The escapist is always trying to escape from the real world – does not wish to face even the simplest problems of life. He likes to ignore them like the ostrich – putting its head in the sand and hoping that there are no enemies around. He is basically a frightened individual – who is scared to face any unpleasant situation in life. He wants to convince himself, however, that he is a brave guy, by creating a make-believe scenario, like my friend Partha.
We were living some years ago in a camp on the hills near Dehradun, India. The houses were temporary structures. The bathrooms were outside in the open, slightly away from the main house. My friend, Partha, was fond of mystery novels written by Sexton Blake and James Hadley Chase. In mysteries, villains are always sending rattle snakes, through the gap between the outside door and the floor board, to kill the detective. He used to imagine that some one is out there to do the same to him. So, he is to design a unique redundancy in his safety precautions. His form of redundancy is some thing like this. In the olden days, in addition to the side flap and button, we used to have metal buckles and flaps on both sides of the pant. Then we also used to have loops for the leather belt. Reinforce all these with elastic suspenders too. On top of this, just in case, put your two hands in your two pant pocket!
At nighttime, Partha was in the habit of reading himself to sleep. While lying in bed and reading the thrillers that he was fond of, he used to get frightened; really frightened. Based on the above redundancy philosophy, he used to get up and stuff some old clothes tightly into the gap between the door and the floor board. He is still not quite satisfied. He used to imagine that the electricity may go off suddenly. So he used to keep a battery powered torch light under his pillow – just in case. But then, these battery cells are always unreliable. So it is safer to keep a candle and a box of matches handy near the bed on a table. Finally, when he puts of the light and tries to go to sleep, he finds that he can’t sleep. After tossing in the bed for sometime, he finds that he has to visit the bath room outside. But he is scared to venture outside all alone to the bath room. What to do – what to do? He hits on a plan. He pinches his small son (one year old), who is sleeping in the adjacent bed with its mother. The baby starts crying. His wife gets up and puts on the light. And there is now not only enough light but also sufficient noise to scare away the midnight marauders, lurking outside. He then bravely opens the main door to go outside to the bath room.
The escapist hates to face the real problems of this world; on the other hand, he is happy to create for himself imaginary problems - and spends his time happily solving the problems that are not there.
The next thought is about “Living in future is escaping the present”
No comments:
Post a Comment