Little old me!

Forever, if I live in the question of my child, I can
Be young eternal, and fly out the window with Peter Pan.

I was walking to my car in the parking lot, talking to myself. I do that. In fact I do it quite often. So much so that the guard at the parking lot has long stopped staring at me (on an entirely side note: I've been drawing a lot of stares from much feminine quarters lately, but my theories on that are too outrageous to write here). I heard my precious ride-in-white scream out, "There you are! Are you out of your mind? Parking me like this, out in the hot sun. Couldn't you have found a place in the shade somewhere? How selfish of you... Look at my paint.. I look double my age already." "Ah! My dear, my dear. You know how it is with me. It is more out of forgetfulness, than selfishness, that I mistreat you so." I discovered the gross inadequacy of my answer when I had (or rather my bum had) to suffer a scorching car seat for the next 30 minutes. Imagine my state of heated distress. Or rather don't. I am going to tax your imagination a lot more in the latter half of this galloping-wild-horse of a write up.

It was turning out to be a boring, hot evening. So I decided to play couch potato to the last `o' and firmly established myself in front of the telly. It was then that I caught, between my innumerable channel-changing remote clicks, Finding Neverland on Star Movies. Now, I had already seen the movie at the cinema. And I had felt something which I wanted to write about, but it got pushed back into one of those drawers of my mind. You know, the one on the back of the highest, dustiest shelf of the cabinet, where I keep all my precious stuff. I remember having read Peter Pan for the -forgotten-again- time and thinking, "What is it that I cannot put my finger on here?" So I watched the movie again. And it tugged so hard at my chest of drawers that the whole cabinet came tumbling down on me.

I saw my shadow snicker at me as I sat massaging the bump on my head. Oow! That hurt. But I found in J.M.Barrie's (played marvelously Johnny Depp) tale with the Davies family the most exciting thing of all. I found my lost memory. I also found an enchanted looking Kate Winslet, but that is not for children to know. In pirates, and mermaids, and fairies, and crocodiles, I lost myself for some time in Neverland. The story had an undercurrent of melancholy somewhere, and it almost became a mirror to my life for a few seconds on that account. Besides that it was a whole lot of fun. Fun to discover that the inspiration behind the most wonderful of characters, was a child. Yes, I know that is the case with most things wonderful, but there are those complex things like love and feelings which also tend to inspire people at times.

Peter Pan. The boy who never grows up. Some may see him as one who is a deserter, shirking from responsibility, running away from growing up! But that's like saying one doesn't believe in fairies (and we mustn't say such silly things!). Peter is the unconquerable spirit of youth, who believes his world to life. A world of make believe, you say. A world made out of beliefs, I see. True beliefs. Innocent beliefs. Unconditional beliefs. Belief that something magical like a happy thought will make you fly towards `second to the right and then straight on till morning.' Belief that a fairy is born every time a baby laughs.

And Peter loved Wendy. He still loves Wendy. And every Wendy loves Peter too. I should not get mushy about such stuff, what being a boy and all, but I am under the influence of fairy dust right now and cannot be held responsible for this. Everybody who thinks I am being crazy here, raise your hands. Oh! Don't bother. It is going to get worse.

I tried changing the channel once during a commercial break, to find Ash doing the item number from Bunty aur Babli (for the uninitiated that is Ms. Aishwarya very-gorgeous Rai I am talking about, and Bunty aur Babli is a brand new Hindi movie... err.. just do not ask me to explain what an item number is). The point to all this is, hormonal urges not withstanding I found myself changing the channel back to catch the end of the movie. A movie I had already seen before! But just to see the eyes of that boy again, was reward enough. I see things which half scare me to death sometimes, but at other times I see things which make me really, really happy to be able to. Able to see, I mean.

If you still have not got what I am trying to say, I must confess I am a terrible writer. I did not think, while writing this up. Because I was afraid thinking might ruin it, and so this piece is a bit here and a bit there. If you did get what I said, you are much better off than me, because I haven't been able to make sense of this at all.

I had put my mp3 player into shuffle mode, before I started writing this post. And now it is playing this Savage Garden track:

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life.


Imagine!