Marginalia

I see an hour where no one has any dire need of me, where I can slip under the blankets of minutes and seconds, and I grab the opportunity. I wake up, groggy and disoriented; I wake up rested. Then, I get off the bed, picking up the cup of coffee gone cold in waiting for me, in the same swift movement, and sip off it to gain some semblance of my step, and then, I realise there is still work to do. But there was work to do earlier, too, and now, I have stolen a nap. What a crafty little manoeuvre. Nothing changes as far as the world is concerned, and yet, everything is different for me. They shall never know, and how can they? This is, after all, a victimless crime.

And I believe this is not a new theme, nor is this description new, and that, too, is what I have realised. The story beats of my life are repetitive enough for me to know that I am doing something right. My day-to-day changes wildly for a little bit but then comes to some sort of mean position on its own. For all the fantastic things I have seen and felt, I reckon my life has been but a finely adjusted balance of routine—even my delinquency follows suit! And this brings me an unrelatable joy. It is mine and mine alone. I can smile over it for hours, and yet, no one would understand. This, too, is a privilege: a life that is truly your own.

I lie in bed, under the warmest duvet known to man on an otherwise nippy, pouring day, writing. The love of my life sleeps next to me, and my eyes too would shut any moment now. I lie here protesting against the last will and testament of mundane exhaustion. To think that I would find myself in a moment like this, that it will feel as if nothing is out of place, that this is how things truly are and should be continues to perplex me. That I am happy addles me and makes me afraid of dozing off lest I arise in a world different from this one. So, I must, at least, make a record of it.

As I look at her, taking the softest breaths possible, and letting them out even softer, it occurs to me that I would give her all the love I have to give, and not leave a drop in the barrel. And on the coattails of this thought comes another: how often do we not realise we are in our greatest days yet? But I have. I reckon I do.

And so, I continue to look. And then, I continue to look. And another minute passes. And the piece reaches its end. And the rain stops outside. And the world goes to sleep. And the dogs stop barking. And my eyes force themselves shut. And still, I continue looking.

And then, I fall asleep.

I barely have something to say to the world besides the marginalia, the little notices of joy and mirth, and sometimes the occasional sigh of melancholy. While one may call it my humility, I call it the truth. I sit here and pretend to have something to say, but what is it that I aim to tell, that I attempt to shout? Drink your coffee and have a grand time doing it. This is all I have told people in conversation, in writing, and, often, in passing. Do not take the answers at face value; find your own way to live, and then find another way to do it when your solutions inevitably run their course, as they often will. And then, when you find your footing, use it to walk to the café still and get a cup of tea, if the hour seems inappropriate for coffee. And if you are so daring, then be it: get a coffee still!

And while there is a figurative quality to it, I wish for you to not read between the lines for a change and take this as literally as it appears. These words are as explicit as the numbers we read and surrender to day after day. And I say this only because tonight I have nothing to say, and if I had something to say in the morning, I have long forgotten and left that train of thought behind. Now, I simply sit here, striking off a task, a chore, and in it, I have brought myself to jot the truth down, which, by all standards, suggests I have exceeded expectations. Whose? Mine, of course; there are no strings on me.

I will never be in university, wasting time at a cafe with my friends, a single cup of coffee serving as our token to have the table, and our audacity on our sleeve keeping any hints of embarrassment at bay. There are several things I will never do again. I will never sit at the bar of some restaurant, lost in the tiny passageways of my mind, no feeling of home in my heart or on the stool or the counter or in the air. And my words make this realisation sound morbid. This is not washed over me. Yes, it may be morbid in instances, but as far as life is considered, it just is. This feeling is, perhaps, the only indication we have of the unending, unrelenting passage of time. And yes, today it has made me sad, and this idea sits in some corner of my heart, marinating over and over, and it has punched me in the gut. I do not intend to deny the feeling. But I do wish to turn it around, look it over like an old keepsake you find in boxes your parents packed years ago, when they did something for the last time, before taping and covering it for all the years to come. I wish to look at it and inspect it, and I have done that; I have made my inquiry. And as I sit here, writing, I conclude it as what it is: there are parts of my life I will never be able to live again owing simply to the fact that time has passed. And yet, does that not make things worth doing in the first place?

I sit with my hand on my hand not because the endless list of tasks has given me respite but because all of us need to sit quietly now and then, and when I get tired of doing that too, I get up, move about the house, and tidy things up. And then, I sit to write. Little else to do, and little to accomplish; the burst of fastidiousness subsides. My words appear all out of place, haphazard, making this piece seem to have a distinct slapdash quality.

But then again, what is the prize? This is a thankless practice. The light outside has been snuffed out for hours, and the day is almost over, and I am tired. My mind wanders, and my muscles ache, and I wonder if this is the precise moment of extreme aliveness, if this is what the greats and the unsung alike have felt for generations before I have, that I am tired suggests, in all measure, that I have done something, and if I have done something, surely, I have lived, have I not?

Is that not prize enough, I wonder? And then, no answer echoes in the room. I settle for it and call it a conclusion. Then, I sit on the couch, my hands once again over one another.

In the tail end of a wildly productive day, I sit on the couch and ponder over the luxury, the privilege of being busy, of having things to do. I am blessed by my dual nature that seeks busyness and then wishes to alleviate itself of it. And somewhere between it, my life tends to happen. And most of my days pass, carried by this continual wheel that spins them around. And I am fortunate enough that my nature continues to be sated. I cannot begin to imagine, no, even entertain the thought of days that are filled with but rest, and no, I cannot think of days with never-ending work spread through them.

Just today, I joked with a friend and told them I am the least disciplined person I know, and they called it a bluff and informed me how wrong I was, how erroneous that claim was, but they only know what they see on the outside. It is not discipline that I have; I wish I was disciplined. I am but a dreamer who enjoys staying awake, a dogsbody who covets sleep, and I am blessed for it. It is a blessing to be exhausted. It is a blessing to wake up once again.

In many ways, these words are a chore, and most things we do in life are chores, and it is my understanding that most people, when they hear the word, immediately think of it as drudgery, of things to avoid, and thus, this opening sentence may appear to be grim, but since I do not have this bias towards the word, I can freely use it in all sorts of places. To me, words have meanings, but connotations are a disservice to language. Most words do not deserve their ill fates; I tend to see where words are placed. The situation matters more than meaning, and if not meaning, then it matters more than connotation.

Surely, if someone who did not look at life in the way I look at it were to open a piece like I have today, it might mean that these words are an obligation, an annoying expenditure of time, but since I have written it, since I am free from the cuffs of connotation, I can assure you that these words are indeed a chore, and so is keeping in touch with all of my friends, and so are a million other things I do, like reading or taking a walk, and all of it is a chore because all of it is routine, and all of it must be done. Out of all the things in my life that I do, doing the dishes is by far one of the most rewarding activities because I can expect a beginning and an end and a set reward for finishing it.

And these words fit a similar bill. And now, I have written. And now, I can sleep in peace.

If someone were to look at this entire tragedy, this colossal waste of time accumulated over the years that I call my body of work, the recurring, defining idea, the leitmotif of it all, if you will, would not be too obscure. The word ‘perhaps’ would take the crown and do it by a large margin, like the results of a disappointing, one-sided ballot, and for good reason, too. Perhaps. What a wonderfully pedestrian way to suggest possibility, and yet, all the better for it.

A friend once commented—when friends still read my work, when it was not as much of a daily obligation or as befuddling—that my usage of the word ‘perhaps’ was the source of their annoyance, their avoidance towards sitting through my drivel. I looked at them and smiled, thinking how sad one must be to despise the mere mention of possibility. But to me, it is all about the maybes and the perhapses. Most life happens in the simple realm of possibility.

All my advice, all my life, begins and ends with it. Or perhaps I buy too much into what I sell, and all of it is but bias. Perhaps, that is true.

Perhaps, both things are true.

The hum of the laundry spinning around in the washing machine out in the washout is the only sound right now. That, and a dog—probably tiny given the timbre of his voice—barking away at the world to its heart’s content from a balcony in the distance. What a beautiful Sunday morning. What a beautiful day in itself despite its restfulness. And to think I did not believe them when they told me life could be wonderful and content if I waited through the storm. I thought them to be liars, tradesmen of the finest snake oil, where finest is, of course, a description of its quality of deception.

But has it not worked like this always? You go to sleep, thinking it to be the end of the world, and then, you wake up and there are things to do. And then, you do them, and soon what felt like the end of the world becomes but a distant memory, further from everything you know to be true, further than the cafe on the corner, further than the grocery store, further than the dog that has continued to bark away and celebrate the coming in of the new day.

If I were being honest with myself, and whoever has the misfortune of reading these words, it does not much matter to me that they are written, and any care I have for them stems from the fact that writing, that sitting down to splash some words on a blank page, has become an inseparable part of my being. And that it matters to me whether I write or not, that it begins eating away at me if I do not do it, happens not because there is anything worth saying but because I wish to live a life I shall like to remember, and not the act of writing but a lack, an absence of it is the closest thing there is to know whether I have been using my time well. It is not in the writing itself; rather all the hours I spend thinking about having not done it because other matters were far too urgent or important or even mildly interesting that makes me feel some semblance of wholeness that makes it all worthwhile.

Put simply, it is when I am sitting on a mat in the grass with the woman I love, or in a room dancing with her, our faces lit by the ochre hues of the lamp, or wasting hours watching television on the floor, playing with our feet under a lightweight throw and giggling for hours that I feel alive, but knowing that the writing, my words, wait for me, that the work remains unwritten, is what turns my attention to this in the first place.

And when today, like yesterday, I did them in this order of inner precedence, no one in the world lost their sleep. And nothing changed. And nothing happened. And that was all; that was all indeed.

The gist of my life, like most lives, I reckon, is that things have happened, for better or for worse, for my power or for my haplessness, for wishes and whims of all in the world that is greater, inexplicably larger than me. And while I have happened to things myself, and I believe most people are this way, too, a lot of my life has just been a mild adjustment. Is it this way for everyone? I wonder. There have been times, I remember them clearly, when I thought it was all over because things did not go per the minutiae I had in mind for them, and then, this too I remember clearly, things kept happening. Nothing ever ended, and it always went on and on.

Perhaps, there is learning in this. Perhaps, there is folly in even believing there was another way, an alternative, that we could move mountains that did not want to be moved in the first place. Perhaps, all of my life has been but a fable in the making. But as I sit here, in a warm room on a cold, wintry night, more whisky in my veins than I would agree with, more love in the house and in my life than I ever imagined, more of more, and more of all that I cannot begin to count, I can say that things have happened, that I caused some of them, but not all, not most; a lot of it happened, and I woke up the next day, going about business as usual.

I wish to give in sometimes to the little whispers of cynicism that lurk about the corner, that have always lurked about the corners of my life, but the sun is so warm. And while I stumble and lose my way for a minute or sometimes a day, I believe my inner nature will always have its way. Like a moth to a faintest glow, I am attracted to the little things, the things that often go unseen, and while the world finds joy in all that is embellished and grandiose, my inclination, like that of a plant, is to simply bend towards warmth. An hour of silence is precious, and so is a dinner, some wine, grub, the calm glow of subdued lighting, and music to go along, and both are equal in their beauty; none is better than the other. And if one of them is better, it is because I say it is, and if I do not tell myself anything, it will not be that way.

I reckon there was a moment, a smidge in the long scheme of things, a few months here and there, where I found my inner compass askew, and I could not see everything for its trueness: a whole lot of nothing, and I say this with the most humility a human being can muster. Everything is nothing. A flower is a flower, growing unbothered, and then, we look at it, and that changes everything.

It is a quiet morning on a quiet day. There will be things to do, surely, and there will be time to get them done, and what will be left will be left for tomorrow. Little to worry about, little to fret over, it is all going as it should go. The coffee is delicious, almost lip-smackingly, wonderfully chocolaty and bold, and the sun outside shares a part in its boldness. What a warm and wonderful day today. I wish all days were like this, and if I found myself on a day that was cold and unforgiving, I wish I remember this morning then to push me through till the clock strikes fifty-nine past eleven. There is still time before this day begins, a few minutes or so, and when it does, its end should be but a blink away. That is how quickly life passes us, and I reckon without much notice. And thus I am glad for the good sense to sit here quietly and take it all in. Not all hours are created equal; some hours pass more quickly than others. This placid, noiseless time that I have managed to make the most of is but a blessing in a day that requires all of my senses to be busy—with work, with people, with phone calls and messages, and a buzzing and boiling that cannot be described. But it will be the end of the day soon. It will all be over before I can manage to take a moment again. And now, I shall begin.

My artistic endeavour has been dulled—and I mean this not in the negative connotation oft associated with the word but merely description—and become softer. And so has all my ambition. And while I still make strides and take leaps and try my hand at writing, all of it is strictly for my benefit, or perhaps, the benefit of those around me. For if I do not make a living, well, it goes without saying it will be somewhat difficult to live, and if I do not sit and write, I tend to become miserable. There is no other way to describe it.

To put it bluntly, I am a thorn in everyone’s side, I see the world with a lens bereft of any joy, and it becomes a chore to even talk to me. This is not unbeknownst to me. Perhaps, this is a repeated thought, and I have jotted it down somewhere in this body of work. If I have, I hope it was done with better words and more finesse. But I reminded myself of it again last week, and since then, I have made it a point to never cease my writing. And if life comes calling, I shall answer it, but then, I shall sit and write.

Retracing my steps to where I was before I embarked on this confession, everything I do is for my benefit, and this has not been some great artistic endeavour. The truth, if I may offer such a thing, is that it does not have to be. It simply is, like most things simply are. It is as much a part of the scenery of my life as a cup of coffee gone cold sitting on the shelf because I did not finish it in time. It is a sip taken regardless.

Now that this practice of writing, of putting down pointless frivolities has resumed in earnest, I stopped myself this morning and asked, “what have I thought about lately?”

The answer, as it turned out, was sparingly little. I have not thought about a lot but that there are things in the world that I cannot do much about, and that often one life alone is hard to keep track of not to mention the weight of the entire world. My conclusion to this pointless inquiry in the morning is that we must think about things, and if thinking a lot seems to be out of the question in the spirit of time, we must think a bit but we must think, and that we must do things, we must use our hands and our minds and act, and if accomplishing everything is an impossibility, then, we must do something.

That is all there is to it, to me, to this day, to this life. I have thought a little here and there, and then, I have done some things, and I have good confidence on being able to say hitherto it has been enough. And it may be enough for the years to come. There will be no ballads or tales about this life, but I am certain it will be talked about. Perhaps, at the dinner table at some casual soiree when their plates are empty of agendas and topics, and that is what it will have stood for: a manageable little. But it will have stood for something. I reckon, that is a good result.

Of all things that can happen to a person, becoming happier is the most challenging of all. At first, it seems to be a distant goal, unreachable, the proverbial pot of gold, even a smidge of it seems to make the most ambitious of us scoff. And then, you find yourself wasting a sunny Sunday, and instead of a picnic, planned in the most excruciating detail, you choose to do laundry, and then, you have some coffee, and sit for hours, stopping only for a peck here, a stray kiss there. It occurs to you just how frighteningly easy happiness seems, how fleeting and ephemeral the glee of it all is, as if it were a delicate trinket from a faraway place, ready to shatter at the first touch of an unsuspecting guest. It appears uncomfortably fragile as you sit on the couch for a little bit of infinity, and yet, there it is.

And that is where you stop, thinking if it is here, then I must let it be, undisturbed, unbothered. I must feign aloofness. I must not let it know about my agency, about how I, too, can do things, can break things. I must pretend to be a character in the background of the most delightful day, continuing to move about in an apartment—one of many—and be a person—one of many—and let the day turn into the night, and the night into the morning, sticking to the script, forevermore.

It is a cozy January morning, and tired and half-asleep as I am, I feel like writing again. I sit here in a sort of a whiteout as the sky and the world outside this apartment slowly comes to life. And the faint tone of the alarm in the other room makes me smile for I know she will take her time to wake up regardless. I make my coffee and sit with the keyboard to begin again. I write the first sentence.

And then, I write it again, and then, I write it again, and it occurs to me that apologies are in order for I have wasted the moment, the stride in all my busy-ness, that the words do not wait for anyone, and now, I shall be stuck forever, and that apologies are in order, but then, I look up. I look up at the light coming out the window, and I realise that this morbid business does not belong here, does not belong today, and to the now. The birds chatter outside as if there is some great news about, and there is! I have picked it up again—the proverbial pen. And what candle does this fallow hold to the abundance of words that is, that will be in my life? It flickers and disappears. What choice does it have?

The refrigerator’s hum fills the air while the faint alarm continues to ring in the other room and claims authority. I stop writing and stretch my fingers once—this is not as easy as it has always looked. Then, I stop altogether and get off the couch. I must go wake her up, and I must sit with her and whisper sweet nothings. The words can wait. The world can wait. A lot of it can stay put till we begin this day. There will be time to do the rest. I have since learned there is an order of precedence to things, to life, and that living it trumps almost everything else. How silly that this of all things is my newfound insight. How silly indeed.