I wish for an escape so eerie
I hope it never breaks my reverie
I wish I would view the things that I’ve never seen
Be lost and yet be found in my own memories.
My soul lies unrest
It thirsts for hunger that I’ve experienced in freedom
But hardly so
Since my hands are tied within my own cage
Sometimes it all lacks sense
I lose all my pre-conceived beauty and grace
All I crave is for an escape
To a world where my heart doesn’t ache
My mind doesn’t pain
And my eyes don’t rain.
I want to visit a sky so red
That it flushes the colours of the rosebed
It brings to shame the red I paint on my lips
Takes the pain from my eyes and ribs
Let me breathe peacefully
It has been so long since I’ve experienced freedom
The last time I did
Was maybe when I visited the end of my heart’s hollow pit
Or was it?
Was it even real?
This feeling that begins
So that it can eventually die.
Will I lie awake in my grave
And not even cry?
Is it possible to live a life
Where perfect doesn’t seem to matter
And like the pieces of broken glass
It’s okay when life shatters
Because that is how we are built
And that is how we will break.
Praying to God
To heed my pathetic plea
Create a world that puts me out of my misery
A world where I could sculpt and shape
And not use these books to escape.
Everyone is an addict. There is always a drug which takes people to a different place where they feel they belong. Likewise, it’s a place one comes back from when they will to.
Watching a movie or reading a book never leaves us quite the same. It leaves a small mark in our souls, regardless of the fact whether liked the piece. This phenomenon is vast enough for people to determine our identity based on what we do to pass our time. The fictional world consumes our souls, and when we come back we’re not quite the same. So what magic do letter on a page or pictures in frame cast on us? What is so intriguing about these worlds? What makes us lose our grip on reality? One can say that these entities take us to another place.
An Oxford study suggests that watching a traumatic film boosts the release of endorphins. This increases our pain tolerance and makes us feel good. In fact, therapists often prescribe movies to patients to treat their patients. After all, the infamous movie director Tim Burton said, “Movies are like an expensive form of therapy.”
It’s astounding how thoughts of a person can bring a whole new world to life using mere words. It might take a few chapters to hook someone. But once hooked, there is no coming back until the last leaf is turned over. The character might not have the easiest of lives, but they have one which can end at a happily ever after and a longing to be a character in the book is agonising. Researchers at the University at Buffalo conclude that reading satisfies the need for human connection because it can mimic the feeling of real social interactions. If a book doesn’t change something in you, then it has failed at being a book.
In today’s locked-down world, books and movies are the only sources of escaping the harsh reality. It’s not that these escapes have a happy-go-luck world, but they have one where we find solutions in the knowledge that they’ll be there. All one can say is that the smell of a thick book or the music of that one intro can change lives.
– Sanjali Sharma and S. Mysha Urooj, Amity International School, Noida
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