believed that I get Owl mail from him and used a wooden stick as a wand, trusting someday it will make my TV remote come flying to me when I say “Accio !”

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

― Albert Einstein

Let It Fly !