I have been happy, tho' in a dream.
I have been happy- and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
-Edgar Allan Poe
Following are the things i have dreamt so much about since childhood that i think i ought to tag them as 'things to do before i die'-
1. To script a documentary on the 'hippies' who came to and lived in India in the 1960s-1970s: I think i shall begin the screenplay with a description of the visit of Allan Ginsberg to Benares, where during a boat-ride on the Ganges on a rainy day, he was inspired to compose verses on the Dashasvamedha ghat. In defense of the seeming pretentiousness of the theme, i shall also raise the question what makes some of us, suspicious of religion and disdainful towards spiritualism through rituals usually, view our own customs and traditions through the wonder-tinted glasses of the firangis?
2.To live in a town at least for a year where i can travel around in a bicycle:I think it should be some distant, exotic city like Warsaw or Buenos Aires where i shall go to work everyday in a bicycle without having to fear that people around might comment that its unnatural for any girl who is not a school-girl to ride a bicycle or that the vehicles around might trample me. Imagine how unattractive the idea is to die on the street knowing till the last moment of your consciousness that you cannot blame the car-driver who has mortally wounded you, for cutting short your flamboyant life because the poor creature himself has been pushed to the brink of insanity by the countless hours of traffic jams that he encounters daily on the crater-ridden roads! So, i would like spend the year in Budapest or Reykjavik, thank you!
3.To write a novel called the 'Trashy novel':No, i cant reveal the plot right now because i have not exactly revealed it to myself yet...but i will write it, sooner or later.
4.To read an authentic biography of Poe: Edgar Allan Poe, my tragic hero who lived his life in dire penury and obscurity only to die am undeservedly frivolous death and then was celebrated as a literary genius not by the smug, Puritan America he was born in but by the highly idiosyncratic French folks!
