I've decided to post shallower materials from now on. What's all this serious posts business anyways? People will think I'm actually a middle aged man ready to die from cancer or something !

On Hassan, Whose First Word was 'Amir'

I read novels through my teenage years. It offered asylum from the many things I didn't like about life at the time. It offered different people to know and understand and relate to, different countries to live in, different vehicles to ride on, different feelings, different cultures, different troubles to think about, different foods to eat, different lives to live and different worlds altogether. And in most parts, these different things are much better than reality.

We knew the characters, their deepest, darkest secrets, we knew what they thought of, their struggles, their preferences, their pet-peeves, their motives and their feelings. And it wouldn't be too much of a pretense to say that we can predict them in the entirety, how they would act or how they would feel if something happens to them.

We know them by heart. We know that Harry Potter would do anything to save his friends and was the bravest boy in his school, and thus the image of an 11 year old boy going back for a girl- friend, into the haunted girl's toilet and going against a big monstrous beast with such composure is something we don't really question. Neither were Artemis Fowl applying cryogenic science to delay the death of his bodyguard, nor Alex Rider who got into his uncle's office through the outside window of the however many storied office building. Or Hassan whose first word was 'Amir' or Charlotte Doyle, a 13 year old girl who joined a pirate crew. We take it as truth because we know them.

Our books became witnesses. The pages absorbed our tears when our characters cried, they saw how our lips curved into uncontrollable smiles, too hard to suppress when our characters win or found redemption, they felt our breaths quicken when our characters had to run on the way to the rendezvous.  Such power these stories and characters have on us. No wonder we feel so connected to them!

Upper class English lass turned pirate...Really...~

2 things I would like to point out. The first is that these characters only belong in novels. As much as we would like someone on the face of this huge earth to actually be like them, we need to understand they are simply fictional.

Why do I make this point in the first place? Its because throughout my reading, I have fallen into the trap of thinking that they are indeed possible. That these characters are alive in the people around me. And so I look to find perfection and such characters in the people that I know. I looked out for Atticus Finch and Hassan. Reepicheep and Samwise. And when real people fail to meet my expectations of perfect courage or standing firm on their principles, or acting out on the pure basis of friendship and love, I feel disappointed. But it's with great relief that in recent years I have come to accept the realities of life. That there are always real things that people worry about and real, practical (and totally boring) reactions of people towards a situation. And hurtful it may be, it has made accepting human flaws easier for myself.