An excited kid observes that her mum and aunts who are obviously too busy to pay her any attention as she searches for her mum’s wrapper. She smiles at herself, devising ways to sneak out of the house and finally do what she has been planning for a real long time. She ties her mum’s wrapper around her neck such that it forms a cape at her back and leaves the house for the staircase just right outside the flat. Her family stay at the top flat which was just perfect for her scheme. She takes a deep breath, spreads her arms and mutters to herself “I believe I can fly. I can fly like Superman” and then she jumps.
That girl was me.
While it was an incredibly foolish thing to do, it however reveals how much influence movies, music, books have on the average mind. These medium hold so much power and conviction such that at age 5, I felt I could actually fly. I grew up listening to R.Kelly’s I believe I can fly, watching super heroes movies like Superman, Spider Man, and the ones with star actors that could fight like Van Damme, Jackie Chan etc. They filled me with such hope that I could fight or take on anyone at all and this would lead to my first fight in primary school, where I stood up for one of my classmate and beat a particular class bully. I was a really tiny kid and when it was reported to my parent that I had beaten a boy much bigger than me, it sounded like comedy. I remember the headmaster laughing in disbelief. “This small girl beat you?” and he would laugh again.
Other than children, with the proliferation of movie reviews on social media, we have seen people adapt lingos, accent and mannerisms of their favourite celebrity and how popular books have sparked up conversations ranging from human rights, feminism, racism, romance to religions, politics etc and has even gone as far as becoming a catalyst for change.
Some of my favourite movies are:
- Street Fighter
- Hard Target
- Live and Let’s Die
- Mr. Bones
- Sarafina
- Saworoide
- Egg of Life
- Issakaba
- Hum Tum
- Salam Namaste
- Kabhi Kushi Kabhi gham
- 3 idiots
- My name is Khan
- Like stars on Earth
Some of my favourite books are:
- There was a country
- Half of a yellow sun
- We should all be feminist
- More or Less
- Love does not win Elections
- Rich Dad Poor Dad’s Conspiracy of the Rich
- How to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere
- You can negotiate anything
- Why you act the way you do
- How to get from where you are to where you want to be
- The 15 invaluable laws of growth
These books and movies have helped shaped my outlook of life, people, culture and traditions, understanding and respecting identities and social strata, insights to the endless possibilities of what your mind can conceive and achieve.
