These days...

Okay, so I(we) have moved into what I'm constantly reminding myself to call 'our own place'. The prospect had long been on the cards but had acquired a sudden gravity and urgency over a lazy weekend's yapping between the partners. Boom! We kicked off the project and we found ourselves in our new place within a month.

Most of the few friends I have have already experienced living on their own. I did too but it was so long ago that it renders my memory hazy. Now I live in my own place in my brimming consciousness.

I can say, it's been a smooth ride so far. Thanks to my wife who's made my life easier over the last 2 years, on all fronts.

Apart from this update, there's nothing much to add - except I am afraid there is. It is because I've been busy living a nondescript, middle-aged man's life. With a set routine intercepted by aberrations of indulgence every now and then (from which I've to painfully recover to tread back onto the routine).

Personal goals - their half-baked outcomes; post-dinner evenings spent staring into the nightly darkness, wondering about how to roast the half-baked outcomes further and convincing myself that the desire to roast so adds up to optimism. All this before falling back into the ennui the routine perpetuates.

Purchased and unread books adorning the living room's shelfs but diligently ticked-off lists of films/series on the subscribed streaming platforms - this gives away the details of a lazy, mindless and gluttonous consumer of digital junk I've become.

My wife and I - we daydream as she folds the sheets & does the bed while I sit there juggling between channels hunting the next national scandal in brewing. We daydream about the places we'd want to visit one day and things to do - but we also conjure meticulous Plan Bs in case of a career outage; like opening a chai shop in a tier 2, mountainous town or something underwhelming yet alternatively romantic like that.

Next moment, we talk about the curtains to be bought and their ideal colour to go friendly with the walls. I spring up from my chair, go light one and bit my lips at being so sold-out. That's when she yells that my coffee is ready and steaming. I walk back into a world of sovereign slavery.

Now that's how life these days is. I'll have to go hunt for a new series on Netsucks.  

A long-forgotten wistfulness pays a visit

I distinctly remember the first time I felt it. It was a dry and hot summer afternoon, and I was staring at the labyrinth of lanes in my workplace's neighborhood, standing on my office's terrace. The summer wind slapped me across my face to remind me of its presence. It was a feeling of yearning to be elsewhere. When I thought about the elsewhere, I tried to dream up a place or a precinct. I failed. It was a general and sweeping sense of hatred towards where I was. The distaste was so strong that it impaired my imaginative ability. Where to be was just an 'elsewhere' with no tag or tangent to it.

With what followed, I had learnt that imagination wasn't the only thing I lacked.  I lacked expression. I think I still do. Since it was a deeply abstract thought, I inadvertently locked it away, and then life has happened since.

A lot has happened since the lockup. There has rarely been any stillness to hear the sound of Silence. I have learnt that the sound of Silence id very distinct in its absolute. And human condition hardly offers the room to gratify one's self with that sound.

To retract from my digression, today I felt the same I had felt that afternoon a few years ago. It lasted for a moment or two and left me with a deep wistfulness as it passed. Now I am feeling wistful as I write this. Soon, this wistfulness slips away.

A Premonition That Almost Came True

They both bumped into each other with premeditated fists to blow.
Words exchanged and jibes hurled at how each of them were as black at heart as a crow.

Anger transcended its dignity and jibes turned into insults.
Both failed to see what this scuffle produced as results.

He wondered, how hard it is to sleep next to each other, on a fine night, pretending nothing ever happened.
He thought he thought aloud but his loudness didn't overpower her wordy weapons being sharpened.

He pulled out his ultimate weapon from the bayonet,
he said she'd have to repent if something happened to his heart.

Something did indeed happen the next morning.
Was she found mourning?

Ordinary Life

As a habit, I logged onto Twitter this morning as I settled into my desk. Scrolling down, I saw someone tweeting this quote "An ordinary life is the ultimate happiness" and accredited it to Thomas Merton. It got me wondering if this Thomas guy had a very extraordinary life that got him reeking of torpidity, so he had come to embrace a mystical idea of an ordinary life.

I believe I am categorically eligible to bicker about ordinary life because? simple, I am leading one. As much as it is to the perspectives of people, there's each to his/her own. So this is mine, consider this disclaimer.

Ordinary life has bestowed me with two struggles I grapple with, every living minute of mine: Anhedonia and Restlessness.

Anhedonia:

We were at a bar on one of the recent weekend evenings. Nibbling away some super fried patties while guzzling down some pints over age-old conversations with an old friend. It began to rain & it battered the glass wall. The bobbing droplets helplessly trickled down. It was picturesque. We were sitting cozy and pretty on the warmer side of the wall. And then it struck me: why wasn't I able to enjoy the moment? I tried counselling myself by remembering my amazing partner of a wife, a peaceful career, decent health and intact appetite; only before I gave up and glared emptily through the glass wall.

Restlessness:

I am hardly able to sit through a movie for 90 minutes, let alone determining to put a book to its permanent rest. When I'm home, my limbs years for some ambling and when I am out in the world, I ache for a silence only a room can offer. I am always here or there but my mind is invariably somewhere else. I long for a still calmness which evades me like a feather on a windy field.

Ordinary Life - a tantalizing condition that barely is the ultimate happiness.

The Indian Middle Class's Melancholy

Two traffic rules broken: triple riding on a motorbike and no helmet. But he does it with an air of sympathy he wish to evoke in a traffic cop who might stop him for his rule-breaking ride. He could use the 'family man' card that may strike a chord with the cop - who too would ride on his own bike with his wife and child(ren) on a Sunday evening. And that card may as well turn out to be a trump card that walks the man out of the intervention with the cop, lossless.

What is striking in that frame - the man with his middle-aged wife and his prepubescent daughter on his 100 cc motorbike - is an ethereal melancholy. A melancholy that's an underlying part of the Indian Middle Class.

What follows is a starkly fictional painting of the man-on-his-bike's life. It could be total farce in its authenticity but it stands for a sect (a humongous one) of people I've grown to know in my life.

That man might be an ordinary graduate with a nondescript job that makes him a tuppence above 30 grand a month. Staying in a single bedroom rented flat in an apartment complex in one of the ignorably sidelined neighborhoods of a metro's downtown, he leaves to work every day by leaving his wife behind at his house. His wife while earning her spot in the family by conscientiously catering to the daily needs of husband and daughter, looks forward to a Sunday of no household chores and one that ends on a high in a cinema theatre. She feels anxious every time a jewelry store's ad shows up on TV, in the short recesses of the daily soaps she religiously follows - soaps that are overdosed with melodrama (an antithesis of this woman's life). When the power goes off  suddenly but unsurprisingly, she takes a deep breath, straightens up her posture and leaves a sigh - reminiscing her teenage fantasies and their permanent inertness.

Reminded by 'teenage', it brings us to their daughter. Her hormones already might have begun getting the better of her but her family can't afford to buy her wings; and she's aware of that in some way. She suffices herself with inexpensive yet almost-unrecognizable frills to keep up with her peers. She's not yet to an age that is brand-conscious but wings, wings of freedom she knows about - about their existence and her family's unaffordability.

Talking of unaffordability, it brings me back to the man. I don't think he remembers the daydreaming from his youth about a plush life. Every day, life forges a slab of mediocrity on his brain that its memory sheets full of once-grand fantasies have evaporated long ago. His bike's servicing prods him for an extra expenditure next month, his daughter's approaching finish line of schooling in the near future and his wife's long due wish of a pair of modest earrings before it's already his daughter's wedding (this, the distant future) occupy his mind.

So there they stop, amid cars, the daughter safely tugged between the man and his wife. The man impatiently stares at the red light, the daughter peers into her father's thinning hairline and the woman looks away into nothingness.

An almost-made choice

It no longer surprises me - the facade of "i-got-it-all-figured" people put up. It's merely concealing their cluelessness to pretend they are a nick ahead of others out there. Because, "out there" is a notorious place and everyone is sound of that fact.

That takes me to the conflicting spot called "to be or not to be". Mind you, this is like poring over different spending models for a lottery, forget winning, even a ticket hasn't been bought.

So there's this conflict between: 'take my vision of societal contribution seriously and work towards it' and 'mind my own business and work on personal success' (again, I'm neither looking at a serious strategy for the former, nor working diligently towards the latter, yet).

It's just that I am taking a bit too long to decide: like taking a whole academic year to opt between math and humanities. I've been stifled with the narrrowness posed by these two choices. When so much satisfaction promisingly entails the prospect of being in a socially exposed job, personal cushiness seems like a petty choice. On the other hand, I've grown to believe that personal success is not a bad idea either. But that mostly involves turning a blind eye towards the former: focus on getting bigger as a corporate slave and climbing higher up the ladder with elevated lifestyle and financial sustainability as its rewarding byproducts.

I am a schmuck, a victim of the lifestyle I aspired and cultivated for myself. I am mostly drawn to things I've acquired and accustomed to, over time with my increased affordability. A giant leap towards the other side of the river - which looks like a real example of glorified living (for the others) involves un-weighing myself by shredding my plum possessions. An unloading that's too heavy and pricey to consider.

I recently let my wife in on the agony of this conflict and she reaffirmed that personal success is not a bad idea at all; and she agreed to my cynical wondering saying this place we call our society is being too deeply gnawed away by its infections that a mere topical pain cream lasts only as long as its moistness on one's skin. I smile to myself about the choice of marrying her - probably one of the very few right choices i have pulled off.

I almost decided to work up the ladder, or in other words, let this tricky word called 'ambition' run its course; while feeding my artistic aspirations with their regular supplies. Chips shall fall where they may. 

A consumable combination

In contrast to my previous post, I also like to believe that every man carries within him an ounce of childishness which, in moment, can come as close to its innocence as it originally is. Having said that, I happened to spot a teen-like jealousy in my partner's tone today - which rarely comes atop her visage of being a grownup.

She expressed a gentle disappointment. She asked me why I haven't written on this blog about her? Why haven't I? I asked myself and the reason was immediate to surface. Writing, as a form of expression, has long taken a backseat. Earlier, be it an incident of angst, words smelled like ash; be it a happy accident - words choreographed a shoddy sequence.

Somewhere around in November of 2016, I found myself watching The Shawshank Redemption on TV and the word that rang all through the movie and in my ears was hope. Like neural connections one's brain makes, hope always had been Futility's connection in my head.

Hope for a meaning? Futile.
Hope for a morning that doesn't bring in wrath as the day wears off? Inescapable
Hope for an evening with eyes full of tired content? Greedy
Hope for fairer principles to live by? Too human to attain
Hope for a day free of guilt from feeling privileged yet underutilized? Improbable
Hope to stand up for my ambition without giving into indulgences? Distant
Hope to affect lives in a fulfilling way? Hopeless

I've grown into this person who's terrified of smallness. A small life at the feet of a mountain city had once fascinated me - it now terrifies me for the long, unending afternoons and the associated ennui it comes with. I loathe people but love their mindless ambling around me.

Magnanimity almost entices me with fulfillment as a lure before its small cause pops up in my head. I smirk in my head when people sloganeer lines like 'do your bit', 'give back to society' and etc. The ocean of misery isn't going to reverse its essence with one drop of my charity.

So I've come to be this man - perennially trapped between an utopia I can't achieve & a rottenness I perpetuate by existing. A non-resident of either worlds and also, a person scared of dissimilarity.

Then she came along. She chose to be with the man with all these vices. She chose to take in his vices as a pickle while drinking her own peg of sour bourbon of life. She says the pickle and bourbon make a consumable combo. I nod, at lack of words.

The lost innocence

I was riding pillion on a friend's moped this morning to work. While we were crossing Afzal Gunj, this odor hit my nostrils. It triggered a touch of nostalgia as it hit. It was the smell of my school's interiors, the first one I ever attended, in early 90s. I remember the smell freshly & vividly because I spent months, one day at a time, 6 days a week, dreading it during mornings & helplessly living through it between 9 to 4 pm.

Amid that acrid odor, there used to be a spell of home's fragrance. It used to emerge from my mother's sari when my face was buried in its folds, my tiny arms thrown around her knees, preventing her from going home after giving me the lunch basket at 12.00 pm.

Mother's touch felt home. Her sinister motive to get rid of me, targeting the larger good of her son's education, didn't seem malicious enough to hate her. Because of my distaste for school, my idea and experience of staying home was naturally enriching. I used to inhale the warmth of folded clothes that used to sit cozily on old newspaper sheets serving as mats on the shelves. I liked how my mother concocted ingredients into dishes that tasted homely. I liked the idyllic lives of shopkeepers - staring at the road on whose both sides their shops sat. Simply, I liked everything that seemed distant from school & possible without it.

Amusingly, I hated Sundays. Because being the pessimist I was born, I saw Sundays more as death knell to horror that awaited next week than as a break from discolored uniforms & semi-stale packed lunches. So Sundays went by in brooding. Saturday evenings seemed joyous. The world seemed like bearable place and I could relist the taste of Éclairs chocolates my mother used to buy and divide between me and my brother.

I used to pop in an Éclairs and jauntily walk to the unending green fields with white patches on them we called 'pitches'.

Those Saturday evening Éclairs were probably the last shreds of innocence I have ever enjoyed.