1. Escapist’s Reality

When I was little, every year the walls in my room would be white washed before Diwali but would be covered with doodles once again by the time Christmas came round. There would be forests growing atop buildings, a cute version of Roald Dahl’s BFG running through an open field, people surfing on tsunamis, and me with Harry Potter’s lightning shaped scar. I spent a significant amount of my childhood reading, watching television, and playing games. Almost everything that I read or watched comprised of an imaginary world and I, alone, played a vital role in all of them. When I couldn’t perform well in a class test, the meaningless scribbles on my walls were blamed. I was told daydreaming about illusory worlds was futile and would not bear any fruit later in my life. People who created alternate versions of reality deluded themselves as they were living fallaciously. So, I tried to control my wandering mind and felt guilty when I was unsuccessful. It took me a while to realize that fantasizing was not only natural but also beneficial.

Daydreaming provides an escape for our mind when life becomes too big a burden to carry. It doesn’t mean that we want to elude our responsibilities or that we are incapable of facing reality. It’s proved that taking a break from stressful situations helps us to reevaluate and come up with better solutions. My board exams are an example of this. There were times when my brain was saturated and refused to process any more information. The more I tried to concentrate on the problem in front of me, the less I understood. Going on a walk, taking a shower, listening to music or even staring at the ceiling helped cope with such times. While the problem didn’t disappear, my mind relaxed and therefore it was better equipped to handle the situation.

It is generally believed that daydreaming is harmful because it may mislead us into pedestalizing ourselves. I disagree with this. It is the very opposite, in so far as it allows us to imagine ourselves without barriers that are set up by our hairsplitting society. There are no impediments in the form of class, caste, race, sexuality, gender, etc. A lot of people from the LGBT community hide their identities in the real world out of the fear of not fitting in. However, they are free to dream of a world where they won’t be seen as anomalies because of their sexuality. In that world, they can be themselves, marry the person they love or not marry at all. We become true to ourselves when we are unashamed of our desires and unafraid of being judged by people.

Escapism in and to pop culture has influenced me greatly. If there wasn’t a heroic Katniss, a valiant Harry and a curious Sherlock, I’d have no one to draw inspiration from. I fail to understand why escapist fiction is considered in a negative light. Neil Gaiman has also commented on the sullying of escapist fiction, “I hear the term bandied about as if it’s a bad thing. As if ‘escapist’ fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.” The assertion that escapist fiction offers nothing more than mere pleasure is devious and dumbfounded. I feel escapist fiction portrays reality in a better, more compassionate manner with the additional perk of getting away from the harsh realities of life.

Our inner and outer worlds need to coexist in a balanced manner. Sometimes escaping to the inner world may take us a step closer to finding solutions to the problems of the outer world. The world of fantasy can’t be deemed worthless because the emotions and experiences that escaping emanates exist even in the outer world.

Mansee Dhapola

I Year