UNLOCKING FANTASY

There’s more to flights of fancy than leprechauns and lightsabers

- Rehana Munir

Twenty-twenty has widely been regarded – in lighter conversation – as the Year of the Introvert. But the ones who are truly geared to handle the unhandleable are another modern subspecies altogether: the fantasists. Weaned on a diet of Game of Thrones and armed with their mandala coloring books, this breed can teach the poor realists a thing or two about coping with the apocalypse.

THE INKLINGS

As the real world retreated into a shell, the need for make-believe grew like a beanstalk before Jack, or like Alice tasting a bite of that trippy Wonderland cake. But like all luxuries, this one, too, is reserved only for the lucky few. I speak for all those long-suffering realists, for whom magic and fantasy spell nothing but tedious, unsatisfying departures from the believable. Bored with fairy tales in childhood, we recoil from magic realism as adults. Ghosts and ghouls, leprechauns and lightsabers – all so obvious in comparison with the subtle and surprising twists of “real life”.