I like strangers. I really do. In my list of people I like the most, I don’t even know the Top 5 ones. But they are the best. They know I don’t like talking much, so they never call. Even if I call, they act as if they don’t recognize me and then yell ‘wrong number’ a couple of times, call me an idiot and slam the phone. Classy isn’t it? I am not certain why they do that but I have a feeling it’s in my best interest. I just love them. In fact so much that I sometimes dream about them.
I like dreaming too. Sometimes, when I am unable to sleep, I dream. Just for the heck of it you know, to piss sleep off. If I was given a choice to be in command over my dreams, you know who I’d ban from my dreams? Relatives!! - They ALWAYS ask you about the same 5 things. Even in dreams. 1) How’s health? 2) How’s work? 3) When are you coming back home? 4) Why do you never call? 5) When are you getting married? – Strangers on the other hand, take you as you are. They believe in you. They never ask these stupid questions. I’d like my relatives to meet these strangers someday. May be they’d learn a couple of things and some more.
Smile is a magnificent thing. I like people smiling. That’s why I like friends. They smile when they look at you. What I don’t like is what they do right after they smile. They come and talk. I don’t like that one bit. They come, they talk, make you feel like you are important to them, and tell their fucked up love stories, then ask whether you had lunch and stuff like that. As if you ought to know all this, always. Strangers don’t do that. They look at you, smile and move on. You see, that’s what I am talking about.
Know whom I like the most? Myself. If only Shahid Kapoor had said “main apna favorite hu” in Jab we met, I might have given you a better reference point. But anyways, I like myself. Things I do, the way I do it. What I don’t like is the fact that sometimes I am accountable to myself. I am disgusted at that. Sometimes there are situations when I am trapped between the desire to do something and the invariable internal strife from my own Tyler Durden asking me not to act on it. Just that, in this case Tyler is a fucking moral righteousness agent who makes me feel like I am some crazy evil son of a bitch. That’s why I want to move away. Like strangers do. I want to do it to myself.
I would just like to drift, shift away from myself, at a calm place, smile, dream with my eyes wide open to let the sleep fall from the corner drop by drop, taking my identity away with it, and would help me just become, A Stranger.
