Theloopylululog

Daily writing prompt

If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

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Haulepane ke bataan mat karo miyaan! Kya mein hauli dikree tereku? (Don’t talk like a fool. Do I look like a fool to you, dude?)

Yes, it’s Hyderabadi slang. Obviously, I am a Hyderabadi!

Only someone with zero interest in getting to know me would ask a question like this!

Me, switching lives with a famous person?

Lite lo yaaron! Damaag ke chindiyan ud gaye kya? (Take it easy, will you! Are you out of your mind?)

Darling WordPress, I am a recluse. A very contented and irreverent one at that.

I am not people-friendly. I abhor small talk and can’t feign interest in someone even if my life depended on it. A fake mona lisa smile to mask constipation? Baigan ke baatan nakko karo yaaron! (Don’t talk nonsense!)

I love my precious solitude and guard it with my life.

Fame is all well and nice for someone who is willing to split open their lives and intestines to public scrutiny. And I am someone who is unknown to people from my own building. Visitors coming home to chat with my parents don’t even realise there is another living, breathing soul under the same roof.

I am a ghost for all practical purposes. What the hell will I do, exchanging all that is vital to me for flashlights and paparazzi?

For incessant judgment and criticism about everything I am? I have already lived a life under their heavy cloud for too long. Let me live my chosen life under the rock of my preference, with no one wanting to know anything about me. Thank you very much.

I have everything I need: happiness, contentment, peace—in that order. A few loved ones who care enough about me and all that I value. I don’t need fame to fulfill any dream my heart might be hiding from me in its subterranean depths.

I am my own 24×7 entertainment channel. I don’t need to become one to the hungry, preying, voyeuristic eyes of the world.

But, if you put a gun to my head and ask the same question, I will perhaps be forced to say Lulu 2.0 from Earth 2.0.

She is the only one I am invested in enough to want to exchange lives with.

Who is she?

Myself from a parallel universe who has managed the impossible odds of achieving everything I couldn’t here on Earth: an acerbic version of me, capable of handling fame and the games that need to be played once famous, a life led under the glow of arc lights and cameras—unabashed and unapologetic, with the gumption and chutzpah required to live under the hawk-eyed world and its potential for infinite hypocrisy.

Care to know more about her? Read on.