Dog-Ears

I have reason to believe they recently came out with a rule, or perhaps, an initiative to better inform consumers of the value of products they purchase. Most packaging, most stores, online or offline, now carry a note about the unit selling price. Or perhaps, it may be worth elucidating this for the less mathematically inclined, and I do not mean it as an insult—far from it. I simply mean that an example is warranted: if a tin of fifty mints costs a hundred bucks, for example, then below the price would simply be the following note:

And if it is a product that is distributed by weight, then a pack of a hundred grams would have another, similar note, say:

And all that is wonderful, I’m sure, for all sorts of things. Now, we know that the new-age company that is selling us a supplement is, in fact, overcharging us. I believe all of us could be making better decisions and there is no better way to compare items than reducing them down to units. No mental gymnastics are now conducted in the grocery aisle. No one stands there, punching numbers in their phone, trying to draw comparisons between the quality and cost of two different name brands of cereal. No one thinks twice, in an ideal world, for thinking is where they get us because they know that most people are tired after a day at the office, and most people are exhausted under the general weight of life, and to think would be too tall an ask at 8:34 in the evening when a day is about to end and you just want it to be over, when your clothes reek of spilled coffee and sweat, when the list of things you ought to do has not budged, when living is far too much and far too entrenched, and when information is bombarded at you from every seen and unseen corner.

I am sure this serves wonderful benefits.

After a movie at the theatre in the mall, I walked through the aisles to reach the next escalator down, placed strategically by some esteemed architect well above my pay grade, so I peruse and peek through all the stores on the way, or get a cup of coffee, perhaps, or get a book. And that is what I did. I walked into the bookstore on the way. I picked one up, just out of curiosity on the title and the art on the cover. Those who claim to not judge a book by its cover, simply have not seen the amount of arduous effort publishers tend to put on what they put out front. We all judge books by covers. The only place that statement is somewhat true is when used as a metaphor for people. But it is a faux metaphor because the literal interpretation does not apply. At least, not in this day and age, when designers, marketers, and, yes, authors, among all sorts of professions, come together to make a single book a reality.

The thing that caught my eye, when I turned to read the book’s abstract on the back cover is that it, too, had a note in the white box along with the price and its ISBN.

It made me laugh, at first, before I realised how the world has changed since I was a little boy. A page in this book costs ₹2.55. I thought. What an absurd, absurd thing to claim! A book is a whole in itself, and all pages are not equal. They are not capsules of fish oil in that one is quite different from the other. A page that is wasted on exposition has little to do with the page that unravels the plot. And the preface, albeit important, is surely not as exciting as the epilogue. And what of the other genres, and the other kinds of books? I reckon a volume of poetry could, in fact, be sold by the page. Even then, the thread needled through all of them, the narrative, the story, the feel and the zeitgeist that it defines, would face terrible losses, if not complete misinterpretation were they removed.

This is the world we live in now, of course, where all of everything is a number. Perhaps, paintings will be sold soon and you will know what each drop of paint costs. But will you know the years of turmoil the artist faced to know where to put each coat? Perhaps not. But that is not where the value lies, I reckon. It lies only within this rampant numerification of the world, of society, and of people. I write these words with my own numerification of the process, having thought about the fact that this piece, in its final form, must be at least a thousand words for a premise like this warrants it. I am not removed from the state of the world, as much as I try to deliberately isolate myself from it. All my attempts and yet, I, too, am a slave to the number on my pay-check, the number of the mortgage for my new home, the age I have reached without publishing a single, worthwhile volume or a book, having nothing but these tattered pieces and essays scattered around with flimsy threads connecting them.

As I sit here, writing these words, sipping my coffee that was cold two hours ago and feels like nothing but a glass of water now, I reckon my disappointment about it all is, perhaps, simply because I failed to write a book before they began to be sold by the page. And now, anything I ever finish will be divided and dissected, and judged for the cost people paid for it. The hostile takeover of artful, tasteful covers was the first thing that happened to books. Perhaps, this is the next, and the world is better for it, I think, because while I have opinions of my own, I surely am just a man living his life. Others are far more esteemed, far more educated and far more responsible to be able to comment on the state of the world.

As far as I am concerned, I’d wager that in an epidemic when no one sits to read simply for the enjoyment of it and to read without gaining something out of it is an act of heresy, of rebellion, and the one who does it, an alien, we might as well go ahead and sell books by the pages. At least, they will still be sold. At least, that is some solace.

Our father used to sing songs—occasionally, unprompted, and out of his own volition. I only remembered this how you remember to tie your shoelaces. You do not go over the specifics of the process day after day, but you do know it in your heart. I reckon it was not until my brother asked me earlier this evening, and it was not until he proceeded to describe a day from our summer break from school, way back when we were children with time on our side and on our hands, that it occurred to me that I, too, have a vivid memory of it. Our father used to sing songs in the summer. Since I remembered this, like how you can only focus on breathing if you become ever so conscious of it, I have only thought about it. My father used to sing songs. What stopped him? I do not know. But I reckon it was the heaviness of life, and that we all grew up and became busier. The levity of singing outlandish, almost archaic songs with somewhat comedic or idyllic undertones must have been extinguished with the lack of laughter at home. It was so refreshing. I remember this at least. It was a different time. I remember this, too.

I have seen enough of life now to imagine what could have slowly stopped him. It could have been the notorious practicalities of life, the debts of money, time and energy which suffocated the urge to riff to a tune. It could have been the other bits, the parts he never talks about, or the parts he talks about often but never to reach catharsis—an aimless rant into the ether—the betrayals, the knives and words twisting into his back, the weight of invisible expectation pushing down on his life. The same six or seven stories about how things did not go his way, the same six or seven laments, the same six or seven times the inclination could have come back but did not. It could have been the unwarranted demands. It could have been the weight, the unstoppable weight, that I, too, have begun to feel now and then. It could be the invitations, the expectations, the need to keep up appearances that ate away at the little until no song remained.

Of course, my father has grown old. So has my mother. So have those they knew, those who are still here, and so did those who left us behind: aunts and uncles and family friends alike. A lot has changed in this town, and a lot has changed in this life, and I am not a boy anymore, but I often wish I was. I wish I still had days and days to read, the never-setting sun strained through the window like the perfect glass of orange juice right into my face, the hope and the energy to sit in front of the computer screen, hungry to learn, ever-so-hungry for life. I believe a lot has changed, but a lot remains. I love my father today as I did then. I love my mother, too. A lot of it has to do with days I do not sit to sift through but which remain buried deep within the shelves of my mind. I ought to take some of them out from time to time and dust them off. Perhaps, we ought to laugh a little, be children again, be aimless and thoughtless and live together again.

I remember now. It was a wonderful, wonderful time we had. The summer days seemed as bottomless as our endless games of carrom. We had a happy childhood. Our mother would sit and help us get ready for the next school year, playfully annoyed at him for he would start suddenly with his distinct baritone, and then, we would not hear anything else but the song from him for days. Each song was its own little phase, like that of the moon, reflecting the sun’s warmth onto all of us till the summers would end.

Oh, what I would not give for him to break into a song today.

I have kept the child inside me alive. Not only alive, I have kept him thriving. Perhaps, it is not apparent in my disposition, my mannerisms, and especially my words, but a ladybird entered the flat yesterday, and I must have spent thirty minutes, spread over intervals, to check up on it, to look at it in giddiness, to be happy that something like it exists in the world. It left at some point when I slid open the balcony door. It wasn’t in the spot where it had spent most of the afternoon.

I remember when we used to be children; this was a great deal. It was of utmost importance. We would run to our parents, to each other, to share the auspicious news. Sometimes, we would softly let it crawl over our fingers and onto our palms. “Look,” we would gleam with ardent eyes, “a ladybird!” We would be sure to tell this to our friends at school. Those were simpler times.

But people have not done justice to the children they once were. I met a friend for coffee the other day, and we talked about the big things. Soon I will meet another for drinks, and we will merely talk about the big things still. We will talk about stocks and bonds, of how the foreign investment has curtailed, like our seemingly receding hairlines over the years, of how the air is full of dust but the new apartment complex down the main street has this chic, almost regal appearance, of how we would want to live there, of how we never can. We will talk about who is marrying who, and who cheated on whom, and who had a side piece ready before they got out of their current relationship. We will talk about our pains and perils, the bitch that are monthly installments, the bosses and the managers and the politics at work. We will even touch upon how difficult the chores are but how necessary, and we will talk about what books we read but not say it was exhilarating but discuss the themes and the intricacies of the narrative instead. We may discuss and even argue over our views about public infrastructure. I will say there is no focus on making this city walkable again. They will tell me to get a car. We will talk about all of this and so much more.

We will not talk about ladybirds.

Saturday. I shut my alarm off and wait for a little while. You tell me in your beautiful grogginess that it is time to wake up. I tell you I will be up in a few minutes. This is untrue. I turn and snuggle into your arms. There is no protest; you hold me instead. I sleep for another half an hour until I do get up. I let you sleep for a little bit, but then you come into the room and exclaim, “You’re sitting here!? I thought you were in the washroom.” “I got up and came here.” I say while taking a sip of my coffee, facing a partially solved crossword, to which you say, “I had to use it! I was waiting!”. “Well, use it, then come back to me.”

“I love you,” I smile.

“I love you, too.”

Then, you unfurl the mat in the hall and stretch a little in your gym clothes right in front of me. I take an extra ten minutes solving the crossword. And then, you go out for chores. I order the groceries in. I nap while trying to meditate—for a few minutes until I realise it is time to begin the day. I get ready. You get back, having picked the groceries up from the gate. Then, you get ready, too.

Then, we waste a little bit of time waiting for laundry to finish its buzzing and humming. I take care of the bills—the rent, the credit card, the savings, and the rest—and I plan a little about the rest of the day. Then, the washing machine beeps, and I spread the sheets and covers on the drying stand. I come back in, walk to the kitchen, and unpack the new mould to fry some eggs. I brush it with oil and begin. You stand beside me, watching intently like a curious child. The pan sizzles with each one I drop into the round ring on the pan. I cook them one at a time; I cook two for you. Then, I cook two for me, too.

“What is left to do today?” You ask me, as we lay in bed.

“Nothing. We have the whole day to us.”

“Will you go to the lake with me?”

“Of course, we’ll walk around it.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I am wide awake. The bus cruises towards the open night. I recall the last month, the last week. I have spent more time on the road than in your arms. This does not sit well with me, but I have nowhere to keep these feelings; the plastic magazine pocket behind the seat in front of me is broken beyond repair, and my pockets are full.

The memory of your face and sleep have raced each other inch to inch for the past few hours, and you have won with the widest margin possible, for sleep is nowhere to be found, and all I can see right now is your face, and all I have managed to do so far is miss you, terribly so, with the helplessness of a child who drops his cone of ice cream on the pavement on a hot summer day.

It has not gone how I had imagined. For all my bold claims, the book I ought to write remains unwritten, but I have seen a city or two or plenty, and I have missed you in every one of them. No, it has not been a far cry from it all. In another year, this would have bothered me beyond repair; this failure would have overstayed its welcome. But it is barely a problem. At most, it is an inconvenience.

I sit here tonight in my delirium of exhaustion, and I wonder if another four days will break my back, if I can take them on and find my way back to you, into quiet mornings of soft nothings, of sunlight falling on white sheets, of everything I thought I will never live to see. I sit here tonight, sleepless, and I wonder if I will do it all again, this month, these years, all of it, if I have it in me to live again, pledge my allegiance to hope again, be brave again.

Yes, if it ends in your arms, yes.

Sit down beside me. You do not have to say anything, and neither will I. As long as we do not talk about it, it does not exist. So, we must continue this way, never talking about it, never making it true. You do not feel it as long as you do not say it, and neither do I if I avoid saying it, too. We can stay this way, in the ambiguity forever, of me never knowing it, of you never saying it, but in the end, you will have said it a thousand times over, and I will have said it, too, only in a language only both of us ever knew. The world will not know about it, and why should it? This is a tête-à-tête, and we must be quiet and we must be soft. We must stick to the whispers, corners, and shadows.

We must only meet at parties and among people. We must only talk in glances. I will know what you mean, and you will know what I do, too. This is a given. It is the only given. I do not know many languages, but I am fluent in this one. And then, we must dance with others; we must dance with every person before we approach each other, so it seems as if nothing is amiss, nothing is at play. And then, we must behave; we must maintain decorum. The walls have ears, too. No one must hear us; we must talk in silence. You will smile and tell me how you feel. I will smile at you, and you, too, will know. But we must never say it. We must never utter the word. We must take the time we have, and then, we must part our ways as people part their ways. We should go on with our lives. We should marry other people, or not, but we must never utter the word or tell the story. It will never be real if we do not say it.

This fiction exists only in the imagination of two particularly stubborn people. You have kissed me a thousand times over, and I have held you countless times, too. We have done this from afar, and we have done this with finesse, with grace, and without anyone catching on. Now, it is time for me to leave. Now, it is time for you to go. Nothing was said, so nothing happened. As long as we uphold the vow and never talk about it, as long as we never say the word, it will never have existed. And yet, I will always remember you, and I hope you will remember me, too.

This piece was first seen on The Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) as part of an addendum to the Symposium on Fiction, the deadline for which passed me by like most love has passed me by: without my realisation, like a swift yet furtive cat, like a confession never uttered.

Walking through, below and around the marvels of a world far gone, of genius left behind, of greatness, succumbed to the lashes of time, it occurred to me that only to see these places with my own eyes was once a dream. Has it come true? I do not know. Dreams do not come true; they only disappear and get folded into reality. Dreams only exist until you cannot differentiate them very well from reality. From that point on, it is but life. Unlike our days or the rest of our existence, dreams do not have a moment where they are happening. They instantly become memories. In the precise moment you achieve whatever you dreamt of, you begin missing the yearning, the want, the hours and days you spent thinking of what would happen if it ever came true.

My dreams have come true, but at what cost, for I have lost them. One might say it is a blessed life, for much of what I dreamt of not more than a decade ago has already begun to happen. And they will be correct. But they will not know how burning too fast through that list has its challenges. You cannot dream as quickly, and suddenly, you find yourself in a life with a dearth of the impossible. As I sit here, having become who I always wanted to be, it occurs to me the truest dream is the one that can never come true.

Writing the first book takes you a lifetime, but writing the second takes you a deadline. That is how dreams work, too. The first few that come true simmered for years, maybe even since you were not as privy to the world’s ways. Then, you learn how to dream, and therein lies the problem.

I continue dreaming, but all my dreams are curtailed to fit within the curtains of reality. The more dreams come true, the more realistic the others begin. No longer do I dream of pink skies, for I know they cannot exist. Instead, I dream of a day not too far from the one I have right now. I dream of love, but not an impossible, colourful one, just the one that will stay by my side for the longest possible time. No longer do I dream of the unreal.

Grateful as I am for all the gifts I’ve received, I wish I could dream of impossibilities again, but I cannot; I do not know how anymore.

Time has marred and blemished it all.

This piece was first seen on The Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) as part of an addendum to the Symposium on Dreams, which I had missed because (and fittingly so) I was walking around in one of mine.

I lie down on the blue lounger in absolute comfort at the end of a long day, thinking about it all once again—this life, the days, of how despite these comforts, every day is long and stretches into midnight and is muddied like watercolours being mixed on a plastic palette. The day is as long as I have known any day to be. I read a few poems and watch the sky flicker with lightning in the distance. They triggered a storm warning yesterday, and all of us braced ourselves. Winds of sixty, seventy kilometres per hour, gusting up to eighty, the message warned. The storm dropped in the middle of the day. The dark, looming cloud over the valley cried pearls of hail. For some time, everything was quiet.

Nothing but the murmur of the rain existed for a while. We remained cooped up as we are on most afternoons. Most people did what they would do anyway, albeit with some pauses. Many windows were opened, I believe, to get a moment of respite, and dogs whimpered away into corners only they knew of. Then, the rain stopped, and out we went like clockwork. Nothing ever stops in this world. People always have places to be, things to do, and errands to run. I went to the mall to get some things, and it was as crowded as always—cafe after cafe and pub after pub filled with people. The grocery store checkout still queued into a deadlock, and tired workers stood pressing the same screen, opening the same drawers, counting the same cash and swiping the same cards.

Nothing stops our will for the mundane. The real adventure is the struggle to find a cab or a dilapidated rickshaw. Everything else is a scam, snake oil, and dreams sold as if they are any better than what most people already live. A person on a coffee run has more purpose than a hippie meditating on some mountain. The people who fall through the cracks pretend they have the answer to a question that does not exist. Most people only wait for the rain to stop. Then, they quietly go out and about their business. It is the most purpose anyone ever needs—to leave the house and know where you’re going. I lie on the lounger, tired. But tired as I am, I would not replace a single day in this life.

A plant in my apartment has suddenly outgrown its pot by a wide margin. Its stems have made almost a truss bridge to ensure the leaves closest to the window and its light stay upright. Yes, I plan to move it to a larger pot soon, but something in witnessing something become exceptional has me putting off this mundane task. There is beauty in overreaching, so for now, there it is, partially suspended in midair, and here I am, watching it. Perhaps, my love for this irrelevant moment comes from the fact that I, too, have overreached for a little bit, and for a little while, I was glorious, too. Now, I try what I can try and do not go beyond my bounds so much. The plant reminds me of some parts of my life. It is a photograph that was never clicked. It is a chronicle that was never written. I plan to savour the visual for as long as I feasibly can, but then, I will give it support, change the pot, and tie some of its branches with some twine. I will not let it fall freely under the weight of its own accolades; no, I will allow a graceful regression for it—one that I did not get when I did fly for a second or two.

It baffles me that if you look closely, there are journeys all around. Lately, finally, I have found myself looking outside of myself once again. I have looked at the world like I did until some months ago. People are often too preoccupied with themselves, and if not themselves, then others, or the general idea of a person, of society, but we ought to see more. The world warrants we look more and talk less. Some things continue to happen despite our meddlesome nature. A whole world exists outside the world of people; if any joy truly exists, it exists in that world. Not in this make-believe, this stage play we conduct every day of relationships, of little scuffles and trysts with paperwork and government offices, of delayed parcels and broken hearts and unsent letters, of clients and projects and appraisals, of all the shenanigans we have created to keep ourselves busy. There is little value in all of that. The flower growing spontaneously on the sidewalk has more to say than any one of us can ever fathom.

Woke up before my alarm and decided to lie in bed for a little bit. Thought of all the times I had thought I could bend life per plan and smiled a little at the long list of times I had failed. There was a craving for coffee at this point, so I got up and made a cup, and put the cup beside the bed on the marble coaster. Dozed off for a little while and waltzed into a dream of the impossible again, only to wake up and realise the music was still playing. Turned the speaker louder and got out of bed, and sipped the coffee that had gone cold. Sat at the desk and replied to some messages. But no mention, no thought of writing until then.

Last year was a year full of writing, and it had little place for life. This one is not. This one has me putting off my words for others, time and time again. That is the long and the short of it. As for how I feel about it—it is not anyone’s concern.

But it is worth a thought, and so, I wondered what was different, and of course, it was that I had a job once again and a life once again. The very thing I advocate, the sun around which all my words revolve, is now, once again, eating at it. To live, to be a part of the world once again has left little time to write about it. I do not haggle with the good and bad of things, so I do not know how much of any this is, but there is little control I have over it anyway, now that I am in it.

I look at the Pessoa beside me and the Carver at the lounger behind. What would they think? I do not know. I have no goddamn idea what they would think. But I can do little when no plan works in this life anyway. You set a few ground rules, and then you watch it go as it goes, over and over and over.

Sat to write for a little while without a plan for where things will go. Reached the last line in time to begin working for the day. There is little else to say about anything else. My notes stay with me, and my memory is roughly reliable when it comes to the myriad of things that happen in life. I can always find time to write about the things I do not have time to write about right now.

All around the planet, in every home is the same lament when it comes to how things could be. Things could be harder, sure, but they could be easier, too. And that’s the long and the short of it. And then, everyone talks about something else or doesn’t talk about anything for a minute or two, but they all agree and sigh. Surely, things could be easier, too, they all think in unison. All over, this happens day after day. There is little we can do about it but carry on—with conversation and with life.

It rained till the morning today. How do I know this? Because I was up working on something as usual. My obsession is as unpredictable as my disposition, but a rainy morning mobilises them both. The morning reminded me of my dream from the other day: I woke up at five, but the air was too muggy. It was sunny outside when I did, but it did not sit right by me since I knew it was five in the morning. How did I know that? How I know it is inching towards midnight as I write these words. All of us have a sense of time. The whole schtick is to feel time pass.

I noticed there was no power in the apartment. I walked to the circuit board and pulled its door open. Inactive. I walked to the balcony, searching for electricity—in the flats all around, on the streets in the distance, on the lone bulb hanging outside the tin shed nearby. Nothing. The world was suddenly out of power. At first glance, though, it looked the same. Only now, suddenly and almost in one fell swoop, there was useless clutter around me. In one moment, everything was redundant and had no reason to exist. Of course, with the ridiculousness of it all, I could sense it was a dream. But for a second, I was convinced of the pointlessness.

Since then, it has set in me: the burst of futility. Like a stain you cannot fully wash out of a suit you once wore at someone’s wedding, like the hindsight-induced regret of a childhood long gone, like a broken vow, like the countless decisions that could have gone either way, like the thousand times we’ve talked about things, of how they could be harder, sure, but they could be easier, too; like the sigh that follows after.

This is a world of advertisement and commodification. It is not enough to do something; you must also advertise it the best you can. The cameras should constantly be rolling. Sipping coffee is not a complete act in itself; you must also film it, you must film the banalest, the most normal things people do, and you must take obscene ownership of that. No one before you has sipped coffee from that point on. Now, you are the poster child for this activity people have done for more days than the number of beats your heart will ever take. No, you now have ownership of this, and not just this, because you now know that this is what it is all about; you can now take anything, such as running or even writing. It is not essential to write, no. You must make a video of it all, with all the bells and whistles that most writers don’t have or, better, don’t need, such as a candle or two, or writing with a view. Most writers write. Those who don’t write tell others they write. Most life is lived quietly. That is true for most of the world. It is lived by going through the motions, by remembering things.

But this world is not about most people, no. It is the world of a select few, of those who are the loudest with the least to show for it, but the inventory is rarely done. Of course, my qualms with it come from the fact that it is a world I do not fit in. Not anymore. Not with my want for genuine honesty in all of everything. I am honest enough to admit it. I do not believe there is merit in documenting or recording every living, breathing moment. What is living then? Internalising it. Living is a profoundly personal activity, and sometimes, you tell other people things.

Living and recording are not words that share meaning. But language is seldom about meaning, of course. It is always about usage. If living has a different meaning now, however, I pronounce most of us dead. This is the afterlife. Despite the good we did, we somehow ended up in hell.

I go to the store to buy some clothes. I pick out three or four things. I walk to the checkout counter. Whoever I’m with—a friend, my mother, my brother—asks me if I want to try out some more, that it was a quick decision, that they have time if I want to look around more, that the green one over there in the corner might look excellent. I softly tell them that I have made up my mind. If I try something else now, it will make it harder, not easier, to decide. Many view this as stubbornness, but no one knows my indecisiveness better than I do. The faux precision with which I cut a decision out of my life, the surgical slice is only an after-effect of my wavering resolve, the doubt in everything I do.

How you do one thing, after all, is how you do everything. No one will admit this, but that does not make it untrue. The way you order at a restaurant is how you seek love, and if you dillydally over deciding what paint to use on your wall, you will delay taking up a job. I avoid my nature in practice. I starve myself of the time to decide; thus, I decide. Whether a decision is correct is not up to me; hindsight gifts decisions their merit. But when I have thought enough and thought hard, I am not willing to think any further. The regular at a cafe always orders the same thing—this tells you more about them than anything they could ever tell you on their own. Baristas and bartenders often know us better than our closest confidants.

But when it comes to the pointlessness we call life, most conversations end, frustratingly so, at one question: what is it that you need?

I need a bench, and I need some books, and I need to be left alone with the time and the patience to read them. That is the only thing I need; it is not what I want, however. I have spent too long deciding what I want; now, the possibilities are endless. And now, I want it all. I want to be a part of the world, help make it move, and avoid sitting on the outskirts of this city of life. Now, I have wasted time deciding. All my life is now an attempt to decide what it will be about, and if I know something about the irresolute, it is that we are always on the fence.

In the top drawer of a dusty mahogany desk covered with sunlight and a plethora of unwritten drafts and mundane paperwork lie hundreds of letters I never sent. Where did they come from, then? From regret, of course, where else? They come from all the times I could have said something other than the right thing, for once, even once would have sufficed, but everything must be in its right place, and now, the words are stuck without a recipient, without stamps, without any purpose. But they linger. Yes, they continue lingering in some corner of my mind, floating about like little birds learning to fly diligently but not knowing what to do once they figure it out. They say we must always say things than not, so they do not weigh on us, that keeping it to ourselves, locked in our heart, makes it heavier than it needs to be, but for how long does one carry the weight until they forget it is weight they carry?

I take the pile out, and some stragglers, which were never bundled, and I toss them onto the desk with a thump. Then, I begin sifting through names I no longer recognise and addresses I no longer remember. One by one, I tear open the flaps, and out come pages, yellow and old, filled with rambling confessions. The ink has blotted on many; I cannot make sense of them anymore, but I know they carried something vital with them. Lost as their contents may be, their weight is not lost on me. All my honesty is reduced to unuttered, unshared reservations. Now, I sit here by myself, a second cup of coffee before ten, imagining how it would feel if they did exist and if it would change anything. And then, I think of what I want to be changed, and I cannot figure it out. All this has been a futile exercise.

Once again, I vow to myself to say what I want to say at all times, always. Once again, I am aware this will not happen. Some of us keep most of us to ourselves. We go about saying the right things, correct answers to questions no one asks, living with our heads held high for having done it properly. Done what? Living. But then, why do we carry the sawdust, the parts we stripped away? How could I ever tell you?

To be alive is to be passed around like a coin between places, to stay for a little while as a coin often finds home in a pocket or wallet. Then, when the time comes: to leave. No one can stay anywhere forever, but of course, all coins eventually get forgotten in a drawer, and people call someplace their home. This is what makes it all meaningful, after all. We walk from one place to another in search of one we would never walk away from, no matter what promises are given to us. I do not fear many things, but I do fear never being able to find such a place, to be stuck in the middle of it forevermore.

I fear obsolescence—becoming so redundant to the lives of others, to every place I have ever set foot in that my presence or absence makes no difference whatsoever. I fear touching so many lives, but it always being touch and go, never being an afterthought because I was a little too occupied with things the others could not care much about, a bit too much of who I am, and I become. I fear starring in a couple of stories everyone remembers but not their narrative. Like a character written out because he did not fit too well in any part of where the story was going, left with a forcibly resolved arc around the halfway mark as the others embark towards the end of the tale. Of course, it is natural to be afraid of something. Worry is an instinct.

As I sip my coffee, I tell myself this, watching the day get on like I have before a thousand times over. Cliche as it may be: we all want to belong somewhere, eventually. It is what defines the wandering. It has to come to an end, or else you may as well never move; you may stay put, never try your hand at a new place, at new people. Perhaps, that is what scares me the most: wandering forever. For all my preference for walking towards nowhere in particular, I, too, wish there was a milestone in sight sometimes. Today is such a day. Yesterday was a day like this, too. The day before that wasn’t so far apart from them either. I have walked far too long as instructed. I have passed so many people by; I have lost count. The road stretches on. There is nothing in sight still.

A single picture of a tree is just that—a picture. A thousand pictures of trees, on different days, in different seasons is a collection. It says more than what one picture ever will. It takes a life of its own. When does this begin to happen? At two pictures? At ten? Who knows? But it does happen. That is what a body of work means. It is also why I write my words day after day. A piece on its own says something, sometimes, but all of them together, they say more than any one of them ever can. What do they say? I am not the judge of that. It will be up to scrutiny later, much later. Perhaps, never, too. Who knows? Who knows how things turn out? But they do say something. That, I am sure of, and that is all my intention: for these inquiries to coalesce into a whole, I could never have created at once. I have fooled myself into writing more than I ever set out to do and hidden in there somewhere, under the folds of sentences filled with things said casually, I may have said something worth saying. At least, I hope so.

But why can’t I say it for sure? Because I cannot say anything for certain. All things I have been sure of have shown me how wrong I have been. In any case, you do not know what happens to your art, and I hope no one is alive to learn what people think they have to say about anything in the world. All great painters end up being printed on a mug, and all great writers are quoted on a T-shirt. That is all there is to it. The artist’s fate is either fading into obscurity or dilution; there is no in-between. They all end this way, even the good ones, especially the good ones. How can we be sure, then? We can’t. Why make art, then? Why not? Fire was a gift to humanity given by chance, and it still is a gift. Its use is a different question—to wage war, to raze forests, to inspire and instigate, to keep warm, or to manhandle and neglect. When the universe does not interfere, I wonder what authority does the artist have?

I sit down to write in gaps between whatever qualifies as a task. But this, this is not a task. These words are not a task. I am now realising, once again, something that I already know and have known for a long time—that all my life is but a bridge to this desk. I wish I had the privilege of being so hopeless that I had nothing to lose or the riches to not care about something as perverse as a to-do list, but I am neither here nor there. I am not in the sky, and I am not on the ground. I am somewhere in the middle.

That means I will always live two lives until my fortune takes a turn, for the literal better or worse. I will be suspended like a bug on a wire, crossing, not knowing where to, aloof about where from, only crawling as if my life depended on it. To be in the middle is to drive through the old neighbourhood and occasionally walk through it to visit the remnants of the life you were never destined for, that you spent years building a ship to sail away from. It is never being able to fully leave it either. To be in the middle is to spend your days drenched in the blessings you never had, yet worry over how it will never be enough. Mostly, however, it means that every word I ever write will have an echo. I will always write it while looking at my watch, and I will always live my life, the one that feeds into this mulchy broth of words I stir day in and day out, with the guilt of knowing I have not written yet, or written enough, or written any better than I did the day before. The last one will hurt like a second-degree burn on the palm of my hand, but I will keep writing, hands flying over the keys whenever I get the time.

And I will tell myself: it is all good as long as I have written, that I should keep climbing uphill, and that there is only one life. Yes, I believe that is the problem. There is only one life, but one too many fires to put out And between jumping out the window, running from the flames and being grateful to have made it on my feet, I will be able to write a few words sometimes. I better make it so even a second is enough.

A second will have to do. After all, there are things, too.

I woke up early today, much before most of the town even begins to move. With a coffee in my hand, I stood on the grass, still moist from last night’s rain, and then I walked back inside and sat at the desk with no words to write. The quiet hour was all I wanted. Well, as quiet as quiet can be. The ceiling fan added its piece to the background, and the birds had some urgent information to broadcast. Just then, my need to talk things through with people to arrive at many, often erroneous, conclusions stared at me from some corner of the silent room.

I wonder if it was the exhaustion from the lack of sleep or just a moment when we walk too far into the depths of our minds, unknowingly, like how we often walk around someone else’s house, partly out of curiosity and partly due to not knowing where things are, that I thought about my life in this city. Not my entire life, no, but just this bit, this leg of it.

Three years have passed since I came back to the city. For all intents and purposes, this is where I live now. I tell myself I will move out again, find a new place in a new city in some corner of the country or even outside. Yes, it can happen, but it will not happen anytime soon, and I have no plans to even begin planning such a move. For now, I carry this feeling of temporariness with me like I have been carrying a parcel in my bag, with a present for a friend, intending to ship it day after day, and always failing to do so.

It is only today, groggy, having slept about four hours at night, that I found my conscience pliable enough to internalise this—that I live here now. But then, in my heart is a potent homesickness. Why?

Perhaps, it is the possibility that I miss, that things have gone a certain way already, and that they can never be how they could have been. In what way? Not in some grand chasm of difference, but the tiny, little things. A habit or quirk that is now absent from my life, which I do not even know about since I will never have it!

There is a damning permanence that comes along with time. It eats away at you, like the scratch behind your throat after getting drenched on a rainy day.

I have a reputation for getting things done. I do not know where this reputation got formed, or why, or even how low the bar has been for people doing things that I, a person who dares to take a nap when there is still work to do, have amassed such a reputation. But then, people often misplace their trust and value how things appear, not how things are. For all nine or ten things I do every day, I have a thousand things left undone. For all books I do find the time to read, my apartment is littered with unread ones, waiting to be picked up once again; the bookmarks have been on the same page for so long you can see the soft bruises they have caused. In my heart, there is a want to do nothing. I believe it is the same for everyone else, but I manage to feign productivity. That much is to my credit. That I can take a bow for.

I jump at the first excuse to leave things for tomorrow, the next month, or, often, the following year. Every single thing I have done, I have done tardily. I am shocked at just how much I was able to do still, just how much I can do all day long, only by being painstakingly average. I make just the amount of effort that is necessary; no other, no more.

I only have unintelligibly ginormous undertakings; my effort is meagre and small in comparison. There is a permanent paucity of motivation in me. I am perpetually fighting an uphill battle, begging myself to get on my feet, imploring my hands to move. All these words I write, those I have written so far, result from continual coercion. My life is a side-effect of dreaming too big and falling short, and now that I think of it, so is my reputation for being productive, whatever that means. It is all just a result of looking at something I know in my heart is impossible and then proclaiming I will find a way. This is not courageous. This is dimwitted. All of who I am is a repercussion of my naivety and my unwillingness to wrap my head around the limits of time.

I reckon if there are no deadlines and your goals are as vague as your claims and estimates as roundabout as your metaphors, you can get away with doing almost everything you planned to do.

I sit in a car with my parents, and we talk about how the weather is just not right this year, of how it is the beginning of May, but it has rained as if it were July already. I wake up the next day to find a message from a friend on a group chat saying it does not seem like May. I get out of bed a little while later. The usual morning routine ensues—I settle by the window, in my chair with a cup of coffee and the curtains pulled wide open. It is still raining outside as if it wasn’t enough the previous day. Not that I have anything against weather like this; in fact, I enjoy it very much, but again, my desire to have everything in its proper place gets the better of me. I let my thoughts rebel against the aesthetic of the world.

But then, it occurs to me if all of us are wrong. Out of everything I trust in this life, I trust my memory the least. There is a reason for my lists and notes and calendars that are always up to date with the minutiae of my days. I spend the better part of the morning reading up on the history of weather in the city, looking at old weather reports from years ago, countless tables and data and terms I do not understand. I go back decades, and I realise we have all been very wrong indeed. It has always been this way. We have always welcomed May with the rain.

How did we forget, then? How we forget anything. Between the bills, the exhaustion, and the want for simpler times in a world that continues to change rapidly, how can you remember anything is, perhaps, a better question to ask.

Living seems harder as the days go by and the world gets on with its antics and shenanigans. Many people I happen to talk to about the state of the world have a lot to say about it. They say it is a pattern, that things inevitably repeat, and society always moves in cycles. Some say it is the dawn of a new, complex age heralded by the advent of all this technology.

But there are others, like me, my parents, my friends, the baristas in the cafes I frequent, or the cab drivers all over town, who, when facing the insurmountable odds of living in this day and age, say, “Surely, it must be the weather.”