Who Doesn’t want to be a Superhero?

Growing up as a kid, all I wanted was to be a Superhero and that too with a very specific superpower – Invisibility on Demand.

A few days back, when I asked a 9-year-old this question, I was surprised by the answer. It was an exact match with what I had wanted at a similar age. This made me wonder and I thought deep and hard about the desire to sometimes be invisible. Obviously, now I know that it is not possible at least with the current available technology. Even to this day, sometimes when all seems lost and chips are down, as an adult, all I want to do is escape from reality momentarily and become invisible in a figurative manner.

Based on constraints and resources available, different folks have their own mechanism to achieve this superpower. Some travel solo to remote corners of world, some take up a creative hobby and the list is endless.

For me what has consistently worked has been books and reading. The more I read, the desire to read increased. Obviously, the reading evolved from comics to short stories to full length books and then once again I realized a pattern in my choice of reading over past twenty years. Irrespective of the mode of books, it was always the history books that I liked the most. Whether Amar Chithra Katha or Tintin as a kid or reading about various Empires or even modern history covering the last century. Somewhat like Alice in Wonderland, this allowed me to teleport myself to a different age and era.

Maybe I was wrong all along. It was not Invisibility that I sought but time travel.

By Taporat Tyagi

Oct, 2022