Winner - Bucket List Competition

~ Sumit Singh, 20CY20034

My Soliloquy

I remember with warm fondness, the aimless world of a child lazing in summer lushness seeped in sweetest aroma of ripe bounty, golden and green. The shifting clouds overhead, bound by the biasness of eyes searching planes and tigers. Dreams are that; transient mellows of obvious pleasure. It is like that ‘Chocolate iced vanilla with whipped cream upside-down double-blended Frappuccino’ you never could say in one breath, yet somehow convinced of its deliciousness. My wishes have always been extravagant with that extra ridiculousness that is meant to be, sublime in their form growing as complex as the world I discover:

Long have I dreamt of an existence of my own design; with all the castles I could find among the many fantasy volumes, English and ethnic. Of the kind of heroes that can only be not-real, the protagonist with all I’m not and the villain which is mostly me. Dreaming such tales are still pleasurable but something that hardly needs to materialize. I still wish to finish my book which, if not half an adventure of Tolkien’s will have all of Kafka’s realism. The cast would definitely be from my college, but more charming than average. The ugly facts that are better left unspoken would be laid bare, pressed into pills that are easily digestible. Ones we acknowledge such possibilities- stories of obvious neglect and strife spread across this land -stitched into a tapestry with clear intention, then will the change come. I strongly believe that activism is not only limited to sentimental resonance of colorful crowds but also with ink, just black on white.

I’ve been told of a land of wonders, of beauty both subtle and lucid where local dialects greet you with each adding miles. It is a place bearing many secrets, only for the worthy and daring. This place promises magnificence, to palate your desire till there’s none more. I wish to travel India in its entirety, to lose a year paddling the valleys of Himalaya, sipping the rich milk only the cattle of hinterlands could make. Collecting music traversing centuries preserved by the freedom of Ladakh highlands, alpine Doons and Bugyals, from nomads who are the most welcoming of hosts. I want to lose myself to the euphony of gongs and rituals reaching the divine, roam the streets of Banaras, Mathura, Vrindavan taking the lores of the folk, beautiful hymns and tragic ballads. Travelling east to the tropical paradise of ethnic richness, to south, rich in culture and cuisine. Of mesmerizing architectures filling me with the pleasure and songs of their glory.

Myths speak of primordial things some personified to fit our fleeting understanding, a morsel of their eternal omnipresence. Still humans are nothing if not persistent, curiosity driving the pursuit of things inexplainable. The debates, songs and literature have said the most and yet there still is much unsaid. Aphrodite, shaped from the foam of Cypress Sea and the dying blood of a vengeful god personifies one such theme, as complex as the subject of her birth. Her name evokes our crude concepts of affection, desire, union and possession and yet they fail to explain what is love. I have like many, gods and beings, spent generous time sifting through religions, epics, prose and poetry to glean their meaning. I found versions, base and baroque though none which sate my search. And again, like many I now look beyond the shelves of literature for the one who can end my struggle. To call them love.

Everyone remembers the sandbox in the local park of our neighborhood, littered with thousand monuments of many imaginations, some made of sand and rest sand itself. Often the day’s castles and caves wouldn’t see the light of tomorrow yet our child-self tried best to make them whole wishing to finish what they couldn’t come morrow, forgetting that the sandbox will remain smaller and crowded by many. Now, the sandbox has grown larger and everyone agrees to share a piece, free to build and raze however they want. But now, most would seldom make the effort, rather content fitting into imaginations of others. Forgetting their self, their hunger, their desire to pursue what seems apparent content to be part of the slum, content to be forgotten. I will not lose the child me, eyes filed with stars and galaxies. I want to craft an obelisk of molten dream solidifying to reality if only to last longer than most. To make a mark for myself, to tell them that I existed for as long as my monument stands.

I often wonder what a fitting end to my story would be, whether it would be beginning to many sequels that I’ll never get to read or words fading of relevance obscured by time. I have learned to live in present the hard way but sometimes my thoughts stray down the spiral of what ifs and what nots imprisoned in anxiety and regret. Humans, in our journey which is life are grandly oblivious, they keep running ahead gaining and losing things of meaning, acknowledging only the latter forgetting that each of them are important milestones and the companions however brief are equally important. We grow old with increasingly more time at hand and little more to live, to reminisce and to contemplate. I wish to remember every moment while I sit in my reclining chair, with steaming tea and restricted snacks reading through the yellowed page of my journal telling story of youth, of passion and present. I wish to complete my journal till ‘the end’ of my time.

Finally, I believe that wishes or dreams are like those water-balls, which grow plump the more water you feed them. They’re fragile and at times futile, but if for nothing they make our lives more colorful.