Fiction

Wrote this one some time ago and forgot all about it. While going through my notes in the phone yesterday, found it again, so sharing it now.

October 19, 2025. Sunday.

London, UK.

Very recently I fell in love with Sherlock Holmes all over again (I have lost count now for how many times I have fallen for him). Hence this random scribble... written in the notepad of my phone as I wait to board my flight at the London airport.

You love reading, don't you? Well, quite obviously you do or else you wouldn’t be here reading my unfiltered thoughts. A better question would be do you love reading fiction? I certainly do (bonus points if it is crime).

Yet often I wonder, why is it that we fall in love with fiction? With characters – people that don't exist?

Maybe because they are perfect? But then don't they usually have their own flaws? Then is it because they are imperfect? They are people just like us that have their own share of weaknesses and mistakes and struggles, and we relate to them? But then, why do we even need fiction? Don't we have enough of inspiring people around us? Then what is it that makes us fall in love with these imaginary folks? Perhaps a bit of both? Neither?

Maybe they have the perfect story, setting, and environment; the perfect relationship with other characters – an ideal world. Or is it that they are how we want ourselves to be? Our ideal self?

But then I come back to Sherlock. And he is none of these. Maybe a bit of all – perfect yet flawed, undoubtedly in the most brilliant way. I don’t want to be a detective yet I want to share his stories, experience the trill of running through the streets of Victorian era London, trying to solve crime and unravel the mysteries, pick his genius mind, learn a trick or two from the legend himself. Despite all of it, I still want to be me. Be with Sherlock but not become him.

Since time immemorial, people have been narrating stories. From the stone age man that painted on the cave walls in hopes of telling someone about his life, desires, journey, struggles and triumphs to the mythology and folk lore that passed on orally from generations to generations with some surviving the test of time and some dying, buried in the hopes of being discovered again some time. From the ancient man that looked up at the sky and decided that there was some tale behind every single speck of dot in the night sky, to the modern man that thought of creating fiction with different creatures and planets with the knowledge of science at hand. From magic and mythology to the science fiction and dystopian. It is the love for stories, real or imagined, that has been a true friend of the humankind. The second nature, a love that stood the test of evolution.

It is the love for stories, real or not, because even though it may be fiction it is belief to the heart.

Fiction – untrue, yet the truth? Food for the soul.

Love,

Srishti Manoj Jain.