A memory that I distinctly remember would be the day I wandered away from my mother at the airport, desperately trying to trace the porcelain tiles on the walls around me as I gave each and every inanimate object life character and personality fascinated, almost hypnotized by my childlike imagination.
Until I found myself in what I would call absolute pandemonium I stood amidst a fracas of a frenzy of people zig zagging their way towards their destination each one blind towards the others reality, form and purpose. As a child I hurriedly tried to memorize each and every intricate yet inconsistent detail, finally exposed to what I wouldn’t describe as mundane. And I realized as people scurried in and out of my sight that although their features remained specialized, captivatingly different, they all had risen or had been carved from the same mold.
And as time suddenly slowed, and every color in the hysteria that I stood in insidiously merged into each other, my focus zoomed out and I realized that although I imagined myself to be an outsider to this foreign mob, from the perspective of the blinking lights on the ceiling, I was too just a face in the crowd. Who am I, who am I, who am I? is a question that undoubtedly covers all the other topics that we discussed in class, and not only is it hard to comprehend, there is absolutely no material that you can refer too, because any artistic creation of what we call good can’t be judged subjectively. We continue to live life mechanically, almost robotically, scampering to follow a sequence, the skeleton of society, almost detached creating what we think is reality, but is it really? We all rise from the same slate, we are all blank canvases until we decide to use a cacophony of colors to highlight what we call our experiences, memories and desires, drowning in the happiness that really, could just be imitation.
As children, we exist so freely, naked in the eyes of the world, untouched never pelted from the harsh actuality, materiality of our present. Never suffocating in the concatenation of masks or costumes that we unknowingly wear to not just places but people in our lives. We really are just living a video game, transitioning from one phase to another, peeling off doddering versions of ourselves, evolving into something new, but temporary, always poised between what we need to be and battling who we really are.
Which is why I refuse to believe that only a single version of us exists, we are what I call diamond shaped, labyrinthine shaped with multiple sides, that shine individually when the sunlight chooses to caress it. Even in the eyes of the world, You are not a single person, you gracefully play different roles in the vivid lives of other people, all tangled up in your existence. You can never know who you are, because it is you’re strife to find out and struggle to perceive who you are, that makes you what you are, you have numerous ever changing reflections even if you can’t see them.
By : MAHIKA TAMPI (XI - Gir)