I'd like to

Travel and touch every wild flower ever grown

Learn to say ‘no’

Be fit

Learn to read and write in Urdu

Teach children in the mountains

Bungee jump

Stop trying to please everyone

A house atop a very tall building and enjoy the rain hitting against my windows. Own one in the mountains with bougainvilleas for company.

Read as many books and then open a book cum tea hut with those books and some fine tea. Then have long and heady conversations about authors of those books and passages from those books with complete strangers

Go without feeling unhappy or depressed or low for a month at a stretch

Visit the bridges in Iowa

Send mother father on a luxury holiday

Be a professional actor

Enjoy rice without guilt

Taste every brand of beer in the world and read up all the literature available on whiskeys

Write a few books

Write handwritten notes or letters to people I have wronged

Write handwritten letters or notes to people who have wronged me

Write a handwritten letter to my father

Buy my mother a house she always yearned for

Put photographs in order, preferably in a black scrap book and give titles

Learn to pull back

Own the best fragrances in the world

Forget

Let go

Resume Hindustani classical classes

Have a massive library at home

Soak in each and every piece, word, anything ever written by Gulzar

Read all the books ever written on magical realism

Figure out how I’m so good at making some of my dearest people uncomfortable just by being around. Change that

Attend a ‘mushaira’

Shoot a documentary on women living in brothels

Do a Delhi to Rishikesh on foot

A cycle ride with someone in the fields

Participate in a marathon every year

Own a telescope

Watch Ijazzat once every month till I die

Raise a child

Do a Greece, Morocco, Venice

Stop searching for happiness outside

Control my anger

Fall irreparably in love with someone, fall like I’ve never been hurt

Accept that mother father will eventually grow old

Find a guru

Read out my favourite passages to the one I will love enough to share them with

Hold hands

Make a film

Be comfortable with the way I look

Stop waiting

Name someone’s child

Say final good byes to a few people

Accept the unrequited

Have stimulating conversations during sunset

Raise plants

Take a guilt free long holiday from work

Get to know mother’s secrets and not judge her

Breed horses

Visit Kashmir

Live in Northeast

Stop making the same mistakes

Recognize patterns

Detox for a month, no drinking, no lying, no escaping, no outside food, no anger, no flirting, no nothing

Make my mentors proud

Settle down mentally and emotionally, not literally and socially

Gift my Dad the best scotch whiskeys in the world

Go fishing

Say no to denial

Say no to defense mechanism

Get another tattoo

Pray for my sisters

Know where to stop

Have zero debt

Keep increasing my collection of coasters, matchboxes, piggy banks

Learn pottery

Learn a craft and then pass it on

Pay attention to directions

Save money

See a past life therapist

Trek more

Seriously work on being a good listener

Remember that distance breeds strength

Stop looking for warmth

Stop making a mess of relationships

Commit