Paris on My Mind: Flights of Fancy

What's a human without active imagination that allows for flights of fancy? Erm... Very successful? Maybe in terms of money amassed yes, but, is this person as stress-free as someone who can shut off all reality and go on an Everest expedition if nothing's working out in real life?

The answer, is not easy. It will vary from person to person but, for someone who does not know what's a lucid dream outside of the dictionary it may not cut ice. However, for someone who uses imagination to hibernate like me, it is the best and the most heavenly de-stress exercise ever.

Having a strong imagination has huge advantages. Whenever bored or irritated by a power cut or a droning voice in a boring meeting on a sultry afternoon, I can happily  imagine myself at far away places doing things that can only be imagined!

Please don't start smirking yet. Have you never read Calvin and Hobbes? What I meant was things like wearing a bikini and emerging from a tranquil sea at Casablanca or eating gelato in Rome at an exquisite piazza with pigeons flying around me or winning huge amounts at a casino in Las Vegas and drinking champagne from a glass slipper in Paris!

Somehow I find my imaginary self slipping in to Paris pretty often. It is not unusual since there's hardly anyone with overactive imagination who does not imagine waking up smelling roses and drinking coffee looking at the iconic Eiffel Tower. (Here I must tell you that I detest coffee and tea is my poison but, in an imaginary situation...)

But, sometimes I imagine more. Much more. I imagine walking down a quaint rue and bumping into a street artist who then shares a sandwich with me and tells me about the underground art districts. I sit around chatting with him (though I speak not a word of French) while he makes a very flattering picture of me.

Van Gogh's Paris Cafe at Night

I often find myself strolling off to small street-side cafes to drink the house wine with cheese that the waiter suggests while smiling at absolute strangers who may think I'm slightly crazy or shrug indulgently (here I imagine a very Gallic shrug). I often see myself walking down a bridge looking down at the mighty Seine and staring at the blue sky while listening to Dido sing Paris in my ears. Sigh!
Dido: Paris (Listen to this!)

I sometimes see myself at the front rows of high-end fashion shows wondering with one raised eyebrow on who wears such unwearable clothes and walking out mid-show to go looking for arty boutiques that sell style that can be worn with elan at any place and in any decade. I would of course be wearing impossibly high heels in all these dreams without getting a killer backache. I'd also be at least a good six inches taller than my real 5'2". My ankles however, remain mine because they are very nice as they are.

To my heat or cold-strapped mind (depending on the season in Delhi) Paris is often the chic place where I write this supposedly huge epic thriller with loads of swashbuckling adventure and buckets of intrigue and espionage mixed with high-octane action!

Sometimes just strolling around and smiling at strangers is not enough. Those days I add adventure to the mix and solve a Da Vinci Code-type mystery and meet a really mysterious guy who whisks me into a world of crime and quest. Well...

Once the book is out and an international bestseller, everyone thinks it's a great story to make a movie and it gets adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster with Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck in the lead roles. Didn't I tell you this is all imagination. Death is never a deterrent. I even met Marty once. Marty who? You gotta be kidding folks! Marty McFly! Back to the Future! Come on!!!

He wanted to take me on a ride in the time machine but, Doc Brown wanted Marty to take him somewhere in the past and fast. I of course, never have the time or patience to wait in a lucid dream. So, I never got to travel in time. But, I know I will - soon.

My best moments in Paris are when I sit sipping wine with Van Gogh while he tells me how no one understands him while I keep quite because he is from the past so, I cannot tell him about the present. Mostly I am happy that he got to off-load because he needed to - all his life. Maybe I did get to ride with Marty. It is very difficult to keep track of how and why in a dream!

There are thousands of adventures I've had there and I know there are millions that still await me as I walk through the two iconic bookshops on the Left Bank, Shakespeare and Company and get to be awed by the charisma of Earnest Hemingway while browsing banned literature! Oh! did I say, "...as I walk through...?" Sorry, got carried away multi-tasking! You know writing and dreaming are so interconnected they could be twins!!!

I know that at this point, many of you would be itching to call the shrink in with a thought to putting me in a  straight jacket but, believe me, imagination is something you should never block. Once you stop imagining you also stop dreaming. Simple happy things that don't cost a bomb and give immense joy and lift you up just because you know you have beaten all odds to achieve what others spend a lifetime just planning to get for a few days or weeks! You can do it any time and have it your own way.

Try it sometime on a hot Sunday afternoon when the heat is frying your mind and making you sluggish. When you can no longer concentrate on the book in hand and your eyes keep straying at the air conditioner remote to see if it increased the temperature on its own. When your eyes are drooping with sleep because your body needs to maintain its normal temperature so, needs you to hibernate. Then you are ready to embark on an adventure to a strange city that you've only read and seen on celluloid but, never set foot on. Go on try it. It's awesome fun! You can think of Paris in the rain or even a snow covered Notre Dame!

Book Review: Sophie Says

They say, 'Chick lit is dead or in the throes of it.' I say, 'are you sure?'

This one is by Judy Balan, she writes well but the plot is too... well... chick lit. She may think of it as a romantic comedy but, it is too 'unbelievable' to be anything but, chick lit. The kinds you thought was gone and over about a few years back. But, here it is - alive and definitely making a beer-laced splash.

Now, I like happy endings and pink-wrapped, hard-as-nails heroines who are down in the dumps at the beginning of the story but, are giving the Statue of  Liberty a run for money by the end of the book.

Give me a woman protagonist or even four any day (I've written one with four incidentally) but, give me some reality. Judy's story is plucked out of day dreams - the candyfloss variety.

Sophia, Judy's heroine is a commitment-phobic blogger in Chennai and she has a past that strings countless broken relationships. She is so adept at breaking-up that she starts a blog that dispenses break-up advises and it becomes very popular. Thus far, we are following roughly Judy's own career and successful blog that led to her writing her first book and now this one.

So far fine.

Then, she goes ahead and quits her well-paying job on a whim and decides to hoodwink her family by setting up a fake boyfriend who she starts crushing on as soon as she sets her sights on his sexy hands!

One thing I'd give Balan is that she writes well. Her style is engaging and at times though the plot lines seem heavily borrowed from Hollywood (both films and TV sitcoms) she is able to carry it off because her narration is racy except for certain parts when Sophie's blog posts pops-up with weird and roundabout explanation of what just happened. It takes a while to wrap your head around those in the middle of a date story or a break-up crank.

A successful, longtime blogger, Judy knows how to keep her reader engaged but, the plot soon becomes a hodgepodge of relationship issues when two of Sophie's best friends' relationships also turn to break-ups and the three spend all the time dissecting men. Sex and the City anyone? OK we have all done that some or the other time in our lives but, not necessarily been in the break-up scene together.

Meanwhile, a jobless Sophie who lives alone gets her if-someday guy into the picture by talking to him about the mysterious fake boyfriend who is fast becoming a reality... In comes the guy number two (or should we say one?) who is, and please hold your breath here, an Indian Hippie who learnt bar-tending in Australia and teaches kindergarten in Cambodia while taking time off to go rock climbing in Canada... Oh and I forgot that he is drop-dead gorgeous and Royalty!

Sister, gimme a break!

Oh! Did I forget to mention that he knows all about the G-spot and the entire alphabet of spots and achieves for the lady earth-shattering 'O's? I'm so swooning here!!!

OK so, these two men, one a romantic and the other a commitment-phobic, like Sophie, fight for the hand of the fair maiden, who decides to outgrow her commitment phobia, thanks to the erstwhile fake boyfriend who has by now brought out to the forefront the nurturing bone in her, to decide upon one of the two.

The climax or the anti-climax takes place at the airport lounge when the two men are within minutes of catching their flights back to New York and Sydney on the same day and almost same time...

I'm sure this scene was written with Karan Johar or Aditya Chopra in mind. Judy has already sold the movie rights for her first book and I can see the second aiming the same way.

Well, it does not end here because there is also an epilogue featuring an Argentinian hottie. Go figure bitches... This girl R.O.C.K.S.!

If you ask me I will go with Balan because, her book is the kind of day dreams that keep me sane in a world where monogamy or love are dead or dying, a fate not too different from chick lit fiction. Her characters are the kind of men I conjure up in my most lucid moments to keep me going when everything around me is falling to pieces. I will not say that such men do not exist, they do but, in our carefully-constructed lucid dreams. Also, because she made me laugh. Lots!

So, if you ask me whether you should buy the book, I'd say, please go ahead because it will help you live your delusion for an afternoon. You can also buy it if you love Harry Potter as much as I do. Why? That's a secret people - you got to read the book to find out more.

Ode to Summer (We've just touched the edge yet)

While I'd love to think of juicy melons and luscious mangoes,
I know in my heart, that the season that saps me of my life force is upon us;
Beyond the bitterness of Winter and the balm of Spring,
Summer comes to Delhi with a purpose - to kill.
Killjoy and kill hope, 'tis the season to hide indoors.
Goodbye outdoors, see you friends,
Summer's got me under house arrest!
But, one great thing is ice creams,
I intend to drawn my sorrows in tubs of Vanilla dreams.
And yes, in bad poetry like this is my revenge to all things heat!