Bookmarks

I stayed up the entire night sneezing, tossing, and turning, finding some angle that pushed enough air into my puffy sinuses. No luck, of course, so I called in sick and slept sitting up. Some things have ailed me for as long as I can remember. You’d think I would be used to these mild annoyances by now, but no, it is always a fresh experience.

The antihistamine I had in the morning did not do much, and it seems, finally, a hearty meal of scrambled eggs, warm and perfect, has done the trick. The coffee, scalding hot, sits beside this keyboard. It should reach a potable temperature by the time I write this piece. I am in a hurry because I could use all the warmth. If this piece takes me too long, the coffee will be lukewarm and watery. This is not usually concerning, but today, I do not have anything but self-preservation on my mind.

The most important thing is keeping my wits about myself. I think no other ailment grinds my gears as much as chronic allergies. Allergies to what, you ask? I wish I knew! When I was in the middle of my adolescence, a doctor conducted a peculiar investigation. He ran two tests.

The first was a detection test, which told whether you had allergies in case the runny nose was a farce. Lo and behold, it was an allergy. The test came back positive. The second was about finding what from. They tested my blood against over a hundred usual, expected allergens. There was no match.

“Interesting,” said the doctor. “It seems you are not allergic to anything.”

“But doctor,” I asked curiously, “the detection said yes, did it not?”

“The detection was wrong.” He said confidently.

I sneezed and asked, “Are you sure?”

“I am. We’ve tested your blood against everything you can contact regularly—no histamine flare-up. There is no allergy.”

I sneezed again. A trail of snot now began to fall out of my nose as I quickly grabbed my handkerchief.

“I am so confused. You can see I’m sneezing, and I am not sick,” I said.

He tapped his hands on the desk, and that was that. Since then, I have had regular days and whatever you’d call today. The only thing is to never run out of antihistamines and warmth. Yes, warmth.

That reminds me, where is my coffee?

Frankly, what complaint can I have? The money is flowing in—not too much, not enough for me to live in a mansion or fly in first class, but not too little either. The coffee never ends; there always is enough to make a cup. The year flows towards its end, and there have been some nitpicks, some deliberations, but all of that withers, facing all the joy. This life has turned out to be a decent one, and the building blocks suggest things will only get better from here on out. I do not mean there will be no troubles. No, I expect trouble to take its fair share, cut its fine slice, but what use are the good times if not to be remembered in times of trouble? And of them, I have plenty. I am confident things will be fine; if not at first, then eventually.

The evenings are nippy now, and the year has begun descending into its last stretch, its tail end which has, perhaps, given rise to this introspective mood. Even with the sun shining outside, you can still tell it is October. There is but awe in my heart at everything. Today, I seem to have begun the day with pumpkin spice appreciation—spicy enough to cut, sweet enough to revel in it, strong enough to be remembered. Days like this will serve as anchors if the tides of time ever begin to shake my ground. Until then, I must always remember to take a moment and smile. If someone had asked me two years ago about happiness, I would have told them I could not remember the last time I felt it. To be clear, it would have been absurd but also correct, not because I had never felt it, but because I never took a moment to take stock of it. We must always look at a moment of joy or even one of calm contentment. We must make a habit of dissociating ourselves from it so as to remember it like we remember some scene from a film—we know who sat where, who said what, and, most important of all, precisely how it felt.

I will remember this moment, and many others like it, in all their regularity. The weather will get colder soon. It is my advice you take stock, too.

I woke up, what one might call fashionably late, and felt as if I was the protagonist of some film for a moment. Then, I went to the kitchen, made some coffee and sat at the desk to do nothing. There is an apparent simplicity in my life now. The funny thing is I never set out to build it—I only wanted it. But perhaps wanting things influences choices more than we realise. Perhaps not, either. I could not care less. This is a complicated matter, and I am only interested in simple things. Love, for example, should be simple, too. Difficult, yes. I do not mind things being difficult so long as they oscillate between easy and difficult, like the sun and the moon. But they should still be simple.

There is always a difference between simple and easy. I meet people who make my life so terribly complex in just a matter of weeks, it becomes a natural decision to let them go, and if they persist on staying, to show them the door. Growing a blossoming garden is one thing; maintaining it is another. Now that there are days filled with easygoing joy, there is nothing I would not do to protect them.

The gentle, soft October afternoon outside reminds me of every October I have ever set foot in. I often have a curious question: if I could somehow reach out to myself from any year other than this one, and if I told myself about my life, what would be the reaction I receive? Would it be one of shock or disillusionment, or perhaps joy? But this is a moment so ordinary, so beautiful and unadorned, so simple (I am aware of my over-usage of this word) that any question like this would have to wait for a day when my capacities are about me. Today, I wish only to sit here, sip my coffee and listen to music that fits right in.

There is always time for the complicated. But we must not drag it into our lives. If anything, we should actively try to push it out until we cannot. There is always an evening when a guest insists they come over despite you telling them it is not a good time. “Ah, you always say this,” they say as they make their way inside your home. And it is true, with good reason.

What reasonable person having a good time would invite elements that take it away?

Exhausted out of my wits, I sit here, forcing myself to think of nothing at all but the little worries, tiny scuffles and bits and pieces of things left undone plague me and sit around this chair, crowding and hovering over me as I sit here and try to force all thoughts out of myself. Then, like some adept yogi, it occurs to me that this is not the answer. But then, all that looks great in a book with a beautifully crafted cover or some film where someone is trying to find themselves, but on a normal day in a normal life, you genuinely want thoughtlessness at the end of it–not some insightful and intricate process of “watching your thoughts” as they call it. Not that I am against insightful and intricate processes, but I am against the bastardisation of ideas and the pimping out concepts which then find their way in colloquialisms and things people say to each other when they sit and talk. Every time you steal a sentence from a book, you lose an ounce of original thought. This is not to say you must not read or remember things. But only that you must watch very carefully what you decide to keep.

After all, there is nothing wrong with being exhausted or wanting to be rid of your thoughts for an hour. It is the most natural thing to want if you, like Atlas, carry the weight of your own world on your shoulders, like everyone else with a little bit of individual responsibility often does. There is nothing wrong with it, indeed. If you are like me, you can sit for about thirty minutes, which become two hours, and dump it all down on a sheet of paper or a screen or even a tissue at a bar. Yes, you could do that. It would be a thousand times better than preaching and regurgitating ideas, chewing them, grinding them, as if they were cud and you were cattle.

The thing about being in the sort of suspended adulthood where you are still early in the years but not as early to be surprised by yourself is that you do things you never once thought you would do. And the vows you made to yourself as an adolescent seem precisely as they were: childish and immature. There are fewer things more fiery than the ideals of a sixteen-year-old. There are also fewer things as misplaced as it. Talking about this with a friend over the phone, I remarked how when you sleep with someone you only just met, someone you do not know and do not intend to see in the near future, it feels good only till the sun rises the next day. Then, you feel a hollowness with no parallels I can think of. To feel as if someone scooped a part of your very being out of you, like how you scoop ice cream out of a tub which does not have much left, when the Tupperware container starts to peek from beneath it all. It feels precisely as banal and mundane and unnecessary in the morning. The heartache of young adulthood felt more real and pure to me than the vacuous feeling of kissing someone I do not care for and whose name I would have forgotten in the drunken haze of a night at the bar. If given the choice, I would take the pain of unrequited love over a one-night stand, but then, it is what it is, as things are when you are in the suspended adulthood of your late twenties, so we take what we get.

A soft blues track plays in the background as I remember this conversation from yesterday, and as I wind down into a new night, I think of how these years feel like the moment when you’ve dipped your toes in the cold water for a while when you have begun to move towards the vast nothingness of the sea but quite reached the depths yet. You take a step towards it, and there is no other thought in your mind except you have left the safety behind, but you are not in the middle yet. You are floating with one foot in the familiar and one foot in the unknown. They feel like that, these years. Everything has started to lose its sense and surety. It has all begun to dissolve in the vast grey. And I have left myself to its devices.

It occurs to me that these pieces would not exist without the people I meet, talk to, or even stumble upon, never to come across again. Every other piece begins with an anecdote or an extract from some elaborate conversation I had with someone else. In a way, none of these words belong to me, for they have been stolen. This is a robbery! And you, fair reader, have been an accomplice. But in all seriousness, I did not want to begin this piece with a confession. Now, it seems I have taken a different tangent and a segue into what I meant to say today would cost me terribly in meter, in cadence and in rhythm. So, now, I must turn this into a monument for all the people who sit behind these pieces.

I owe it all to them, their insights, and their misgivings. How beautiful it is that every person is poetic if we listen closely. Today, a friend sent me a text message that had perfect alliteration—not that they realised this, not that they had to, but I did, and I told them, and lucky for me—for it is not always that an off-timed remark sits well with the listener—they took it gladly. But on another note, what else can one do when told they are poetic? It may be a compliment of the highest order, and here, I paid it without realising it. No, no, no, that is miles away from how I meant it. You see, this is my terrible affliction in real life when I am outside this room and in the world of people. My words disagree with my heart.

At least once, I have wanted to tell someone, “I love you”, and failed so terribly in my tone I scared them out of it. It rarely ever is about what we say; almost always, it is about the how. But we all make mistakes when tired, confused and out of depth. When I said it was a compliment of the highest order, I simply meant that all people are poetic and, thus, worthy of receiving such a compliment. The writers, poets, and watchers only reflect the world—at least those of us who are honest.

And now, I think you may be mildly curious about what I wanted to write about before I began a rave about people and their innate artistic value, and to that end, I ask you, “What does it matter? There were far better things to talk about, weren’t there?”

Lately, all I hear from others is their opinion and different takes on how I have changed. I do not know what provoked and poked the comments out of their mouths, but I am glad for them because otherwise, all I get to hear from them is convoluted and candy-wrapped criticism about the peculiarities of my nature and existence. In any case, this will eventually become a peculiarity as well. People do not take long to turn what they like or appreciate about someone into their flaws. What they love about you gradually becomes what they repeatedly make fun of, dislike or point out.

My attention to detail is adored until it becomes a problem. I do not mind this any more than I mind a rainy day. But people are not like this. A warm afternoon in January is celebrated; the same is hated in July. We should not care for the nature of things. People are this way. You could not change them for the life of you, and there are better pursuits to spend your energy on than attempting to change someone. Even if there is space in us to change, it only occurs if we want to change; it happens at our behest and with our permission. No one can change a person who is unwilling to change, and no one can ever nudge someone into someone they do not want to become themselves. People may be like clay, but they are also the modellers.

In any case, of my own volition, I have changed, and for now, it is something everyone has enjoyed, and this has made me happy. Not because I wanted to transform my life and myself to garner attention but because it is a fuzzy feeling when we are noticed. “You have become so steadfast and sure,” someone told me recently. “Thank you,” I said and smiled. I wanted to ask if it was a good thing, but then, I figured it does not do well to probe when someone compliments you, even if we are not sure it is a compliment.

I wonder what else is supposed to happen. Often, when you watch a television series and follow it for all its seasons, there is a looming second-hand regret that the end was just a futile extension of the story, that the character arcs were all wrapped well in some earlier episode in some other season. “It could have ended there, and things would have been fine,” you’d comment often as you sat in some bar or cafe, discussing the show unprompted. That is precisely how it feels these days. The only stories to begin are new ones. No old stories linger. At least, not any I count. Everything in the works, everything in motion, is now resolved with the unmatched finesse of a virtuoso. But then, the nature of life is to keep going. It does not care for the narratives we weave. It only cares for the randomness with which we arrive and leave, so our stories will forever be abrupt and incomplete.

There is disappointment in this and fear if you are ever where I am, when there is nothing left but to begin anew, but there is also freedom. This is, of course, no television show plagued by a room of overpaid and burned-out writers. It is a life being lived actively, day after day. The onus is on us to write the story, and if the story beats in my life are any indication, it may not be the happiest story despite its moments of joy, but it sure makes for a compelling narrative. At least, I’d like to believe so, given how many times people ask me if I will ever write a book inspired by the last decade. Perhaps I will, but I am leaning towards letting it all be some kind of secret history, never to be shared. It makes for an intriguing character at best, especially when I find myself in this not-so-unusual position of beginning again.

What would I like today? A little bit of honesty, but often that seems impossible, so a black coffee would do. One is simple and easy, and the other requires a succession of specific steps and everything done exactly right. It is the easiest thing, to be honest, and yet, rarer than a four-leaf clover, rarer than the full moon even, seen only once a month or so. But today is not a day to worry about such things. Today, I feel lighter than a feather because no lies bog me down. It occurred to me today when I woke up, made my bed, and walked out onto the balcony to take a breath and a moment: such a beautiful life and such a beautiful day in it. I stood there like how you often do when there is not a thought on your mind. My life now is filled with complete honesty in all things I am and do. There is no place for anything phoney now. I refuse to tolerate it; I refuse to let it in. Like a tollbooth or an immigration check where the attendant is comically strict, anything inauthentic is rejected outright; there is no space for it, not even an inch, not anymore.

There is little else to think or worry about. I plan to meet many people today, so I must get ready and leave immediately. It is something I cannot explain, however. This lightness, this happiness, this general state of joy. The other day, a waft of worry floated into my day, and for a second, I could not see what was wrong. Then, I immediately flipped the windows wide open, and it flew away as quietly as it had arrived. There seldom are things to worry about. Most situations need only patience, for us to stand our ground as truthfully as we can. Then, they pass, and before you know it, many years pass, and every memory of them becomes a memory so distant that you cannot place why you were so worried anyway.

And now, I must close this piece at an anticlimactic end. Time is running out, and I have a day to spend in a life, the story of which I would not change even if ever given the chance.

It’s Saturday, and it’s already afternoon. I have been sitting here for about three hours now, lost in a series of thoughts, a sort of reverse meditation where I focus on every single one. The only thought that sticks out is how a friend commented about me changing the clothes I wear or my “style”, as people call it. That word does not sit well with me because people use it as a sort of absolute when it is something you arrive at with time and something you keep unlocking.

In a sort of segue, if we think about the style of a writer, we see some remnants of it in their early work, then, as time goes on, it begins to materialise in all its glory. All style is like that, including the clothes one wears. It is not about hopping from one place to another; it is simply about growing into something.

Not that I am one to nitpick when someone pays me a compliment. There is no better response than a “thank you”, as I responded earnestly when my friend said it. But I reckon you can think about something without pinning any emotion on it. The greys and blues I wore so often have been superseded by earthy greens and browns. I did not choose one or the other, and I wear my greys and blues whenever possible. All of it is but a natural progression. My obsession with the sun, the warmth, the trees all around has dissolved slowly in the clothes I wear. My words, at least what I remember of what I wrote four or five years ago, have matured, too. But I cannot feign disinvolvement from them. I wrote them, and they led to what came next.

The exploration of style, as it were, is quite like taking a thread and following it until the end. It also is somewhat like chasing the rainbow. You never reach where you want to, but the process takes you through every nook and cranny. There seldom is a pursuit so colourful. But I am glad I can still change my mind easily after all these years. I have met those hardened into whoever they became or at least think themselves to be. Many a friend have accepted who they will be, and to me, it is heartbreaking. A person can become so many things, yet many people settle on being permanent.

With another birthday approaching faster than I can keep track of time, I have not been blind to how I have changed concerning my place in this world. Once believing myself on the journey towards an invisible greatness, I now understand I am but a conduit for something even I cannot fully explain. And by no means do I mean this in the mystical sense. I cannot claim my purpose, perhaps, except for writing these words. It is the only time anything makes sense to me. I find myself at this desk but also soaring in the sky, looking at the big picture—of how everyone needs everyone. You might call it resignation, but I have realised that I am but a cog in this wildly incredible machinery. So many things are far out of my reach, but I can still affect them; so long as I keep this up, my life has meaning. So many lives get affected by the simple act of reading a sentence, and it is in these words I attempt to cause a quiet revolution—one of kindness and understanding.

I am fully aware of the possibility that these words never get read or that I stop writing them five years from now. But regardless, the words I have written will remain, and all the people they reached would have changed with them. So many people I have met and changed as I am by writing these words, so many lives I have touched, some softly, like how you’d play with a touch-me-not before it closes. So many people I had but a momentary slice of time to laugh with, and yet, it was enough.

I do not know what lies ahead for me, but I am sure time has things in store for all of us, forging us into whatever we become. But I would be lying if I said it was not glorious to simply be alive. Why must we strive for unknown zeniths when merely sitting on the grass makes us feel a vital part of this giant experiment? There cannot only be heroes and villains. There must be those who watch them and tell their tales. I believe I fall somewhere in the cracks. I do not have tales to tell yet, but I do have something to say.

In this reflective stupor of late morning, I sip my coffee as I write these words and smile. How wonderful it is to feel so strongly your hands begin writing before you even have a chance to think.

On this ordinary evening with the general haze of this little pocket of urban peace, I sit and recall the days of middle school. You see, I had a small group of friends, but really, only one of them was my friend. The rest were just people I had come across, or who had joined, as is the case with a ragtag team of kids no one wants to play with. Every week, we got time allocated to visit the library.

There is something about making kids sit in a room surrounded by books, perhaps. They think this might make them—well, some of them—want to read. And sure, I can say it worked. The first books I read were the Enid Blyton stories, book after book—I tore through them. Before long, I was done with most of the books worth reading, but this is not about me or my introduction to the unappreciated and miserly vocation of reading for fun. This is but a memory of how my friend and I used to pick a magazine each week—those magazines for children, the ones where there was no topic, and each page was a surprise.

It had a page on trivia and every week, we would jot it all down into a tiny notebook, hoping we could capture everything there was to know about the world. Useless, of course, all those facts. At least from the idea of having an everyday life. You could live your entire life knowing centipedes don’t have an even number of feet. But then, we wrote all of them down in a shared notebook, just in case. I do not know why we were doing this, but it has not stopped in many ways—this want for useless knowledge.

The other day, I watched an hour-long documentary about printing. We do not change much from who we started as; we only become more of ourselves. Or maybe it is only me who refuses to let go of the things that brought me joy then and the others? They have already lost who they were; their curiosity is now plastered with a snide remark, and their laughter is shut behind stacks of bills. This perpetual continuity I find in myself is missing in others.

Often, I tell others about something, and they tell me there are better things adults should worry about, to which I have no response, but what a shame it is that we must choose one or the other.

What a shame indeed.

So much happens to us, so many histories remain unwritten, and the world, as it must, keeps going on. The world will keep moving forward, and it will go its own way, and people will always be moving about in the mornings, commuting in crowds, in trains and in buses, despite what is told and what is not. If there is any scope of piecing together a sort of broken history of this life with these pieces, even if someone were to consider this laborious undertaking, most of it would remain lost on streets of cities no one could list, on tables in bars and cafes long shut down, in the minds of people who would have forgotten all about it—for there are always better things to remember.

And this is with all the headway, the building blocks I lay in the bare. What of those who do not talk? The friend who keeps to himself? What of them and their stories? Well, nothing. In the end, many like him have come and gone, and as vivid as each life is, no remembrance, no records exist. That, and only that, is why we must strive to make a mark on this world, so long as it is not some scar we leave behind. People remember tyrants, but then, who would wish to be remembered only to be spit upon?

Why bother going the extra mile? Why bother living an outlandish, unexplainable life? For the glory, for the grandeur! What else? The world has come far, sure, and we casually enjoy days monarchs and regents would long for, but the ambition of Ozymandius remains the same, and so does his downfall, and so does his hubris. For all its modernity, the world remains plagued by people who have not made those strides. And now, we are playing catch-up with it. So much is expected of us, and we remain full of ourselves—no thought about anything else in sight!

Why does anyone do anything? To be remembered. What else can you do? This planet has remained without you for millennia, and it will remain after you, all things considered. All we have is some seventy years to make our mark. Was there any ambition more noble than this!? Was there any species more selfish than this!

I come from a place where everyone thrives on keeping their minds full at all times, mimicking the homes they live in. Lack of space and plenty of people means space rarely goes unoccupied. The streets are chock-full of people, the malls are never empty, and most houses might as well be mazes. This is no one’s fault, of course. But, the way it appears to me, there are two responses to living in a place like this: you either enjoy an empty mind, devoid of any thoughts or worries as you remain in a calm, restful state, or you fill your mind with anything you find, with advertising, with propaganda, with the concerns of your neighbours and the history of your fathers. Naturally, the former has fewer takers. Regardless, this is not the problem.

The problem is that other people live your life for you more than you live it yourself, and since they will always be there, so will the noise they carry with them. It is quite like how when a cat is belled, you know it approaches, but in this case, the bells toll everywhere; they jingle from all corners in an ugly, jarring dissonance. This is the problem, especially for people like me.

So, it is crucial to steal a moment of quiet. Of course, in truth, the closest to quiet you can get is a patio or a bench in the evening, with the traffic still echoing all around, the music blaring from all directions, and the people talking loudly. The noise never leaves, but you can recede behind some hedges. That is the closest you get to it; that is enough if you have spent your life in a place this loud. Any quieter and anxiety starts to creep in.

There is always a little and a lot to say about how this permanent presence of noise makes minds malleable, makes people agitated and angry, and how, like bacteria, an idea propagates, floats into and makes homes into populations. A little because any person with an ounce of identity would catch it before it reaches them and seek the quiet when they feel the animosity, hatred, and umbrella of second-hand thought overwhelming them, and a lot because those who need to listen only believe things when they are said over and over—any softer, and you might as well avoid intervening at all.

This piece is a part of the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium #16. The STSC is a place for people who believe so profoundly in the simple ideas of identity and art that the mere existence of this belief earns the status of rebellion. In a world where originality is waning, the STSC strives to maintain the good fight. In this camaraderie, the Symposium is a monthly, almost disattached collaboration set around a central theme. This month’s theme is Propaganda.

All intense arguments end in a silence that overstays its welcome, but they truly end with a glass of scotch as you try to let it all fade in the background, especially when you have some words to write. True neutrality is impossible, and not taking a stance often becomes a stance. The only terrible part about that is how lonely your camp looks compared to the others that lionise something or the other. If you look at the world objectively, at least try to the limit you can, you tend to isolate yourself from everyone else. People bicker over their Gods and monsters, but the outcast remains an outcast in all eyes. This is a terrible digression from what I was going to write—it is not worth it anymore. It is not the thought as much as the emotion behind it that fetches the right words. You cannot remember a sunset and paint it from memory. You can remember what a general sunset looks like, but to paint the precise one you saw on a particular evening is only possible if you paint it there and then or right after. It is waiting too long when most inspiration wanes.

Despite all the joy I felt this weekend, I will end it with a sullen voice and depressing words. It is with displeasure that I must say that people disgust me when they cannot take their biases off like a hat. It is with great concern that I must comment there is an overabundance of such people in the world. Where do we go from here? It is not something I can answer. But today—like many such days when amid a discussion, I pause and stop to make any retort or a point, when I fade into silence and continue eating my food or sipping my drink—I feel aghast at the way people think, of how they limit themselves, of how they admit they are willing to not go beyond the veil, even if they know the truth is tucked right behind it. It will always confuse me how easily people accept falsifiable truths; I try to remind them of the year, of the zeitgeist and times we live in, and then, as it always is, nothing changes. Perhaps it is my failure to attempt, but what else can you do?

Of course, this vague rambling gives you nothing, but if you have reached this far, I reckon you already know what I am talking about.

I woke up beyond well-rested today, almost as if I have begun this life again, but from where I left it last night by some miracle. I stayed in bed for a bit despite knowing this delay would cost me since I had to be in another city in a few hours and back by morning, not that this trip is any crucial, only we must keep our feet moving from time to time. The paralysis of being is a slow death when one is too comfortable.

This does not matter, however. What matters is that it is too muggy for this to be a morning in late September. Yes, the only reasonable thing to worry about is the weather today. It is that or reading the newspaper like a concerned citizen of the world at large. If not that, it is some dystopian rating to measure the capability of a cab driver or a delivery person, and then, that becoming how people view them entirely. They have convinced us to think in terms of their numbers. A 4.2 on 5.0? This must be a terrible person. The point is that worry has no end once you begin. You start on one corner of the proverbial sheet of society, and you never get to the other end. You get exhausted and fall asleep in the middle. Then, you wake up well-rested on a September morning, and it is hot and sombre, more than you would ever expect, so you move your faculties to this instead.

What can I do for the world after all, if not point these things out in whatever way I can? There it is, bait for the teacher who hasn’t a clue what these words are about, but now, at least now, they have some reasonable explanation for why the words are put a certain way. Of course, this may be decades from now or never. But something tells me a teacher is smiling at these words far into the future, and to them, I say hello. To the rest of whoever reads these words, I say worry but do it gingerly. Do not go too deep into it. Do not stay outside the water either. Dip your toes and sit; you, too, will realise the only bother is the humidity. There’s little you can do about the water, but look at it.

The world is only a certain way when people are looking at it. Sometimes, that is all the world expects—for people to look at it the way it is, not how they wished it would be.

When I exited the apartment I rented in Florence, I sat with the host, a sweet woman in her early fifties with a penchant for art and espresso, as you would expect from her, given where she was placed in space and time. “Take a coffee before you go, come on, come on, sit,” she said. I could not say no to a coffee, partly owing to who I am but also, given where I was placed in space and time. So, I obliged, and then we talked about my stay so far and if the city was everything I had hoped for. It was more than that, as I told her, and then, when I began to leave, I picked up my bags and manoeuvred them through the door as I have countless times before. Living alone teaches you how to handle hands filled to the brim with bags and still somehow be able to open the door and bring things in. It is a skill that is not celebrated, but given the number of people I have seen stumble and fail at this little task, it occurs to me that it may not be as common, which leads me to believe that despite what television shows and movies have had us believe, people living alone may still not be as common. It is also an easy trick to see if someone lives on their own. Watch how they open the door when their hands are full. More often than not, the smoother and effortless their transition into taking things in or out, the more years they have spent by themselves.

As soon as I stepped out the door, I thanked her one final time. She thanked me for staying and said, “It is easy to be nice to you.” It stuck with me like a drop of honey. I began thinking about it in the elevator, and honestly, I have not stopped since. I must be doing something right if that is the case, I know, but what is it, and how do I do more of it? I will never know. We do not know our parts like other people know them. We live in our entirety; this is not the case for others. A friend once spotted a spot on the shelf I was blind to while cleaning daily. Then, he wiped it off as we continued to talk. Others can tell things about ourselves that we would never spot in eternity. I will never know why she said what she said, but I know now that when you say something nice to someone, they remember it forever.

I lie here on the rug, almost asleep, in front of the TV, and it occurs to me that this, too, is some kind of happiness. It is not the most glorious variant, sure, and indeed, not the prettiest, but it is mundane and regular. What more could I want from this moment and this day? I’ve spent the day well. It was an unremarkable day, but beautiful still. Although, I also sneezed a lot of the day away today, and sadly, that is not some metaphor. My allergies have not left me even a smidge of a window to think, and now, having huffed and puffed all day long, I am all but ready to sleep.

There was a time this would have bothered me, and I would have been cross with life, but that time has long passed. Today, despite me being slightly out of sorts and despite this day having nothing particularly noteworthy about it, I am happy I got to spend it as best as I could. Many of my friends like to spend their money on expensive shoes, and at least two admit that they do not wear them for themselves but for the world. This is not something that sits well with me and the kind of person I have become over these years—the person who is content with the type of day I just had. But it still baffles me if I think of myself doing something only for the admiration of the world at large. It is more sickening than the sniffle-snuffle I had to tolerate today. If nothing else, were I to write these words only for the world, I would have ceased my struggle years ago. If I were to live my life at the behest of what others might think of it, I reckon half the good things that happened to me would not have even had an opportunity to happen.

But tonight, I do not want to bother myself with this anymore. I am at my wit’s end; the anti-histamines have stopped working, the tea is not doing much, the tissues are running out, and my will gave out at around seven in the evening. Despite my willingness to go on and on today, I must stop here. I must let myself drift into sleep without my realising it. It has been a day so typical; I should not like to remember it, but then, how could I forget? The reminder waits for me tomorrow—quite impatiently, I might add.

I sit and sip coffee as usual, procrastinating work as usual, thinking about nothing as usual. Then, all of a sudden, I started to recall the last time I received unconditional acceptance. The answer to that, as it turns out, is both almost a decade ago and last week. These things are never as simple as they should be. We are starved for the want of simplicity in a complex world, but mostly, we are starved for someone looking at us and having nothing to say—no praise, no disdain.

Mostly, we want to be perceived as we perceive ourselves, not to be made saints, and not to be compared to demons. All of us are but a drop of paint in a jar of water, ever spreading to fit our own selves, ever-growing, until no room is left, not a single molecule remains which can move a certain way or be a sure thing until we become who we are meant to be: a person, as unremarkable as any other.

Of all answers to the grand questions of ambition, “person” ranks at the bottom of the list. No one ever says it despite that being the only grand aspiration. I wish someone looked at me as I sit here, looked at me and said my name with the untouched honesty of a child, with no expectation attached to it, nor some role I play in their life, and surely, not some adjective such as “writer”. That is all I aspire for now.

But the more I talk to people, the more I find myself playing versions of myself, and yet, as much as those are parts of me, none of them compare to what I see when I look in the mirror. Perhaps that is why I fail in the matters of love, too. This expectation, rarely met as it is, gets projected onto someone else. And then, I bare my soul for a spell, only to receive dismay or disappointment, and I cover it up again.

It remains to be seen if this will ever be met, not that it has any bearing on my contentment or the completion of this life. Since I can at least look at myself honestly, I would say this life is more complete than many others. At least, if nothing else, it is an attempt in the right direction.

You must train yourself to spot joy. It is not always apparent, and sometimes, you might have to pick a few rocks for it to squiggle out from under them or squint hard as if seeking some elusive bird hiding in the woods ahead. But I promise you that if you do this enough, you will learn to spot it in the heaviest of fogs, in the worst storm possible.

For a little while a few years ago, I lost this ability, so excuse me if this sounds like some sermon by an unholy priest. It is not easy finding your footing. They always told me I was too old for my age. Perhaps it is that and nothing else, yet I feel this catharsis in my heart. A sequence in some film shows me some mirror of hindsight, or some song tugs at the right strings, and all of a sudden, I find myself with tears in my eyes. Tears of what? You might wonder, given my claims of having trained myself well enough to spot happiness. I do not know what to tell you—some things you just know for yourself, and if you don’t, then I suggest you call yourself lucky. But if I were to attempt still and not leave you hanging with your hand out for an explanation, I’d say it is lament over people I will never get to see, over time lost in the years I can only recall in passing. So much I have forgotten because I was too far away from this world. So much that I know to have happened has no record whatsoever—not in these words, not in my memory, but in parting words, and often, denying someone the privilege of the same.

All my unhappiness is now remembered as regret. But it is not something I carry with me on my person. It is a painting on a wall, waves lashing about it, as haphazard and tumultuous as I assume I was at the time. How unfortunate that I met some of the most incredible people I have ever met when I was lost at sea. Now, I can but sit at this shore, having spent years here. All my storms have passed. All the visitors have left. Some tried to stay, too, tried to hold on. We cannot say who tore their camps apart. Was it the sea, I wonder, or was it just me?