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The other day I stood in the shower, and as one often tends to think of the most unrelated things as they stand under the water, I thought of my intrinsic urge to write, how the words have fallen out of my hands as the drops fell from above. I stood there engulfed in the water, drenched, as I had been by words for all these years.

Where there is a thought about my writing, there is always a minor disappointment wedged like in some corner you cannot clean too easily. Like how we often fail to mention things that are always there, even if they are out of place, I seldom say a word about this practice. The fact that we fail to mention the ever-present sky does not mean it is not there, and such is the regret of having to go at it on my own. Sure, there is a spray of appreciation here and there, but there is mostly a continual lull which makes me think of those writers who had a friend or two who read each word, not because they were fond of reading, but because they were written by someone they knew, and that was enough. It makes me think of them, and it sends a wave of envy over me, and soon, that splashes to become regret. Such is the nature of things we regret—we can seldom control what we brood over. So, I stood there and let everything wash over me. There was work to do and words to write.

My exhaustion reaches its tipping point, and then, the scales tip over, and slowly, like Sisyphus, I gather my wits, and I get on with it. All the while, my visage reflects that of the sea—both lying about the surging activity right underneath. Perhaps, one day, when many years have passed, and I am close to turning sixty like my father will in a few days, I will be asked whether it was difficult to write, and I will divulge all the gory details of muffled arguments with myself. And maybe then, maybe just then, I will not stay quiet like my father does when someone asks him if he is tired of life, and maybe just then, I will tell them: you should have asked a long time ago!

It is not the easiest thing: to write words. But then, you realise you have done it alone for so long, why not see it through? Time is my devoted cheerleader. On most days, it is also the only one.

If you take a walk and come home with one good sentence, the walk was worth it. And what if you don’t find it? Even then, you will have moved and been in the world which never goes to waste. On top of that, if you are keen to look around even a couple of times, you will learn that good, even great, sentences live everywhere. Some are on a street hawker’s cart, and there is one tucked in the moment when a child thumps on a metal staircase because they love the sound. I’d argue you’d find one in terrible service at a cafe, and then, you will find some in the trees around us.

To create anything in this world, we must be a part of it. We must learn to realise our place in the vast connections of life, and we must, sometimes, learn to navigate them. Good for us, there are streets and sidewalks. And a lot of us, not to our blame, start looking for things elsewhere. There is nothing here, in this town, in this city, so I must go to a beach far away, a distant hill, or a lonely island. But what you cannot see where you are will always be invisible irrespective of where you go. That is true, and poets have written ballads more harmonious than any sentence I can write about it today. I can only try to look around and find a sentence. When I think of my place here, that is what I think of, nothing else.

Just today, when I was walking down the street, a man stopped and asked me for directions. I named a popular place nearby, assuming he might know it and that may help him find where he is going. He told me it was his first month in the city and that he did not know the place yet. Then, he laughed and said, “Soon, I will know my way around these streets as long as I keep losing myself.” And that was when I knew the walk was worth it. I helped him with where he had to go, and then I went on my way, which was to nowhere in particular, of course. I was only searching to belong.

When you grow up reading books or digesting films into your very being, a lot of good comes out of it. One glaring issue remains, though: dialogue. You read books, and you think people talk like this, that most people will give you complete responses, that most conversations would be a delight simply because of how people express themselves. And then, you move into the world and realise how you set yourself up for failure. Inadequacies, directness, and an arrogant and proud ignorance of how to express oneself are rampant. Most people talk with such a lack of flair that talking to them seems like a pointless affair. There is little to no awareness, let alone acceptance, that even conversation is an art. You must know a little wordplay to make it enthusing, and more than that, you must know the value of timing. This is a privileged complaint, of course. Many do not have people to talk to, so it is in bad taste to have that and crib over it. But then, my dissatisfaction with most conversations I have is so perpetually large that it seems my entire life is slowly leaving something to be desired.

How beautiful it is that we have several languages, words that migrate from one to another, and expressions that know no home? Yet, most people gloss over all that and only talk of the brass tacks, and a large chunk of them even leave gaps between what is essential. People are messy and dirty, and their words reek of their insecurities. Friendships are based on a meagre list of topics; no one reads or thinks enough to break those barriers. It is a subliminal pain when you sit across a person and know the perfect way to phrase something they are sharing with you, and then they use a rather pedestrian way to say it! You sit there, screaming internally: the metaphor was right there. It was served to you five minutes ago. But most people seldom look around enough to know how to talk about what they want to talk about. Most, if not all, the world is at a severe lack of words, and some of us are so full of them that we’re bursting at our seams.

It is a painful life where only the characters talk like you’d expect people to talk; and when people talk, all you want to do is leave.

It is way past afternoon on a Friday, and I sit here with a bowl of cereal, yawning absurdly and intermittently. With two screens facing me and asking me, in their own regard, to get some work done, I feel terribly stretched and exhausted in advance. The day began a few hours ago, and I feel the sort of tired one tends to feel when the week is close to its inevitable end. Most weeks end with me being tired mentally, but there are rare weeks when I am tired physically. My threshold for exhaustion is large, owing to habits inculcated in me from the get-go or, perhaps, some genetic lottery. I reckon, large as it may be, I do reach it now and then. Today is one of those days when a cup of coffee has no benefit, and this cereal seems as useless as an umbrella on a pleasant spring day. And so, my goal for today is to do as much as I can, which I’ve come to realise is always a deviation from the standard, again, owing to the habits I picked up over the years, and then sleep early and sleep well. The jury is still out on whether that will actually happen, but I would be glad if I could manage to end the day on time.

This is by no means unfortunate or terrible. It is but a description of things. It does not have to stand for anything but that—a description. Most people immediately assign emotion to things. This is the Achilles heel of society and those who live in it. Most things are as they are, and what we feel about them adds nothing to the thing itself, its conversation, or its description. Most, not all, of course. That is always a nuance we must remember to consider. Some things warrant you to feel about them. They compel you to comment. If and only if that is the case, should we ever talk about them in the frame of our feelings. The rest, we should let slip like we let time slip, which is to say, we should let them slip without noticing or caring about them until it is much too late, if at all.

It is a foggy, almost opaque night, but things could not be clearer. I cannot see the nearest building, but a glimpse of everything that is important, that is crucial is not out of the question. When I came back to this city three years ago, which have but felt like three consecutive blinks overflowing with events big and small, I envisioned a life for myself. I realised today, with a faux display of a heavy heart, that I failed at building it. In truth, I could not be more glad that I was so off the mark in my planning that what is here today is a mirror image; my plans have been flipped a hundred and eighty degrees. There is no greater celebration I can have today than this: I have failed remarkably, and yet, I am more than glad for where I landed. It is the connotation that is the problem. Failed, in general, is a terrible word; even a soft mention of failure will make someone wince in remembrance of the last time they had overshot or undershot their mark. But the “what” of failure is crucial. What have I failed at? I have failed at creating a life I thought would make me happy, and through it, I have found a life I could not be more grateful for. My moment of clarity on this utterly nebulous day is a testament to what I have found on a road I stumbled and fell on.

In trying to become who I thought I was to become and failing to get even an inch close to it, I have somehow fooled everyone and managed to become something still. I would not be as perverse to have the audacity to suggest this is who I was meant to become. What is meant and what is not is none of my concern. All I know is that this life feels like a solid mistake, the one you’d want to make again and again when you know how things transpire eventually. Perhaps, this is too early to call it. But if someone asked me today what has changed, I would simply tell them that the crucial once is now mundane, and the mundane, the run-of-the-mill, the banal once could not be more crucial now. That is all the difference in the simplest words I can imagine.

I do the dishes with the cold water running over my latex gloves, and suddenly, my watch vibrates on my wrist. When I am finally done with this bookend of a chore, I check my watch. It tells me it is time to sleep. I chuckle at our dystopian existence, which I partake in equally as my aversion to it. Then, I say, “no, it is time to write” in the otherwise empty apartment, and my eyes catch my reflection on the balcony door. It stirs a feeling in me, which I would not chalk up to loneliness, but like how a single tree often sits atop a cliff in its solitary glory—akin to that. I came to the desk, and I started writing. There were words I had pondered over since this day was still full of light, but I had not taken anything down, but this thought seemed too good to pass on. It is a habit.

As meticulous as I am, and despite my fondness for lists and calendars, I have realised I am far too in the moment than most people I know. I am far too aware of where—and when, which is more important—I am than most people who talk of mindfulness like they talk of happiness, which is to say they talk a whole lot more than they experience it.

Habits die harder than most people who write books with bold typeface plastered over them would have you believe. Habits die much harder than most things do, and they are built with even more angst. A peddler of these ideas will never admit how difficult they can be for those who struggle, for there lies no gain in doing that. Habits die a stubborn death, like my habit of making others’ problems my own and loving them only because they offered me a puzzle to solve. It died much after the problems fizzled out themselves. It died much after most of those people had departed from my life. Years would pass with me sitting on the couch, thinking of answers to questions that didn’t exist anymore for people who didn’t need them. But it died, eventually.

Perhaps, that is why they peddle the snake oil of modern improvement. If your book stays on their shelf long enough for all entangled threads to come undone, you have a stake in the credit. How? Why now? They ask. And there is your book, eating dust on their shelf and serving you false glory.

As I walk about the city or move about in cabs or cars that belong to other people, I look around as one does with a sort of imagination that this life is a film we are watching in a theatre. There is a moment of positive detachment. The other day, the same thing happened, and then, the city whispered a secret in my ear, and for a second, I thought I heard the word “excitement”, but then, I could not be too sure. There were too many noises from all around for me to have been sure of it. But if I were to gamble, I’d say it was something to do with excitement, and I reckon the city was telling me to loosen up a little.

The city has grown as I have, and I think our intertwined stories, both of which are written with significant gaps in important events, left out like some sort of mystery, have the same moral: things change, and our best bet is to be excited for most of them. The rest happen as they do, but most things are worth being excited about.

This is the secret the streets whisper into my ear now and then. To be excited about things, in general. Why are you stoked about something as silly as this? They ask me. Why shouldn’t I be? There is so much here—a whole life built year by year. Just the other day, we were out for drinks. As we descended and exited the building, I ran into the baristas at my favourite cafe, who were on their way upstairs. We met with a smile and a camaraderie I do not have with the oldest of my friends. About an hour later, I met another face standing behind the counter at another cafe I frequent. These are little events, but they are essential.

Everyone needs roots, they say, but they fail to mention that if the tree is alive, and if it is thriving, or perhaps even growing in a measly manner, the roots keep growing too. And that is what the city reminded me of the other day. But I couldn’t be too sure, I swear. The music was loud, and we humans tend to tell ourselves things we wish to say to ourselves through proxy.

We are always looking for someone else to tell us what we want to tell ourselves.

The fact that I have written mainly about time for the latter part of last year, and not just about it but the passage of it, is not unfounded. I noticed this tendency a while back, and if you have read any of these bookmarks, these pieces, even with significant gaps between them, I reckon you would have noticed this, too.

Why did I not interrupt it if I were aware of this repetition? Because writing correctly about a subject is a game of practice. We must obsessively try our hand at it, over and over, and if we are lucky, and if we are good, only then do we get to capture it. What people call theme is simply a writer’s valiant attempts to write about something banal. Some spend their lives writing about the same thing, and then, someday, they write but a sentence, and it captures everything they have written about it before.

For now, in this fresh beginning where we all must make some changes, I believe I am tired of writing about time, and I shall slowly turn my eyes towards other things. The ticking of the clock is so well positioned in the middle of my head that even if I do nothing in a day, I feel time passing, and if a day is so full I barely get a chance to breathe, I feel it passing still. This awareness is not your run-of-the-mill inkling where someone knows that days get on, and so do lives. It is that of a librarian who keeps a meticulous record of where each book is kept. That is how I have kept my hours for all these months.

The other day, a friend told me they are trying something new as part of the annual mimetic shenanigans. Will you change something, then? They asked me once they walked me through their list of changes. I think I wish to spend a day without feeling time passing. I thought this, but I did not say anything. All I knew was that it was imperative I do this now. Sometimes, you just know.

So, our circus begins again. Today, we march through time with our little steps and continue our shenanigans. It is a quiet beginning, and I notice an increasing capacity for all things calm within me. It is a quiet beginning, and I would not have it any other way.

I came back to my apartment after lunch. Per custom, I made a cup of coffee, set the mug on the rug, and sat to watch a film. Then, I watched another, and then another. By the time the credits rolled over for the third one, the curtains of the night sky had rolled over the pale January day as well. At some point, while I sat with a blanket wrapped loosely around myself, I realised how calm it all is in my mind lately. It may be winter outside, but in my mind, it is always warm. The sun always shines, and there is warmth I can always draw from. There is little left to prove to anyone. There is little agenda left in my days. I only want things to keep going forward. It is an incredible desire. The universe may not take kindly to my quiescent but bold demand. But as I sat in the comfort of my own company this evening, I made it. I made my demand.

If there’s anything that has changed in how I look at it all, it is that my feet are sure of themselves now, and I rarely stumble and fall when I take a walk in the street. I fail to recall any recent instance of tripping over nothing. That is the note I will begin this year on if I must. I will start it with a sense of security unbeknownst to me before. But then, if I can avoid it, I will begin this year without a note at all. Notes set expectations, and we are all equally cognizant of what happens when that happens.

If I could make any wish for the next cycle, I would make no wish at all, and if I were compelled to set an intention, I would try and pick nothing. I believe this and only this is what I have learned about life—an axiom. Everything else is a corollary to it.

My heart is unwavering, my steps are sure, and I am ready to dance to whatever tunes time brings along. I have never really felt a desire for a resolution anyway. I have ever only jumped through the hoops.

Now that the calendar is all but run out, now that it is the last day of the year, I will have to think of a conclusion, or at least a thoughtful, perhaps, poignant sentence. But I sit here with my coffee, as I have sat day after day. To me, this is just another day. How can I claim things have concluded when they are still very much on their way, when I know I am engulfed in the beginning still? This thought repulses me. There is little to say about the last day of a year besides just one: another year begins tomorrow. That is where its significance begins and ends.

When all is said and done, which is another way of saying “in the end” while deliberately avoiding those exact words, there is not much to any of it. To go through a day is to go through a year, and to go through a year is to go through a life, which is a roundabout way to suggest that it is but a day today—nothing more, nothing less. It is but a day today, and what we choose to do with it will have as much control over our lives as any other day has had so far.

How much control is that? Now, that is up to us to decide. That is the tricky part. That is always the tricky part.

My passion is rationed. My zeal is cut up into small portions as if I were preparing meals for the week and then used on a case-by-case basis. I am too careful with my time and attention—which is to say I don’t let one idea envelop my soul. To me, that is a sort of surrender I cannot make, and then, I look around and see this is a flaw. This is my biggest flaw in plain sight. The world seeks to be defined, and here, even after spending over a decade playing with words, I shy away from calling myself a writer. Now, the need to be defined, to have a meaning assigned to your life by proxy, is not washed over me. I understand it and respect it when it is in others. It only disgusts me when I think of this need in myself, even in my imagination. To define destroys what you could be.

Let’s say I call myself a writer as audaciously as those who sit and write banal, run-of-the-mill poems without an ounce of thought behind them, which often read like the lines we reject when we sit and write thoughtfully. Let’s say I do that, and then, one day, for some unfortunate circumstance and loss of some faculty, I cannot write anymore. What then? Who will I be, and what will I call myself? A person has to be more than a single thing they do. They must be so much more, so they keep the world guessing. If nothing else, it keeps things interesting.

But in everything I do, I will always keep some part of myself away from it. I will always be the sum of the parts, and I will always be an outsider. That is one way to be one of a kind, of course, but my soul fears being limited by labels. There is little I can do about it. Like how moths flutter towards a flame, even if it causes them to burn and die, I, too, cannot resist this urge, this instinct.

Perhaps, it is not up to me. We all want to belong, don’t we? It is just that when I enter a room and meet people who look the same, sound the same, and act the same way, it scares me. Then, it irks me. Slowly, it sickens me. All of them are dead inside. If that is the cost, then I will always refuse to pay it. I will always have the option of changing my course if I begin to dislike myself.

How many others, I reckon, can make that claim?

It is a brumal day, and the sun has not broken still. Nothing seems to have any authority over the blinding white, foggy sky. The hills have succumbed to the winter haze, and the city is visible in parts. There is a cup of coffee on your desk. You don’t remember when you kept it there. You are sure the coffee is as cold as water by now. You stand barefoot on the wooden floor as you dress up for the day. As you pull the pullover over yourself, it occurs that although things have not happened exactly as you wanted them to, this year came through for you.

Most of your wildest dreams have come true, and so have some of your fears, but the latter is far trivial to dive into, so you let it be an afterthought and walk towards the desk. You pick up the cup of coffee and drag the curtains open. The first instance makes the room light up, even without the sun. Yes, even then. Then you sip the coffee, which tastes as you had expected, and then, you realise this is how the year has unfurled too—precisely as you wanted it to. The sun shows its face just then as if it were a nod of acknowledgement. Of course, that means nothing, and all of it is a massive coincidence, but still, it stirs in you a sort of hope that what’s to come may not be as you expect it, that things may be different than they look, that we are not always as fortunate to have things transpire per plan—as vague as it may be.

And so, with no rhyme or reason, you decide to get down and walk to the coffee shop. As you do, you notice a slight drizzle. It could just be dew, of course. You continue walking. You brave the windy weather as your scarf tries its best to not fly away, and it begins to rain. “How random things are!” You cannot believe it. “How quickly the tide of this day has changed,” you remark. “How random things are, and here I stand, with so much happiness in my heart. What else can I say about anything at all? “

You walk in and get a cup of coffee. A year is almost over. All the grace you wished for about three hundred and sixty-five days ago has made a quiet home in your heart.

A year is almost over. The world is still beautiful.

Anything you lose too quickly does not deserve to be held by you, and you should make proper arrangements to change how you keep it, and if that seems impossible, you must let it go.

If you keep losing a ring, you need to check if it’s too loose and get it bent to size. Temporarily, you may even wind a string through and around it to tighten it. But if you promise yourself you’ll get it fixed but never do, you must stop wearing it. It saves you from heartache when you lose it, as you inevitably will. We should not take second or third chances for granted. Something lost once is lost forever. Sometimes, serendipity intervenes. But beyond that little favour, it’s all up to you.

If you keep losing your composure, for example, in a year which has left but a smidge of it remaining. If your patience seems like a flimsy, ceramic mug with cracks on every corner of it, you should let it break sooner than later. You must loosen your grip on it all and, unhinged as it may seem, rage against it all. You must let go and scream. If you keep losing your composure, you may need to lose it all before you can start amassing it. Then, you must be careful to never lose it again.

And what if you lose a lover once? Well, you must follow suit. You must let them go. If that seems too painful, you must do it in secret. You must slowly cease meeting them or calling them and find someone else. It is the best outcome for everyone facing the misfortune of being involved in the shenanigans of your fecklessness.

No object, and surely, no person should be at the receiving end of irresponsibility. It is the worst possible thing a person can do to anything on this planet. And most people live life this way. They keep losing things and promising they will change their ways or get them fixed, but then, time passes, and they are still who they are—they lose things and leave a trail of trinkets behind.

And then, they throw a fit against the world, knowing in their heart their pain is unwarranted and, frankly, selfish. They flail knowing that all they had to do was be careful.

And if that was simply not possible, all they had to do was let go.

There are days so calm you live through and barely stop to think about them. As beneficial as they are for happiness, they are useless for the writing. I laugh, and I live, and then I face the page in terror, which soon becomes agony. Where is my mind? It is lost in the daze of simple pleasures, laughter and conversation and the quiet embrace of a vacation right at the end of the year. It has not stopped to think or worry.

Earlier this morning, I did not think of much, but I did sip my coffee surrounded by family. For a second, I thought of it: my sordid search for balance and how this year has proven to be an answer for it all. It lasted for but a second, and then, interrupted by laughter, I came back to the moment. In many ways, this was precisely what this year had given me: a steady stream of interruptions. All my happiness, which was in abundance, was interrupted before turning into complacency, and even a smidge of my sadness was stopped before it became heartache—long before it even got close.

This was the balance I had begged for from others, from cities and friends and lovers. I was denied this over and over, but often as we do in dejection, I was too afraid to open the letter. If I had, if I had even once had the guts to ask: why do you refuse this tiny demand of mine? I would have received a simple answer in every letter, email, and phone call. It would have been plastered on the walls if I had only once had it in me to ask.

“It is not ours to give.”

When I say, I often think about how we record, I mean I think of it all the time, compulsively and obsessively. Humans live, and when living is not enough, we record our lives—in words, in pictures, in art and in film. We want more than to be alive. We want to be remembered as we are, and we want to look at how we were.

I sit, sandwiched between the bed and a stack of blankets on a night so cold my fingers struggle to find the correct keys. I’ve typed all words with errors; then, I have erased them to write them correctly. It will probably take me twice as long to write today, but I will do it regardless. It is almost ridiculous when you think about it. Almost. Then, human as you are, you would understand. Why must I record these bookmarks? I have earned the right to ask this question now that I have spent a year, shy of a couple of weeks, writing them. Why should I remember all these days without any detail about my life? I wish with the right to ask this question, an answer would have arrived too. But things and life are seldom as straightforward. Something in me tells me this will be important. For what? I do not know yet. All I know is that it is a question for another day, and I have an inkling that the answer will make me stop in my tracks someday years from now, and then, I will ask the question.

That is often how things happen: in reverse, in an indirect, frustratingly roundabout way; like how you only know the warmth of the sun on a cold night as this one, like how you only know love when you realise you have none left, like how you understand how crucial the beginning is when things are about to end.

Things have a tendency to work out like that, but they tend to work out after all. Convoluted as it is and haphazard as it stands, there is nothing more glorious than this meaningless life we are compelled to record, generation after generation, people after people.

It is a night so cold that every breath I exhale is visible even inside the room, but here I sit, writing with fingers that have overshot their mark about a thousand times. There is something in this, too.

No matter how good you are at crunching numbers, regardless of how much your feet are dipped in the river of time, you will always be surprised when moments come to pass. Life is an unreal experience. You find yourself in the middle of a moment, and despite all your imagination, only then do you know what it feels like. All your estimation is a poor proxy for experience. For most of your life, you will be caught off-guard by the unexpected happiness around you. You will sit around people and laugh, knowing that you knew you would get here somehow, but that all of it would happen like this was beyond your wildest imagination. No plans can prepare you for joy. It is one of the sweetest pleasures of being alive: to feel alive in a way you did not know you could.

Time feels like a substance we do not comprehend yet, or perhaps, never well. It bends over on itself. The shock of it passing and yet, staying still in more ways than we can count is not something we are never prepared for.

I vividly remember episodes from my childhood as I sit in a blanket on a hazy day irreconcilably far from it. No understanding of relativity will ever make this easier to digest. The sheer confusion of being old enough to handle myself and yet, knowing that I am still the same child in more ways than I can name right now causes a lump in my throat. I swallow reality with a gulp. It all makes me feel more alive, if nothing else.

But what has brought this onslaught of happy terror, this barrage of glorious surrender to time? A coincidence. I had a day impeccably similar to a day I had so many years ago; I would have to stop writing and do the mathematics to tell you the correct number. They were so alike, so happily alike, that I could have sworn for a second I forgot all this time had passed and that I sat there looking like how I do today. I could have sworn, for a second, I did not know when the clock stopped ticking. I blinked on a day all those years ago, and suddenly, I was here today.

It is always sudden. We call it passing as if it is a slow, gradual shift, but when you look back, it is always sudden.

I wiped the frost off the cold glass window as the bus zoomed past the night. I checked my watch. It was five to one, and everyone else was asleep. I looked at the fog and caught a glimpse of the nebulous world I lived in. For a change, it looked exactly like it was: unclear and blurry. There are moments when, once again, we come face to face with how irrelevant all our little and large troubles are simply because so many others live lives as vivid as our own. Sonder, they call it these days. It is a popular word indeed, and for good reason. I reckon we all ought to experience it now and then, deliberately, even if life does not give us a chance. But then, life rarely passes an opportunity to make you feel this troubling belonging, this odd kinship. I am a person because I have worries of my own. I see you, too, have some in your backpack. Perhaps, we can be friends, and if that is not possible for reasons unknown, then let us simply smile and excuse each other as we pass by.

Places like a filled bus or a crowded mall are a microcosm of the world. If you can navigate through them well enough, rest assured, you can navigate through the world. And if you can tolerate your urban loneliness in them, be sure, you will always handle your own in life. At least, this has been my experience. You feel a specific sort of alone in a bus cruising through the midnight hour along empty highways and backroads. Most often, the best course of action is to get some shut-eye like everyone else, but then, if you are like me and you struggle to sleep now and then, another thing to do is revel in the moment.

You can feel alive at the edge of some mountain or some cliff, feeling the tremendous range of human emotions all at once. That is one way to go about it. Another is to sit in a bus and look at the sheer breadth of the human experience, to notice the people and how they carry themselves. That, too, makes you feel alive. Everyone has someplace to be, but here, for this little slice of time, we all go together. How could someone not feel life surging through them when this happens?

Over time, I have learned that I must, in some meaningful way, contribute to the world I live in. When I am useful, I am happy. I sat with this thought earlier this afternoon, which was as sunny and warm as a friend’s laughter, and I realised this was an instinct as old as time. I was just another soul for hire in a long line stretching as far back as we can imagine, and then some. The excitement I feel when someone asks something of me is unparalleled. I do not know anything else that moves my feet as fast as a favour does. Can you do this for me? They ask me as if it is an outrageous thing to ask someone in your life. Why, of course. Why else would I be here?

I do not go out to seek my purpose. I live my life, and it often comes to me as a favour or a request and, sometimes, as duty. I do not know much else, frankly, and the questions of why we are here tire me. It is an easier answer. Why are we here? For others. Then, why are the others here? For myself, for everyone else. How do you think all of us got here in the first place? Humanity has gone through many perils, but someone has always stopped to help someone when they saw it. We should not complicate things which are far simpler if we simply stopped talking about them.

There is little else in my mind today but the past and the present. I do not care much about the future today. It will come as it comes. It will be another year soon, and it will pass like this one did—in a hurry I have not had the misfortune of experiencing yet. I wonder where time has to reach in the end that it passes us by so quickly. In my mind today are all the people I have met, all the people left behind, and the few who are still here. In this foggy bus ride to celebrate the joy of doing nothing for a week, I shall think about this: the life I have lived and the people I have loved. I shall keep them in my mind.

Time moves by so fast that we rarely get a chance to think of everyone else. But we should. We should. Life isn’t as easy without other people, nor is it worth living.

Before you begin writing, you must be ready to reject the first two paragraphs, and, on some days, you must do three. You must do this no matter how good they are, even if the words flow like a life that knows no trouble and a love that knows no deceit. Even then, you must erase them before you even get a chance to look at them properly, to read them through. It is not about the writing or the quality of the words but only about what they say. They are what you’d call the slag and the lather. They are what you feel in the moment, how you felt during the day. They are what a person may have said to you because they weren’t on their best behaviour. You must wash your hands and your soul off them. Before you begin writing, you must go through a proverbial baptism and sit without anything that drags you down. It is the only way to ensure that your writing responds to the grave problem of existence and is not a knee-jerk reaction to the world. On most days, this alone will make your words seem polished.

How do you always have something to say? They ask when they question me about my writing. You should see what I don’t say, I tell them. The words would stretch out for miles and cover the Earth enough times for you to stop keeping track of their journey. There is so much I don’t say in these words, in general, when I am out and about.

I wonder why that is, but all these years of playing with words have taught me that once you say something, you can rarely take it back. You can use more words to counter what you said earlier, of course, and that is perfectly valid, but you can never erase what is uttered once, even in laughter, even in joy, even in the lightest of spirits. All of us have to be sure of what we should say, and it often is best to look past the first thing that comes to our mind.

That is all my little method achieves. It discards the first thing that comes to my mind, and to be sure, it discards the second, the third, and even the fourth, sometimes. It rejects until there is little to reject. Then, I can sit and write peacefully. If the thought I write about was not wandering in the gardens of my mind before I sat to write, I am sure it is a good one.

Lie down on the couch or the chair and pull up a blanket over yourself. It is December. There is dew on the grass and frost on the windows. Sit down and take a deep breath. It has been a year, once again. A little heat would do you well. We must all rest and rejoice when things end. It is not an easy task to spend a year and come out unscathed. People rarely achieve it, and if you did not come out without scratches, then you must, by all means, sit and rest. After all, in a few days, it will all begin again. Life has a tendency to keep going. No one prepares us for the effort it takes to learn to live—not doing things, but simply living. But it does take effort; it takes a lot of it.

We must rest when we get the chance. It makes me laugh how to live is to breathe, and yet, pausing to take a breath is something we are the slowest to learn. No one teaches us this, so we take the most time to learn this, and yet, it is the single-most requirement to lead a life worth living. So, you must begin today. There is still a week left. Sit in the sun tomorrow, and watch the world glow with yellow respite. There will be time to do what is left. It is never too late, but you must learn to sit in the sun. The year is not yet over. There is still one more thing to learn. And if you take my word for it, a week is more than enough to learn to breathe. We must look around more often.

Perhaps, that is what I ought to do next year—look around more often. You can never get enough of the world; there is always more. There is always more than what meets the eye. But we must learn to stop and catch our breath and look around the world. It is something most people do not learn at all. And then, when the time comes, they do what they ought to have done much earlier. They lie under a blanket, struggling to breathe, looking around frantically. They do not know how to do it correctly.

That is when they realise that all life is practice for the moment we die, and we must keep at it if we want to do it gracefully.