The Cake Dream

The sight of dark swirling chocolate with whipped creme in front of you and the scent of hot cake wafting from the oven behind. The slow rise of batter visible from outside, every glance stolen. Bubbles on the surface telling you, it's going to be perfect...fluffy, scrumptious, warm and tender... Then the focus shifts back to the icing...it has to be perfect too...the dark, rich brown of coco hiding the pristine white of creme...
Then you shift and wake up!
Damn!!!
It's morning and there is no cake cooking...it was just a dream.
In zombie fashion you walk to the washroom and get fresh. Somehow the residual sleep is magnified after the  trip to the loo. Dragging your feet to the kitchen, you fix yourself a brown bread sandwich with soya spread and nutri. So much for the cake dream!

Sifting through the daily mundane activities, and the oh-so-heavy dose of reality, the cake keeps visiting you from time to time. Sleeping is not required anymore, you can almost sense its taste and richness in your daydreams. The fantasy turns to the haunting! Ingesting some more yellow-food you fantasize about the dark coco color of your imaginary friend...
A friend, yes...The dreary reality makes the fickle dream seem like such a friend. It doesn't apply rules, doesn't expect, doesn't judge your actions or other thoughts...it just lingers...like an emotional support to your battered psyche. You ache and long for the chance to drift back into the dream world when you can actually taste your magical creation of the night before. The idea doesn't occur that the dream may not continue (its not "Tivo" up there, after all!).
By the time its the hour to hit the sack again you are so obsessed with the cake that you can't shut your eyes long enough to fall asleep. Every cell in your body seems to be vibrating, dying to transcend into an alternate reality which can take you that much closer to your cake! 60 minutes of tossing in the bed later, you get up.
Pick up the phone.
Dial a 24 hours service.
Place an order for your dream.
And then the reality hit you again... there is no cash in the wallet.

Damn!!!
You pick the phone again.
Dial the same service.
Cancel the order.
Hit the sack.
This time, sleep doesn't evade...it comes and engulfs you in the scent of your cake once again...

Freedom...j'adore!

Of the changes I keep choosing to experience, the one that has begun this year is the most liberating one! Freedom without independence (yet!) can be quite unnerving and for a change, I understand now how the people of our nation must have felt on 15th Aug, 1947. The idea is not to compare my life to the country but to simply cherish the idea of comprehension which has long since escaped me. I detested history lessons about our freedom struggle with an uncanny passion; not because I am not patriotic but because they were the same for 5 whole academic years!!! And I still couldn't figure out what was all the big fuss about...
So basically my own lack of empathy bothered me beyond expression.
But finally I have caught up.
Freedom is something so dear to revel in that it doesn't matter how often you talk about it, you will not be able to do justice to the feeling in itself. Sleeping without an alarm clock, eating when you want to and not because it's the lunch hour, lounging (read lazying) around with your favorite book and going out when the weather is actually worth enjoying. That's a little piece of heaven...right there...on earth!
You don't need to die to get all that.
You just need to kill the independent chic inside you!
For independence is a different story altogether. It makes you responsible and sneakily build shackles of its own. You start depending on yourself and before you know it, you are proud of yourself. Pride that is based on the shaky grounds of consistently holding a job and sustaining yourself. Pride that helps you hold up your head and walk into a store and use your plastic money to buy some form of happiness and of-course, experience some very expensive retail therapy. Pride that affords you meaningless nights of intoxication just so you can have a hung-over Monday, earning yourself some more independence. Pride that makes you look down upon those who chose the easy life and didn't bother to enter the rat-race. Pride that eventually turns you into someone you hoped you will never be...a slave to your independence.
Been there...done that!
And now that I have opened myself to experience what is so fleeting in it's essence; I don't want to let go. A childhood dream of becoming a pirate one day does come back and appeal horrendously to me. But then again, may be it will take some more life to finally be ready for an adventure of that proportion. For now, I have to satisfy with feeling free to do with my life what I wanted to. Be selfish and not proud. Be free but not independent. Struggle a little against the norm and renounce the "Stepford" routine once and for all.
And while it's possible...live a little. :) :) :)