15 Day Challenge: Day 1

5 things that I can’t live without

Ah, reminds me of the time I filled up my Orkut bio.

Goes without saying that family tops the list along with that Nanda guy. But I have hashed and rehashed about it time and again, so I’ll refrain from doing it once more.

I have made a very loose interpretation of 'things'.

Anyway, here goes and in no particular order.

1) Anybody who knows me remotely will know that I’m obsessed with chocolate. My life revolves around chocolate and I (almost literally) worship it. I can’t do without it even for a single day, unhealthy as it sounds.

In my defense, it has been proved that chocolate is good for the heart, so there *sticking tongue out*

Very mature, I know :D

2) My trusty ole Nokia Xpress Music: it’s like an extension of my hand and I know for a fact that the moment I lose it will be the moment my world falls apart. It’s not so much my contact point with the rest of the world as much an integral aid in my living life, putting one feet in front of the other and moving forward.

My dependency, it scares me.

There should be mobile de-addiction centres, I tell you.

3) The third one arises from my inherently being the poster-girl for Aries. My obsessively compulsive need to win, to be first, to be the best in whatever I put myself to- assignments, activities, sports, writing...

I can get very neurotic about everything being jussst the right way, how I do and redo and re-redo things long after they are done just to satisfy this need and the thirst for recognition and appreciation for it. But I don’t push it, mind you. I want it ONLY if I think I deserve it. And it’s not fame, either, that I want.

Only two people in the world know how much it means to me because I’m VERY good at hiding it. Nonchalance, thy name is Priyanka.

It’s something I and the people who love me enough have put up with for a long time. And I know that I can’t live without that drive because otherwise I am not who I am.

This is also why I hate working in groups.

I was born to be solo.

Like I said, Arian poster-girl.

4) Dreams.

I am a dreamer (I’d say ‘who’s firmly rooted in reality’ but too politically correct and irritatingly so). 

I dream of the big things: a world with no sadness or pain, education abroad, the perfect job, the unending shopping sprees, the house-full of pets, the long vacations to everywhere. 

And the small things: the perfect porch garden, the kurta that beckons me so prettily, winning a lifetime’s supply of Twix bars, the squirrels stealing nuts from my palm, the yummy panipuri and the even yummier Mr. Cooper.

A lot of these might be pipe dreams but all the same they help me wake up and look forward to each day.

When the day is bleak and there seems to be no hope for the future,

When I see people with almost perfect lives complaining about inconsequential things, not knowing the value of what they have.

When the past haunts and I dwell on those untaken decisions that might have made a huge difference.

When helplessness claws its dangerous way in.

When the sheer unfairness of life threatens to overwhelm.

I sit down, close my eyes and start dreaming of that perfect life to come.

Dreams help me survive.

Which is why Inception made perfect sense and remains one of my favourite movies of all time.

5) Books.

The reason why I dream so much. They help me escape into a world I conjure up. For a day, 368 pages of a book help me eat, live and breathe. They open up new vistas of life, new paths I never thought existed, even alternate worlds. While they make me yearn for more than MY life can give, they also give me the ultimate happiness and fulfilment that even chocolate hasn’t been able to equal in so long (and that is saying something: refer point 1).

Philosophy never charmed me though. Maybe my taste is too shallow but The Alchemist never made sense to me (I finished it only because I detest leaving books half read). Nor did I have the patience to even start The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But give me a good sci-fi, mafia war or a whodunit and I am occupied and out of everybody’s hair for the rest of the day. To each his own, I suppose.

However much the world evolves and the technology develops, I’ll always depend on a book to ‘snap me out of it’.

And there are those five things which I, for Hell or high water, can't live without.

That's today's challenge completed. 14 more to go, folks!

One’s that almost made the list: 

• My need to always take the road not taken, 
• F.R.I.E.N.D.S – Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe have gotten me through some tough times, 
• Innate necessity to tease the ‘bejesus’ out of my brother,
• Animals – dogs, cats, rabbits, guniea pigs…. Everything, anything,
• My dear little Dell, I don’t know what I’d do without it.