journal.coffee

I think the last thing I ever want is for someone to ask someone else about me and them being able to perfectly, in a few words, describe who I am. Such a tragedy that would be if someone could say a single word to catch everything a person is and everything they ever could be, as if casting a net over their entire being. Such a terrible thing it is to be labelled and defined. A friend remarked the other day about how I tend to contradict myself every half year or so, and I laughed about it and said something about how it wasn’t always like that, that there are things that change and things that stay, but then, I thought about it a lot, and they did make a valid observation. But then, I reckon it is all by design, and this need to reinvent who I am and what I do continually. It starts to suffocate me if time passes and I look in the mirror, and it is the same person I see, complete with the same vocation, fears or days. There is so much room to experiment in this life, and we must shuffle things up every two or three years to exercise this muscle of freedom in our minds. You conform too long to yourself and what everyone says about you, and then, you conform for a lifetime. At least, I think that is true, and so I tend to go out of my way to make sure there is some problem to solve, and as flawed as it may sound, make a problem if there isn’t any, but then, this is life, and there are always things to fix or make better. At least, I think that is true, but you could never be too sure about these things.

The whole day has passed since I wrote the above, and like an adept juggler or acrobat, I have balanced the requirements to be a person on my nose. Now, I sit at the cafe and bask in my glory. Another day has been conquered. Another battle has been won. No one will tell these tales. We begin and end with our banality. I take a sip of the coffee like it is some mead from the gods, given as a gift to exist, and I think of myself and all that I did today, and a part of me is happy for whoever I am right now, but a part of me has begun to ask: where to next? I do not have an answer. Not yet.

The fever passed, and with it passed hundreds of sentences I had thought of and not written down anywhere. A lot of inspiration comes from lying in bed under the blanket of boredom, and sickness is an excuse good as any to spend a few days thinking. Now that I am filled with caffeine and the other stuff the pills put into me, I have lost all the bits and pieces I had foraged from the many wealds of my fever dreams. Now, like usual, I am filled with the fears of deadlines, with the perils of never-ending paperwork. All so tiring, all so overwhelming, all so usual. It baffles me that we accept this as people, but I am just one person and don’t intend to cause a revolution. People cannot bother with where the world goes. It is only the concern of the few who take the positions and stature, whatever their motivations might be. Most of us only want to be able to have a good time for as long as we can do it and be done with this charade sooner than later.

I lost myself for a good chunk of this year, and now July is here. It is here with its whiteout of languid swelter. Despite countless warnings, it has barely rained in the city this year. It has been muggy and frustrating all around. But in this nothingness, I find it easier to retrace my steps to what began all this, these words, these slices of my life. My resolve beats inside my heart; I can hear its soft thumps again.

There is a reason for my days filled with the horrors of work, money, and other twaddle, but there is a better end to this bitter pursuit. I had gotten too caught up with the minutiae. You must always resist the call of a number; they always catch you with it: years of experience, monthly income, the next step of your career, what say you. So much of society is filled with these vacuous ideas in the name of progress, but is it progress if it leads nowhere? You might as well draw a circle in the sand and trace it with your steps for eternity. Now, I am reminded once again why I do what I do.

It has always been to be able to read a book in peace, and if I want to spend two days reading it, then taking two days. There has never been anything else, and I am getting there, both in mind and in means.

On a rather regular day with a rather regular sky, I had a rather regular realisation regarding the range of my reticence. How did it begin? It began with a friend saying something, and it sticking like a spot of ink accidentally sputtered onto a white wall—unintentional, sure, but permanent for all intents and purposes. What was said, what it meant is all irrelevant, for the inquiry has been made, and the thinking has been done: I have realised how much I have changed.

The world claims, as part of its peevish plethora of platitudes, that people can’t place much but remember how we made them feel. It’s a popular claim based on a popular quote, but like all things that are too simple as all popular things often are, it is as true as the time on a broken clock—which is to say it is mostly wrong. People only remember what they remember. On most days, they forget most about others and themselves. It’s a tall order for them to remember your continuity. Recency is all that is remembered, and it rewrites and resets the rest in its reflection. But why this sudden detour into what the world says about what people remember? Because of how we change.

We change slowly, in pieces and places no one—not even we—can notice. But then, the toll of remembering how and who we were falls only on ourselves. Nobody can remember this for us; we must do the heavy lifting. And how do we change?

Time passes, and something gets knocked down here and there. If we notice it, we replace it, but what if we don’t? If it is something small like a split of paint on the wall, or a screw that moves freely if you turn it too tight, or a table that wobbles a bit, what then? What if it is something we ignore? Then, we change as things change—without anyone knowing or, better, remembering.

Summer slowly swerves and swivels with the splashes of monsoon, and I sit at this cafe, tallying the little things I have ignored too long, of how they have changed who I am. But of course, there is no answer, no conclusion, and if you ask anyone else but myself, I assure you, there will be no memory. No one but we, ourselves, are the reliable narrators. We write about it if we can; otherwise, we write it off.

Woke up yesterday with a dream I could not make head or tail of, and it was not until the afternoon that I accepted it to be a fever dream. Since then, the juxtaposition of the city caught in the rain, with storm warnings issued yet again, and my body continuing to boil has had me cross-eyed and confused. My febrile and fatigued state has painted the last forty-eight hours in its own dull colours mixed in sweat and many hours of lying down or doing the little I can do. I’d say I was able to do something still, often owing to the faux vigour pumped in my veins through coffee or a tablet or two. But mostly, outside of the hours of work, the last two days have been watching TV and the rain, and at times, both of them together. How fast days pass when we’re sick, and yet, how long every second feels when everything in your being hurts to some degree—it makes me curious still, and here I sit staring at the clear night sky, washed anew by the rain this evening, a cup of chamomile on the sill, enjoying the breeze as it plucks the droplets of sweat stuck to my temples.

Before I moved inside and sat to write, I picked all the books lying on the desk and the rugs and put them back on the bookshelf. All the books I wanted to read, that I had begun reading ardently, have now disappeared into the pile of failed attempts. I must find something else to read when this ends—this fever, this annoyance. It always goes like this—when you find a good book and begin reading it and liking every second of your time spent with it, some barrier blocks it from being read further. It could be a sickness, a spell of busyness, a wedding or something you have no control and imagination for, and then you can never open it up and continue from that point on. You have to start reading it again someday, and until that day arrives, the book remains shamefully jailed amidst the towers of books you own.

Now, I wait patiently for everything to pass and to begin a new book, hoping nothing interrupts it, but seldom is it all so benevolent. Most life is interruption to things we thought we would do, and somehow, between all that, we end up doing something still.

The best kind of stories are where the elements of fantasy are used sparingly, and nothing is too out there, and when you experience it, you know it is a story, but you also know that it could very well be something that happened in the neighbourhood, and if it did, and if you heard it from someone, and if they had a habit of exaggeration, you would get a version of it almost precisely like the story you’ve just read or watched. And when people talk in those stories, they speak in such a way that if you replaced one of them and placed someone else, someone real in it, they would be able to carry the conversation forward, and no one would notice the replacement. I think those are the best stories. There is a place for all of it, of course, but if I were to choose to lose myself in an unbelievable world, I prefer to be lost with someone I would not mind talking to if I ever met them; quite possibly, I would not mind calling them a friend, either. For the sake of explicit clarity, since the preference for one thing is often interpreted as hatred for another today, I am a lover of all stories; only we all have our favourites in the things we love, too. That much, you’ll have to agree with.

Favourite seasons, favourite lovers, favourite cafes or favourite films do not tell you that they are loved more than the others, and I believe that is where people start to conflate things; they only tell you that when someone thinks about the thing, their favourite is what usually comes to mind. When I think of drinking, I think of an old fashioned. Does that mean I despise beer? No. On the contrary, when I think of summer, I cannot help but think of a warm day on a terrace patio and the cold pint of beer in my hands, every drop and bubble sparkling under the golden, royal sun. We all have our favourites. The trick, if there is any, is being open to them changing. There are no absolutes here. There can never be any. The human spirit tries to fill the days it is poured into. Often, it fills some days faster than others. That has nothing to say about its ability to adapt or change. All it says is there are parts of life we like, and there are some parts we like more than others.

A great sentence is not a great sentence in itself. It is lifted off the page by the padding around it, the context set by the paragraph it begins or ends, or if done correctly, lifts in turn. When you read a book, and suddenly, you reach a sentence that knocks the wind out of you, when you have to rest the book onto the couch or the lounger or wherever you are reading it, and when you have to stare off into space to realise what has just happened to you, it is not about the single sentence. It is about the buildup, the anticipation, the stage set until it makes its bold, grand entry. It is the effect of so many words, so much groundwork being laid for you. The sentence may be great in itself; sure, that could be true, too. But until you read it sandwiched between where it was meant to exist and not as a stray quote on some website or in some compilation by someone who only wished they could have written one of them, would you truly know the essence of it. There is nothing more essential than context.

And the context of a life is the most important thing. To assume we know things about others is a pit many fall into now and then. To believe we are even aware of the full context of our lives at all times is also an expectation that is seldom met. Take my days, for example: once again, the context of my days is that I seem to have gone out of my way and lived too much for others after a full year—maybe more—of keeping this affliction in check. I believe there are flaws we can never overcome, the fatal ones, and like my sentences, my life is, too, woven into that of others. But then, before this thought consumes me, I realise July is not here yet. It is still June, and i can still strike a balance. Half a year may have passed, but half remains still, and sure, even if I may have walked the tightrope of duty and desire for a while, all seems clearer once again.

I can still salvage this year; if I play my cards right, I can still salvage this life. Anything feels doomed when we realise time never stopped flowing; it also makes things saveable, that there is always more time.

There are many reasons you might hate a book, and let me tell you: it is perfectly fine to have it on your bookshelf still, like how you remember the birthday of an old friend you haven’t talked to in years, with unmatched familiarity.

You could hate a book because it is a terrible book, or that you never found the time to read it, and now it serves as a reminder of your procrastination, or you could hate it because the person who gave it to you is not in your life for reasons you do not want to dive into further, or because you once really enjoyed it but have now outgrown it like a pair of jeans from your adolescence—while it may not serve any purpose now, it was instrumental once. But perhaps, the most crucial kind of hate for a book you could have is when you fundamentally disagree with the author or find their existence infuriating but also carry a deep respect for the magnitude of their work.

All these are perfectly fine to have on your bookshelf, and it makes me wince in disgust when I enter someone’s home and see a bookshelf, but there are only books they agree with, or books that are popular to have, or those from only one era, or one author, or books that seemingly only talk about one thing. It’s ugly and perverse; worse, it tells no story. Having a bookshelf without a story is worse than having no bookshelf at all.

If at least a quarter of the books have not turned yellow on the sides, owing to the pastel touch of time, it is too recent a bookshelf, which means whoever owns it (provided they have kept the practice of reading for a while and not begun just now, where the latter has an exemption from this yardstick, and I wholeheartedly welcome them to the club) has actively discarded books out of it, which suggests that they do not care about the reading as much as they care about reading the right things where what defines the “right” is as arbitrary as any of society’s fickle whims.

I could not, in my right mind, ever trust someone who only lives this life of appearance. I would not trust them with dividing portions of food, giving friendly advice on a mundane problem, or speaking a simple smidge of truth even when there was no reason to lie.

Midnight was approaching; we were getting drunk. I had not planned on it, but who plans for it? The crowd was waning, and everyone was slowly getting home, partly because I assumed they had enough to drink, too, but mostly because it was about to rain. Just then, I stared at the night sky from the balcony of the bar we were in, and the static of rain had already begun to fill it quietly. I do not remember whoever said whatever from that point on. There was but the sky to watch in its soft light beauty, and to be honest, what do people say anyway? The server asked me if we had a last order since they were approaching closing time. I laughed and said I was expecting him, and we ordered an old fashioned each and some dessert which we ended up not eating, and I was glad for it. Stating it was “out of your way” and declining the invitation of being dropped home, I booked a ride and trotted towards the little booth where all the guards sat. I asked them if I could wait there. They did not mind.

I think it was then that I felt this extreme wave of loneliness crash over me. The cemented courtyard, usually brimming, was now as drenched and empty as I was. The neon lights from all around created a separate world in the reflections, one which I could not inhabit and which felt more real than the one I was living in. This heaviness in the drops that rapidly fell into the fountain pool right ahead of me like a barrage of shells fired into enemy lines took me by surprise, and it made me feel every sadness I had felt all at once. Then, the driver arrived, and I got in and apologised for getting the seats all wet. When we passed the clock tower, its chime echoed over the empty, slippery wet town, and I checked my watch; it was thirteen to midnight still.

“Why do you think it chimed early?” I asked the driver.

“I have no idea, but if it helps, I checked the time, too,” he said and laughed.

“It does help,” I laughed too, and we did not say anything till we reached.

I reached the apartment two minutes before midnight. I left the wet clothes by the door and slept within ten minutes of changing. When I woke up in the morning, though, the sadness had not left me still.

A world of broadcasting, and here, I sit facing a journal. My ineptitude to follow social expectations puzzles me today as it did the first time I experienced it. I do not remember precisely when this was, but I do remember feeling a deep need to ask, “Why?” And then, in the face of cricket silence at best or “because that is how it is” at worst, I knew it would always trouble me, that there was something inherently different in my perception of things.

Of course, we all believe ourselves to be different when we are young. Naturally, I did find other mavericks—some who taught me to pretend by doing the bare minimum to be what society, as a whole, perceives a person to be, and some who taught me, by their existence itself, to never give too much merit to this want to fall out of the crowd, to try and live in the world still. This careful balance now sets the backdrop of my life.

Still, the utter ridiculousness of sharing every breath, recording and filming every second of our existence glares straight into my eyes, and perhaps, it is not the act itself. Perhaps, it is the broadcasting that is expected of everyone now—to get a job, or someone to read your words, or even find love, I reckon. And I did play by the rules for some years, but then, a voice inside me softly asked, “Why?” And when I could not answer, and when playing a part in my life instead of living it became too perverse an approach, I decided to stop and hide it all, tucked it deep beneath the smile when I tell people nothing interesting, nothing worth mentioning goes on in my life.

I am now protecting my life from other people. And sure, I know the perils of straying too much from the herd, so I share a taste now and then, like a piece of cheese on a charcuterie board or a sip of wine you could not afford a whole glass of at a chic restaurant, but when I see an opening, I make an exit, and I tell no one about it.

“Where have you been?” they ask me.

“Here, home, where else?” I tell them.

But I know what they are truly saying is, “We know nothing about you; we used to know so much,” and what I am truly telling them is, “I know, I’ll prefer to keep it that way.”

It has been over three years since I came back to this town, and now and then, I realise that despite the never-ending construction, the malls, the cafes, and the rich people and their large cars appearing out of thin air and taking over all our regular haunts in their fancy clothes and white shoes that are always clean, the city still has its distinct sluggishness to it and that I should move back to some small apartment in a larger metro. Maybe then I will find the others, wherever they are.

I read a book, which was an entire study on how larger ideas get exchanged faster the larger a city is, and it did feel true when I read it, but then, what will you do of a grand idea when your soul has already left your body after an exhausting two-hour train ride home? And what will you do when your family lives in another state and visiting them would be an ordeal?

When this year began, I visited one of those big cities that I loved visiting only for its sheer scale, but this time, having lived in this pocket of peace, it broke my heart in a way I can’t yet describe, and when I came back, I could not write. It was as if I had lost my spark, like a pen that falls out of your pocket as you rush about at the airport. It isn’t until you need it that you realise it isn’t there. It was like that, and I could not write for months. The few pieces I did manage, I wrote only on sheer willpower. But only now have I been able to wash it all of me. Only now can I write as freely as I did last year.

A part of me is frustrated with the tardiness and the casualness of this city, but a part of me knows that is what keeps it liveable, that there is still something more than this game we play. The simple pleasures have almost, fortunately, remained simple.

I sit across from my friend and have coffee with him, and we talk about how we both seem to be living slower than we ought to at this age. And I nod in agreement.

“Yes, I think I might try to go out if I feel things get too slow here”, but then, I realise what a week did for my writing, how it clouded my view of the world, and I pause and then say, “I couldn’t be too sure though. I can never be too sure of anything.”

I spent the first half of this empty Saturday talking to friends on the phone about the little fits of nuisance to find solace and belonging. All the while, I kept looking out the balcony door, wondering how the weather was frustratingly unideal and, frankly, not the kind of hot like a sumptuous meal on a cold day or like a slice of pizza with bubbling cheese coming fresh out of the oven, but like water in a bottle that was forgotten in the car the entire afternoon drinking which does nothing to quench your thirst but only make you feel that taking that sip is, and might forever be, one of the greatest regrets of your life. The lifeless air surrounding me feels like a perpetual heartbreak, but not the one that you use to sculpt poems out of; instead, one that is so pedestrian that to make even a verse out of it would be a crime against all those who have ever written poems before. Has June always been this dreary, or has this one arrived like a detached coworker who arrives with no smile on his face and no hello on his tongue, only a sense of obligation that he had to come in today like he does, like everyone expects?

The coffee has been sitting here for hours and has not gone cold. It has maintained this temperature like how the sky has maintained its stance for being right in the centre of blue and grey. Perhaps, this day, given how slow and, if I am being honest, useless it seems, is the perfect excuse to do nothing at all. Read a book, maybe or lie down. I believe on days like this one, like how they have been for this past week or so, that is the only course of action—nothingness. Instead of resisting the absence of energy, you give into it, you surrender the ounce of vigour you had, and you fade into the hours that all look the same. So, perhaps, until the rain the weather report so confidently shows arrives, I will be as lifeless as everything and everybody around me.

My neighbours from the apartment straight ahead of mine hung some clothes on the railing of their balcony as I wrote these words. It has been a while since then. Not a single breeze blew them since—not even a little bit. This should not bother me as much as it does, but it does.

The light outside has begun to fade, and the city has called it a day. I shut everything off and take the last leftover sip from my coffee. Then, it occurs to me this was the fourth cup I had today and the ridiculousness of still feeling sleepy. The pointlessness of these cups of coffee and how they do nothing for me makes me chuckle every time I set a mug down at any table, but then, habits are habits, and there is little you can do about the few that are not as terrible as some others. But regardless, the day is over, and Saturday couldn’t arrive sooner. Some weeks are heavy not because something major happens but because nothing happens at all! They are so run of the mill; they take a large bite out of your soul in their banality. This was a week like that, and every moment from it was spent waiting for it to end. And then what? What did I think would happen? Nothing, but despite the air being still and dead, we can hope for eventfulness, we can hope for a bit of rain. It’s the least you can ask from life, after all—for things to happen.

Someday many days from now, I will be lying in the grass under the shade of some sprawling tree, and that will be all I do for the day. That, too, will be uneventful, but I believe it will not feel so heavy. I cannot say why. You just know about some things.

You have some money now, they ask me, why don’t you do it? I believe only those born with it clutched loosely in their hands have the audacity to make remarks like that; the rest of us know it rarely is just about the money.

But there will be a day like that, and then, all these days will be distant and blurry, and whether they were eventful or otherwise would be a moot point. As I write these words, I look at the growing towers of books I have bought surrounding the tenements of the few I have read. Yes, I will get to all of you, too, I sigh. I will get to all of it. There is still time. This has all just begun, and I am ahead of where I thought I would be by now. It’s all well on its way.

There are just weeks like the one I just had that I must get through, one by one, over and over. Patience is all living is about—patience and looking at the sun now and then.

For the last couple of days, we’ve all been waking up with sweaty palms and a sad, muggy air in the room. June casts its spell on the world, and suddenly, everything is warmer than you’d like it. Outside the window is a world stuck in time, almost overcast, with no sign of any activity, no wind. The peace offering of dried leaves from last evening, brought to the balcony by the barely blowing breeze, seem to be fixed, almost glued to the grass. There is such listlessness outside; it has begun to rub off on me and my attitude toward whatever I do. But the day is getting on, the things to do are piling on, and here I am, struggling to write in the face of this dead air, this more than morbid day, and when I say morbid, it is only because it appears as if there is not an ounce of life in it. There are days in summer when energy flows all around you, and then, there is a summer like this, too.

My position is not lost on me. To be able to waste this amount of thought on the weather requires a steadfastness in life that I do not deny. Things are stable, as they can be in many ways, and it has led me to worry about the weather. I have things to do and decades to worry about, but the days could not be more yellow and warm. There is little else I need to do than write these words, work a job, and ensure I am well. Just now, a pigeon landed on the balcony in a languid stupor. If it was exhausted, it had been exhausted a while now. I thought it would fly away as they usually do, but spent as it appeared, it decided to walk around for a bit, and now, it seems to be catching its breath under the shade of the wall in the corner. And here I sit, sipping coffee, looking outside. This day has gotten on already. Four hours since I woke up, it seems not a second has passed. I wonder when it will rain. I hope it rains soon. This sordid listlessness has ensnared people and pigeons alike, it seems.

It often surprises me how people underestimate the expanse of what someone can know if they simply read, for they do not talk about such things because it is perverse to always show that you know something about anything.

There are times when you share your knowledge, and times you keep it tucked in the back pocket like some receipt you forgot was in there. If, for example, you find yourself at a party at three in the morning, and if things have reached the point where people are simply sitting down with their drinks in their hands, you do not talk about the things you know for only two things can come out of it. If they somehow reject what you have to say, no matter the pedigree of where you read it, it will lead to an altercation the others are too tired to watch, and this will do nothing but turn what was a graceful descent into an unfortunate end. On the other hand, if they do not say anything but feel inadequate for not knowing much about how coffee was first made or the clear difference between an ale and a lager, or some old law which serves nothing but be a piece of trivia, they will continue to remember how you made them feel, despite it being their fault for not reading enough, and they will never invite you again.

All that to say that there is a time and place to share what you know, but if you ever happen to find yourself in the company of an expert who is only one per a degree that eats dust in some drawer they have not opened in years, and if you truly know what you know owing to reading out of general curiosity and the joy of knowing things—which is the only way to read—and not out of the necessity to fulfil some credit criteria, I suggest you destroy them and let them have it. There is a time and place, often at a table in a cafe, where you have been quiet too long, waiting for a moment to pounce. If you find that window, by all means, pounce.

The view that knowledge is not found in books or an interconnected web of ideas, experience and error must be destroyed like the paper armour of expertise they wear. It was better when knowledge and reading were synonymous. I suggest we start a quiet revolution and put things back to where they were.

I sit with a cup of coffee and my eyes half open while the sun, its soft light, continues to seize all of this town and its torpor. I hesitate to begin the day. There is a limbo between when I wake up and before I become a real, moving part of the world. I find myself there often, and mostly, it is the only place I find myself at home. I rarely want to leave it; I am cooped up cosily there.

For all my readiness, I rarely am ready. For all my presence, I am almost always aloof. Every day I live is in resistance to my nature. Maybe, that is the problem with making things look easy. As time passes, people forget it was ever hard, ourselves included. I sit here, and I do nothing. I am not ready to be a person yet, I tell myself. Let me finish my coffee and get back to you in about ten minutes. With all that haggling done, I lean into the chair, let my shoulders down, and look out the window at nothing.

The morning I wrote the above passage was two mornings ago. Now, it is almost midnight two nights later, and I sit here, my shirt unbuttoned and a glass of wine on the table. For all its tribulations, this life I live is a good one. This is not washed over me, but a man forgets now and then. Guilty as charged, I accept that this realisation has come too late this year. I seem to have had my head in the sand for so long; it’s June already!

A tardy spring and gratefulness are how I will remember this year. While walking on the sidewalk last evening, I noticed the bougainvillaea had gone out of its way to cover it. I was too tall for it now, and my hair kept brushing against it. It was then, perhaps, that it must have hit me, or maybe, at some party, or while I laughed about some things I have no control over. I do not know where my disposition went or why the world’s heaviness crushed my shoulders for so long, but it was there. Now, it seems to have taken its bow, made its exit, and given way to an excess of daisies, which seem to have begun a conquest on the pots in the garden below this apartment complex.

I said this year was slow. Perhaps, it is right on time. After all, now that I say it out loud, I wonder, who am I to decide?

Making coffee this morning, I did not know what I would do for the day. I had a general idea like how we have a general idea about how our friends spend their days, but if I were asked to describe either in excruciating detail, counting the unforgiving minutiae, I would be both an unkempt person and a terrible friend. But since no one has such questions, I am spared. I envy those who know what they want in life. I map out every corner of my day on most days because I wander aimlessly. For all checklists I scratch off every day, if someone asked me where I was going, I would not have an answer. Honestly, I would not know where to begin. My dreams change like the weather in this city, which graced us with the sun for precisely one and a half days before sweeping up a gust out of the blue and deciding it would be a storm again. I resemble this sky more than I do any picture anyone has made of me in their mind. For all their surety, I am filled with doubts. I often tell people I do not know how this story ends, that I will be fine with whatever ending I get. The ending is not my concern.

But every so often, I wish it were. I wish I cared about the times I live in, not the centuries that have long passed and the decades I will never get to see. I wish I cared enough to be bothered by this vagueness. But I do not. I do not care about where things go as long as they keep heading somewhere. I believe movement is enough. When things stop moving is when I will be concerned. I know it was not this way earlier. Somewhere below all this, I remember knowing where things were going, steering the course, and not giving in to the forces of time and fate. But like someone who wakes up on an island, having fought unbelievably well against nemeses they can never defeat, I, too, have no intention of setting sail again. I, too, am grateful that I can still walk, that things still move and that everything is in the right place. There is no greater blessing than braving the storm and coming out unscathed, for whatever it is worth.

But somewhere deep down, a voice has started to emerge. I can hear it sometimes, inciting rebellion within me. Its whispers have gotten louder.

Perhaps out of general exhaustion and lack of acknowledgement on any given day, or maybe, out of randomness, I let myself slither into the more selfish parts of who I am this morning. Since then, it has been a day immersed in the sad thanklessness of what I call life. They teach us never to expect credit, that it is perverse and immoral, but why should someone do anything then?

There are times when you do the work, and if all goes correctly, I wager there is a moment of celebration or acknowledgement. A farmer toils for harvest. There is no other reason for his work. Bushels of grain and fruit is why he bears the sun, day after day, over and over. And if they are empty season after season? I reckon he will find another line of work. But what of all we do for the world we live in, for the corner we call our life? Do you ever get a chance to reap something out of it? Part of me knows this lacklustre feeling of being overlooked is but exhaustion, but on some days, we can throw a tantrum and bitch about the parts of our lives we don’t quite like.

I detest this part: for all my motivation to do good work, to do good, in general, to do the right thing whenever I can, I barely garner claps or a note of thanks. Often this does not bother me at all. Then, there are days when I wake up, and my first thought is the pointlessness of my actions. Even these words that I write day after day are acknowledged sparingly, if at all, and if they are, it is by those who already know about them.

For the better part of a decade, I have been fighting uphill for everything, to live a righteous and better life, not to waste most of it, and if I stumble or err, to do better. I have beaten myself up to an alienation I cannot explain. Ultimately, all my noble habits are for nought, all my words remain hidden, and I go unnoticed no matter where I am. This feeling has engulfed me today, like this quiet, purple June sky has engulfed the city. Perhaps, there is nothing else left to do today but to take a walk and sleep. It is a thankless existence for most of us. No snare drums thump for our arrival. We move silently from one place to another, busy living as they taught us to.

I almost always skip breakfast, and sometimes, by the time I pour milk over some cereal, it is already past noon. And I believe people have all sorts of things to say about it, but then, they have all kinds of things to say about everything. I don’t pay much heed to what people have to say, and I have people to thank for that. When they tell me I behave like a child if I make a pun too many, or drink myself out at a party as if it was my first, or continue to carry with me the interests I had as a little boy, I do not care for it, not anymore.

Perhaps, it is because they are correct. After all, only a child is bold in the most harmless, softest of ways. A pun does not hurt anyone; it only makes them feel the envy of never being able to let go of their adult pride to say something ridiculous and mildly funny, and the other things have similar results. Whenever someone calls you a child for doing something, they secretly wish they dared to do whatever it is, too, and when they realise they have been living wrong all this time, they have no choice but to paint it wrong, but it is not so; it is only different.

There are parts of me that do not fit well with most of what we call the world, and it is none of my concern. All trees are the same to us, but to all trees, every tree may be different in ways we do not understand, even beyond the superficial turning of their branches or the colours of their leaves—things that we do notice if we have it in ourselves to look up on any given day, which rare for most people, but it does happen.

Of course, as is with all things, this is a game of balance. For every bill you struggle and pay, you must climb a wall for no other reason but to check if you can do so. For every difficult conversation you have, you must splash on a puddle to wash the dirt of age. And for every impossible situation you face, you must make a harmless pun that makes them roll their eyes. Where do you get all these terrible jokes, they ask me? It is an urge I cannot resist, I tell them. It comes to me, and I must say it out loud.

Between you and me, if I don’t, I might grow old like all of them. Now who wants that, I wonder.

Didn’t write for what—how many days? Three or four or maybe more; did not keep track, of course, was too busy living. Made several notes here and there and forgot about them until I sat at the desk.

The process is easy. I refuse to believe it begins somewhere or ends somewhere. It starts when you feel something enough to put it down and ends when you write the last word, but when would I ever write it? There is always something more to write after you are done writing. There are more pieces I have not written than the ones I finish, and many I have left midway kept like dough kept in the corner to ferment and rest. I think every person must live first before they tell a story. Living always comes first—documenting it, sharing it comes later. Many befuddle it and have it the other way around. I pity them.

Yesterday, I took a nap on the plane because the sky was too bright, the clouds too white, and I was too tired to look out and bear it all, and a sentence came to me: no matter who you are and where you come from, there will be some struggle, and in the end, only you will know it. It will be your weight to lift, your cross to bear, and as much as telling others is an option, you will never find the words or the opportunity—which is often more critical. If you have ever tried confessing your unending love for someone, you know the struggle of finding them at the right moment and by themselves, which is, again, more important. People are rarely alone anyway. Their thoughts, regrets, and other badges and patches of time and worry travel with them. But that is not the topic at hand; my digressive roundabout ways of saying things get on my nerves as much as they do others, sometimes. The case is that no matter who you are, you will struggle with something. This is, of course, an obvious realisation about yourself. Ask anyone on the street if they have ever struggled, and they will tell you: naturally.

But this is not as obvious when you think of others, and it is the more difficult thing to admit: as much as I have struggled, others have, too, in things they don’t tell me, especially in them, like all I refuse to mention even when given a chance, or a thousand.

I’ve thought about time. It does not surprise me, nor was I able to make any major or new observations. But it does not mean I didn’t think about it. Most thought is routine; you do it like the dishes or cooking the few things you know how to cook well. That is to say: you do it without volition and almost robotically. It would happen even if you weren’t thinking about it, and it would happen precisely as it would if you had your mind set on it. That is how I think about time. It occurs independently, and I don’t have to move a muscle to trigger the thought. I reckon there are topics like this for all people. For me, it is time, its passage, its importance, its monotony and its omnipresence.

I sit on this bus, as I have done many times before. Like the dishes, like writing, like everything else that I do over and over again, it has all melded into one another. There is no particular memory I have of travelling in an overnight bus. I just have a general idea of how it goes and what happened when I was on a bus once, but separating it all and sifting through it is impossible. Time has cast a patina on it all. It’s all safe and protected and forever hidden from even myself. But most of all, like all things with a little burnish on them, it is colourful and vibrant.

I reckon, in the end, it all becomes this: a collection of general ideas. I will never befriend someone new like the first few times, and indeed, I will not fall in love and know about it. It will happen and get melded with the many times I’ve experienced it before. There is nothing new to feel anymore. All the new gets sorted into a label before it even happens, and why does it happen? Time, of course; why else? It is time that blunts the effect of novelty.

Many people would think ill of this idea, and immediately, conditioned as they are to say the right thing, even when no such thing exists, they will retort by saying something that has been rinsed and repeated a million times by all sorts of people. There is always something new that can happen; they might say, not knowing that their mindless regurgitation of the idea defeats their defense on its own.