The real and the fantasy

Discussing the poems over a couple of drinks, my friend asked - 'Bala, this estranged wife thing, what is it?' I said we had a tiff. 'I would never write that and show it to my wife', he said. 'And that about strangling a lover and all. You shouldn't write such things.' I explain to him that all that is not necessarily real and true, I stretch my imagination, add a dash of this and a dash of that, some may be partially true, some a figment of imagination, what i fantasize. Like in my teens, I had this huge crush on Hema Malini, then the reigning super star. I am talking about the early seventies. My books were neatly covered with her pictures, my walls filled with her posters, I would look oh-so-longingly at Hema Malini's eyes and lips ( her torso was always so modestly draped with clothes - I suspect whether she had an oomph figure) for hours. She is still a looker, now in her sixties. But my everlasting devotion was totally for Waheeda Rehman. Even now, I can watch the song sequences of those old 50s & 60s movies of Waheeda and get into a mood. Just see the 'Choudvin ka chand' scene! Can there be a woman with a face more beautiful than Waheeda? There is such sensuality, senstivity and spirituality about her face and expressions!

Fantasies are escape routes. You very well know you are never going to get anywhere near Hemamalini or Waheeda Rehman. And the fact is that Waheeda is now a sweet old lady in her early seventies. So what? I have the time and the inclination, friend! In between moments of the monotonous drudgery of my mundane life, I take a break into the fantasyland. I am not going to live there forever, though. Because the real stuff isn't that bad either.

The problem is with the reader who knows me in person. He/she would try to link this word to that incident and this phrase to that memory. The reader should delink the writer from his write. ( many people are using 'write' as a noun. Have to check if this is correct.)

I remember the days long ago, when, after watching a Western at Sree Kumar Theatre, guys would come out of the hall, swaggering, their arms loosened and hanging slightly curved as if they will come out blazing with their .45s.

These pages, my friendly reader, is my fantasy land. The internet is my magic mirror; I have been passing through its gates so many times, for so long, that I don't know which is real and which is fantasy. Frankly, I don't care. I am happy, whatever it is, where ever I am. Just let me be. Don't judge me on the basis of what I write. I could be a brilliant con artist, a Jack-the-ripper, child molester, or an embodiment, a paragon, of virtues. Read, if you like. And then leave it. Make me happy by leaving a comment...
***************** Balachandran, 25.4.09, Trivandrum