WordPress’ daily prompts are really interesting, and every time they get delivered to my inbox I can’t help but feel excited about what I would write for it. It’s a real pity I don’t get around to writing for all of them. Mostly, they arrive when my day is almost ending (due to the time difference) and I am spent by the time I get to my laptop. However, I can’t help but think of what I’d write for each of them. Like the other day the prompt was Stranger in a Strange Land, and it prompted, “What’s your favorite part about visiting a new place — the food? The architecture? The people watching?” I wondered what it was for me, and I came up with a single word answer – stories. I am hugely fascinated by the stories embedded in far flung places. So much so that I make them up in my head. I write myself poems on what happened in some lanes. I imagine how people must have built a monument and what kind of conversations they’d have had. I think of how people went by places without phones or taxis. And then, I thank the heaven above for sending me someone who can narrate those stories for me. Stories are my favourite part of visiting a new place.
Then there was the prompt Fly on the Wall which asked, If you could be a “fly on the wall” anywhere and at any time in history, where and when would you choose?. When I read this I thought it was just superb! I mean, what an awesome prompt. And I thought about it (in spite of the fact that my history knowledge is terrible). I also discussed it with my sister. I haven’t come up with a conclusive answer, but I have some thoughts. Maybe I’d like to be present when the Qutub Minar or Taj Mahal were conceived and constructed. Or I’d like to watch Michelangelo dig up graves in secret so he could study human anatomy. Or maybe, I’d like to be in Noah’s ark when the great flood came. One place? I can’t think of just one.
And today the prompt is, There is No Place Like Home, which says:
If you had the opportunity to live a nomadic life, traveling from place to place, would you do it? Do you need a home base? What makes a place “home” to you?
Photographers, artists, poets: show us MOVING.
When I read this prompt, I didn’t even have to blink and I said ‘yes!’ Although having a home is my dream, living like a nomad is definitely something I want to do. It would let me be a ‘stranger in a strange land’ and even a ‘fly on the wall’. A home to me is anywhere I can lie down at night and not feel the need to be worried for the people in my life. It’s that simple. Being a nomad (I like to call it wanderer; it has a certain flamboyance to it ;)), even for a small period of my life, is on my to-do list. Do I need a home base? Not so much actually. But I need my people to come to.
It would be nice if I could write for these prompts daily, but then life gets in the way. And now that we’re back to the real world, here’s something B. J. Armstrong sang once, “Home is where the heart is, but what a shame, cos everyone’s heart doesn’t beat the same.“
Doesn’t it?
amarllyis 