What did I imagine as a little kid? Of course, I had to have imagined for isn't that what little kids are best at? But I think at that young, tender age, I imagined of the most impossible fantasies, the most unreal stories, like little butterflies growing out of my pillow. My imagination had no bounds.
But even with that boundless imagination, not once did I ever fathom the possibility of a reality I now live. I could not imagine these things, maybe because my mind was obsessed only with the most unreal of sagas. And this right now is real. Me, typing on my Apple laptop, in my bed on the floor is real.
Wait.
Is it?
No, this isn't a trick question nor am I pretending to be smart. All I am is deeply curious about the possibility of this moment right now being merely a figment of my imagination. No, not the fact that I'm sitting because, yes, I am sitting. I am typing. That, I agree, is very real. But this context, everything around me right now which is not me seems merely an extension of something that I once imagined. For in a way, am I not in this little messy college room because I had once imagined, dreamed so much that I willed it into reality?
Maybe I had imagined many other things that do not exist in any real shape or form now but I don't remember those things anymore. The process that transformed my imagination into my reality was so gradual and insidious that I can't trace its progression. So insidious that I wonder if it even matters what I had initially imagined or when or how or why. That slow process which transformed my imagination into a full-fledged animal has made those initial details irrelevant. All that matters now is this big animal that sits in front of me, around me, in me. Even athraaf, as we'd say in Urdu. This big animal called Reality.
Yet this big animal right now that is making me consciously type furiously can't stop some part of my brain from imagining and dreaming completely unbeknownst to this conscious, furiously-typing me. The imagination is happening, regardless of Reality. And the slow process with which it transforms into Reality is also happening.
But of course I don't know of it.
Yet tomorrow Reality is going to strike again. The big animal that some part of me is creating right now is going to hit me like it's something new and unfamiliar. And it is. It is an entirely new being but its disguise of independence can not hide its humble origins, can not untie itself from the imagination, the part of me that created it. So I feel like I have a right to know, because a part of me already does. I have a right to know what tomorrow shall hold for me but my boundless imagination, cultivated ever since my days of childhood, shall not tell me. It says, "Have patience, Aditi. Have patience. Wait and watch."
There is no other time when my being feels as incongruously assembled or disjointed.
