It’s a hot autumn afternoon smack dab in the middle of October, and the sun as golden as the pint of beer I’m sipping tells me everything I have ever wanted to know. The breeze, albeit sunkissed, is refreshingly calm, and as it moves in its own way, it whispers all the secrets anyone ever ought to know. I stand on the balcony and watch the day shape around me as some kids make the most of the warmth—one skates about on his rollerblades, others play badminton, and one just sits there on the bench. It catches my eye, and I feel some kinship with him, but then, I don’t dwell on this and look further around.
The sky is always clearer as the colder months get on. If you’re privy to the science of it, you’d know cold and hot air hold moisture differently, but we don’t always think of the world from the eye of physics on most days, even if we know things. Most, if not all, look at the afternoon sky in October, demarcated cleanly by the verdant hills, and tell themselves that this may be a spoonful of respite on colder days. That is all we have for winter: a little bit of rum, some hot chocolate and the memory of the sunny afternoon from a few hours ago. Yes, no one quite cares about the why of things as long as they can conjure a reasonable explanation. If it is not reasonable, then it must be poetic. And so, there is no truth to things; there is only what we believe to be true. Most lives, if not all, are an amalgam of fact and fiction, where fiction is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is the imposter. It is the liar and the fraud. On most days, we cannot separate between the two; for better or worse, everyone lives like this and dies pretty much the same.
But it is still October; that much is true. And we are halfway through it; that much is true. And it is sunny, and on sunny days, we must sit with some beer and nap the afternoon away; that much is true enough for me to do it and not have doubts about. That is how most people live: in the absence of doubts. To seek truth is to be uncertain, and so, it is the lack of doubt that is the problem. We wear our surety as pins on our clothes, and then, we do whatever the hell we want to do, convinced it all makes sense.