Wednesday 25 January 2012

Tea with the One, and the Only...

This post is in response for Preeti's creative prompt "If I could invite anybody for 'tea for two' today it would undoubtedly be ..........................." Now as I am already waiting for the book to reach me, it makes perfect sense to participate here and begin a story even before it starts unfolding when I'll have the book in my hands. 


If I could invite anyone for tea, I would invite the one person, author, celebrated wit, self-certified genius (and rightly so), Oscar Wilde. He is one person from whom even an insult will seem like praise. I fell in love with Ernest (Importance of Being Earnest) and Dorian Gray was definitely one true 'gray' character - he was not bad to begin with, only obsessed with his own perfect beauty...but then only Wilde could paint dangerous, fatal obsessions with such subtlety! And his poems! Ah! 


His one advice I have always taken to heart: 


"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde


Oh and also:


"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself." ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray


I would ask him to comment on the 'sensitive' sentiments of our country people who get offended with everything and everyone who does not tow the "normal" line. I wonder what he will tell both Rushdie and our government. [Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. ― Oscar Wilde]


He would certainly have a unique view on everything - economy, humor, comics, books, blockbuster movies, novels, religion, outsourcing, and maybe even Stephanie Meyer (sorry, I enjoyed Twilight, but...). [One's real life is often the life that one does not lead. ― Oscar Wilde]


He was a lot of things, but never apologetic for living his life the way he wanted. And made fun of his own attitudes too!


To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray


I would also like to invite Osho and Douglas Adams, but I doubt they will be easy or even willing to pin-down. I will have to meet them both in the restaurant at the end of the Universe, they will not come, I'll have to go there.