Deadpan Vs Peter Pan

Sometimes things need to be done in life not for the sake of sane rationality behind them…

rather for the wild pleasure of breaking free from the straight-jacket of rationality itself. In fact,

I feel the best part of anyone’s life is lived in the moments of playing wager over controls…

over the closet-rules of couched safety. And any individual list of such dicey activities often

holds a sweeping resonance with others, which only points at the in-lying crave in all of us for

going total crazy at times. Cycling competition over muddy potholes in drenching rain en route

home…the one raising the highest splash becoming the nearest avatar to the teen models of

BSA SLR. Putting together wee allowances to have panipuris with friends in the ramshackle stall

of the tuition-neighborhood—surely the masaala used by the phuchkawalla couldn’t have been

legal, since we stuck to it in spite of the severe hot pangs experienced by us overnight.

Arranging cover-ups for friends in soup—for disappointing report cards, catfight injuries, or

absence from tuition for executing crucial, emotional appointments. However, hostel life is what I

recall as the container of all the sorties of my tangy memories in rule-fooling. The list seems

endless—duping the warden to smuggle in heater; trying to churn out a culinary wonder with

group-effort, but actually achieving the legendary spoilt-broth; working on assignments till late

night with the deadlines scorch-close; surviving on room-cooked Maggie days-out to escape the

prolonged terrorism of hostel-food; going hooligan in holi with wild improvisations on the raang

and the play; and last but not the least, late night group-chats skipping dinner and studies that

used to levitate us above the mortal sense of P.M.s and A.M.s, until someone happened to

discover a purple sky over a casual washroom-break. All these memories are recalled with

treasured caresses, when I fetch nostalgia to retrieve me some carefree smiles from the past, to

help me sustain the care-worn present.

Rules are meant to charter the course of our life; they sustain us when the storm of

unpredictability threatens to toss our choices and decisions into chaos. But life is not all about

stormy weather, and when it’s time to make hay, let not the Peter Pan in us be shackled back

by the if-so’s and then-what’s….whatever age our physical frame might be in. Let not the sum

total of our lives be measured in units of mint, but rather in the minty moments of camaraderie

lived while frisking with deadpan rules.