DON'T MOCK ME for you don't understand me...

“You know I was thinking of getting a tattoo.”
“Yeah? Get what though?”
“Ummm…it’s related to the Harry Potter series.”
“Harry Potter. Hmmm. But why? Don’t you think you should get something that means something to you? Something significant."

I was strangely taken aback. But what could I say? I couldn’t help but look like a recoiled hurt snake. Could I explain to him what hurt me? Could I explain to myself what hurt me? Was I merely hurt or were there strata to how I felt?

Could I explain to him that harry potter was an escape for me or is that the most generic answer people hear. Just the other day someone asked me why do you like fiction, and I told him how it was an escape for me. And all he did was smirk at me and say, “Please give me genuine answer which is yours and not just something you read somewhere and say that just because it sounds better than the real answers.”

How do these people judge you like that? And why do they even do that? Some say because they like to term themselves as the realists. Some say because they like to feel superior to you by hurling such questions at you and enjoy seeing you get bewildered. I think I disagree with these opinions. I don’t think it’s in their nature. I don’t think they have an ulterior motive behind saying this or doing this to you. I think they merely lack imagination.

People say there are so many stories already in this world. Why would you then need fiction? Well, fictional stories are only partly fictional. They reflect the authors’ plights, longings, affections, hopes, and so much more. It’s not about what they say but what they mean to say. You think harry potter was merely a series about an orphan with abilities to save the world? No. Hell no. It was so much more than what meets your eye. It’s about love which comes in so many forms, shapes and sizes, it’s about friendship, it’s about what you believe in can be realized.

To me, it was all the above and much more. It taught me how being alone was different from being lonely, how loneliness was just a state of mind, it taught me how I could find friends in the most unlike places, it gave me my first true love- books. How was I to explain to my friend that it might merely be a children’s novel for you, but, it completed me in the most unlikely ways that he could imagine.

What was the tattoo you ask?

LUMOS- for I am my own light.