Satre versus Streisand

My college organized its annual literary fest last week ( VIBES,2012 ). And we had a blast!

Not that we (by ‘we’ in this post, I mean Binita- whose blog is here here - and me) won too may prizes but we participated in most of the events as teams or individually. We almost made it in ‘lost your translation’ and ‘mind your language’ as a team. She won JAM (all applaud please! firstly because it’s one of the biggest crowd pullers and you have to be crazy awesome to make it to finals and secondly, because she gave the college some legendary one liners, which of course, can’t be put up here publicly ;-)). I won MOCK PRESS and couldn’t have been happier. This is our last vibes because next year will be our final year and neither of us will be sane enough to participate. Ahhh…. The first signs of the end of college life.
Anyway, ‘CREATIVE WRITING’ was one of the daily events and I had decided to do it all five days, just so that I could have something at the end to put up here. Ok no, I wanted to pick up some prizes too, which I did ! So the the next four posts will be the ones I wrote last week on four consecutive days . they are definitely not my favourite- a little too ‘serious’ for my taste but I did the best I could. Leave a comment if you like them!



DAY 1.        TOPIC : SATRE SAID THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE WHILE STREISAND SANG THAT PEOPLE WHO NEED OTHER PEOPLE ARE LUCKY. WITH WHOM DO YOU AGREE AND WHY ?

Satre and Streisand sit across each other, in my drawing room, with the usual aromatic, yet bitter, Assam tea in their cups. As they sip it noiselessly, the questions for this evening rumble in their minds. The red sunset on the sea, visible through the glass window, fills the air with anticipation of a definite conclusion. But as every day, neither of them breaks the ice. Thankfully, their eyes meet, and with no pleasantries setting the foreground, they set out arguing, unrestrained .Excerpts:

SATRE: Hell is other people, Streisand. You see them beating you in life. You see them taking the ignored road, and have a beautiful journey through it. Seeing them, you push yourself harder and pity your own shortcomings. Thus every single day, they make you a living hell.

STREISAND: ‘people’ are not just people. They are also friends and family. They beat us in order to set higher standards. They walk on that different road, to taste rebellion and to leave behind a legacy of change. They point us our failures so that we can have a good laugh at ourselves and understand that we are humane, not God .We need these “hells”. We are kind of lucky to be needing people.

SATRE: lucky? What lucky?

STREISAND: lucky because only the loners and the dead don’t need people. At least we know that we are neither!

SATRE: Not funny. Look, I am not talking big fancy stuff like you. Forget the legacy part. Look at ‘now’. What are you scared of at this moment? Death? Na... Bankruptcy? Nopes …You are scared of losing this argument to me, who is a ‘people’. At office, you fear your boss. At the gym, you envy the great bodies OTHERS have. While on road, you are angry at those who honk unnecessarily. The source of everything evil in your life is ‘people’.

STREISAND: Yes right. They are all many steps ahead of you and me. Only that none of us are on the same staircase! The social equations work both ways, implying that we will be needed too. And if hell is other people, heaven is NO people. Who wants to be in such a barren place? ‘People’ around us come in readymade packages, mixed but fixed proportions of good and bad.  Make peace with it, SATRE, don’t hate mankind.

SATRE: I love humanity!! It’s just the humans I can’t stand .You know that, don’t you?!!?

And then there was the sound of their characteristic laughter. For some time, I watched them both argue to and fro.

 Satre sounded a firm realist, but also an egotist.

Streisand appeared an altruist, but also an escapist.

In this ageless classic war between cynicism and hope, whose side should I be on?

My Assam tea had been sipped till the last drop. The sun had diminished into the horizon by now. Gradually, Satre and Streisand evaporated into thick fumes. The last ray of sun diffused into the twilight sky and the fumes, into ME.