journal.coffee

In some ways, I’ve always been a writer, but if I was being honest, I really began writing because I wanted to be one of the greats. I wanted to leave something behind that was celebrated for years after I disappeared.

Now, however, I don’t feel the same. I don’t want to be great and neither do I feel I deserve it. There is no great tragedy in me or my life. Nothing of enough mettle to prove that I persisted even though I did. My battles were in the every day — in the mundane.

Although, I think I know why I write now.

I want to write a word so honest and plain that it pushes someone else, perhaps, someone around or someone way beyond my time, in just the right way. Maybe, they come across something I said and it rubs them off in the wrongest way possible, or maybe, it stirs something in them that wasn’t there before.

So, I document this ordinary life — one without anything epic or grandiose in it. I do it honestly in every way I can, in every form I can, and I’ll continue doing it until I vanish. I don’t know any other way, and I have nothing better to do.

So, if you are who I have talked about, and if you’re reading this, do me a favour. Be great. Be greater. The world requires more like you and less like me — those who dwell in the every day. Just promise me that you’ll be honest, and I promise you, the greatness would arrive on its own.

Then, you won’t need anything at all.

They are running—rampant and hungry—dividing the city between right and wrong. They are running, each preaching their own gospel. Some say you may not believe otherwise. Some say you may not disagree. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is right. “Take a side or we’ll take one for you,” a banner swirls through the air.

There is a kid—dazed and confused. He’s walking, stumbling into them as they ignore him walking between their feet. He sees a dog on the street — scared. He walks up to it and pats it on the head. He comforts him. Perhaps, he comforts himself in the process. He leaves the dog and continues walking.

They are here. They break down the door. “How do you think?” They ask me. “How do I think what?” I ask them back. “How do you think?” They stress on the last word. A knee to my stomach. I fall down in pain. “Who do you write for?” They scream in my ear. I look at the floor—silent.

Outside, the kid walks further, astonished at the chaos and destruction. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand anything. He looks at a white flag stained red. He looks at people arguing, even killing each other, left and right. He stops by an old house. He looks inside.

I hear the deafening question, “Who do you write for? How do you think?” They continue asking me. A question follows a knee, a knee follows a question. “Why won’t you agree? Why won’t you disagree? Why won’t you take a side? Everyone has to. Everyone does.” I stay silent, my body aching. I feel the life running out of me.

I look outside my door. A kid looks straight at me. I look at his forlorn face. His expression turns pale and just, sad. He looks inside the house, and with it, my heart. I know how he feels. I have felt the same way too — caught forever in battles with which I have nothing to do.

Another knee in my back, “Who do you write for?” They ask again. Barely breathing, I struggle to speak. “I write… for the kid,” I answer, “I have always written for the kid.” Unable to understand, they shoot the both of us. We stop breathing.

Perhaps, they didn’t get it—what a tragedy.

Sometimes, I couldn’t fall asleep because of all the possibilities. I’d lay in my bed, looking out at the dark sky from between the curtains in my bedroom. I’d look at it with an odd sort of excitement.

I was so genuinely excited for another day that sleep just wouldn’t come. I’d be giddy, thinking about all that I could do in life. There was so much to do!

It was overwhelming — the possibility of life. The possibility that exists as long as we’re here, breathing. The possibility of the human potential, that remains there until tapped into.

I’d think about all the things that remained undone. I would look at the plant by the window sill and remember how one day, after four months of consistent watering without any visible results, it decided to grow out on its own.

I remarked, “”How did you do that in a day?”” It made me wonder with almost childlike awe: how amazing it is that even when something isn’t visible, a change, some growth, is always afoot? As long as we kept doing what we needed to do, we kept growing.

One day, it would all start to show just like the plant. Then, a bystander, looking at you for the first time, would remark, “”How did you do that in a day?”” And you’d reply, “”Oh, very easily. You see, I stared by staring out my window every night.”” You’d chuckle, remembering all those nights you couldn’t sleep.

All of that would come later though if it ever does, and I couldn’t care less. All I could care about was the next day, and the possibility of all that I could do in this life, all that I could leave behind. The human potential was so vast and inspiring that to think of anything less was an insult to everyone that came before.

There was, frankly, so much to do!

They sat at the edge of the lake in the evenings after the day was done. There was nothing beyond the lake it seemed, and if there was, they couldn’t have known it. For a couple of weeks, every evening, they’d come to the lake. They’d sit on a small cemented platform, large enough to fit the six of them if they sat shoulder to shoulder, and they’d stare. They’d stare at the landscape. They watched as a lone man rowed his boat every evening, making the scenery appear as if it was straight out of a painting. It was surreal. That was all they cared about. They talked about life as they got drunk out of their wits. He liked that. He liked that a lot. It was then that he learned that happiness wasn’t something you felt throughout life but in memories, spread over like polaroids. It was the moments that counted. It was about how many polaroids you could collect. He learned that he was happy at that moment, looking at the sunset over the sparkling, golden water, laughing, and just being stupid for a change. On one of those evenings, he learned something. It was something he’d learn forever that day. He learned that one could be crumbling inside, and still manage to find an ounce of happiness. His heart was broken, but he was happy, and that was all that mattered.

They often say life is a journey but they never tell you what kind. I seem to have found the answer. Life is like travelling in trains. You take one, then another, and often you miss stations. How did I come to this conclusion, you ask? Well, one tends to fall asleep on a train, only to wake up to a different scenery in a different city, and having missed most of what went on during the time they had dozed off. It is quite similar in life, at least, that’s how it played out for me.

I slept, looking out the window, in a certain winter a couple of years ago, and while I felt the wind on my face and faintly heard people say things as one might do during a journey on the rail, I was barely conscious of where I was going or what was happening or where I was in the first place! The co-passengers changed. I reckon the lot must’ve changed entirely more than once for I woke up only recently. I had been asleep all this time, going where the train took me. I woke up this summer. I woke up in a different city at two in the night.

Just like someone who wakes up on a train, not knowing where they are, shocked, and in the most urgent panic, I walked to the door and looked out. I had missed my station a ways back. In a sudden rush of adrenaline, I decided to get off at whatever station came next, and to correct the course from there on. I splashed some water on my face and I decided to hold my bag and stand near the door.

The good thing about trains is, you can always go from anywhere to anywhere as long as there is a track laid out. I reckon that’s true of life too. The journey seldom has one fixed destination. One can hope they pick their stations right. They’re both very similar in that respect: trains and life. They’re very similar indeed for both tend to work out, eventually, even if you doze off every now and then. As long as you woke up in time for your station or not too far away from it, both worked out just fine.

It’s too bad that tables don’t talk. If they did, you’d have had the chance to meet a rather interesting one, tucked away in the corner of a cosy café in the city where nothing ever happens. It is the storyteller of the highest order for it has seen them happen across its life. They say once it begins, it doesn’t stop talking.

It would tell you a story it watched unfold over the years. It would narrate it as if it was some epic saga of love and heartbreak and of all things petty humans cannot control. It would go on and on because there was so much to tell. It would tell you about the two of them.

It would tell you of the most amazing events from the most random of days, and it would tell you of smiles exchanged. It would narrate and never get tired of how it felt that love transpire. It would tell you of all it saw and sometimes, it’d add its own touch to it. It has, of course, seen thousands of these.

It would tell you how they met once a year, then every day, and then never again. The table would talk, and talk, and talk about how he saw them grow up and saw them grow closer, and of course, apart. It would start from the first, awkward sips of coffee to the last silence as they sat with tears in their eyes.

It would tell you how both of them kept visiting for some time, alone, right before they stopped. It would tell you of when they finally came back to the café, after years and not together, of course. It would talk of its excitement when it saw them, and the disappointment it felt when they both walked up to it, but never chose it again.

If you chose it, though, and if it could talk, it would never stop talking. It would have so much to tell you about them — about us. Alas, it’s a story I won’t tell because, perhaps, it’s a story they’ve long forgotten. It makes me think of how it’s too bad that tables don’t talk. It makes me wonder if that is how stories are lost through time.

Today, I spent the afternoon working, sipping coffee, and watching an eagle on a naked tree nearby. The eagle likes to sit on one of its twig-like branches. I watched it fly high into the sky and then dive way down, almost like a torpedo chasing a target. There was nothing else there, as I could gather after I left all my work undone and the coffee to get colder, and kept watching it.

It would come back to that branch, and it would take its time, and then it would fly upwards. It would keep going until it was the only thing of significance in that blue sky. The sole mark on the canvas, stretching its wings as wide as it could as it reached its personal zenith. Then, it came crashing down. It went like an arrow, aiming for something invisible.

I saw it surrendered all control as it was coming down. It wasn’t chasing anything, and surely it wasn’t aiming for anything. It was no arrow. It was a rock. It was falling freely in the wind, but it wasn’t free. It was falling like a person falls when they’re going for rock bottom. The motion is free, and they’ve lost all control. Of course, not of their own volition.

It wasn’t until the eagle would reach near the tree again, until it touched the periphery of the known world again, that it decided to turn and flap its wings. It would start to gain some sense of control. Quickly too, since it immediately changed its trajectory, flapped its wings once, and swung back to the branch.

This entire display reminded me of myself when I fell countless times, and how I’d keep falling with no sense of reality in my immediate sight. Until I saw some part of who I was, perhaps, in a familiar place, and I’d change the trajectory. I’d go back to where I had started from in one flap.

Perhaps, the eagle was testing itself against its own nature, knowing all too well that it would gain control before it hit the ground. Perhaps, I had been doing the same all this time. Perhaps, it has been so long, both of us have forgotten what came first — the fall or the recovery. Or maybe, it was the other way round. Maybe, we’d both learned, albeit differently, that the only thing left to do was to keep going.

Life was all about the manoeuvre.

A friend, who happened to miss a lot of our outings and times we hung out, sent me a comic of sorts today. It was about how when the world will go back to normal, they’ll try to show up more. It got me thinking, though.

Perhaps, the reason I’ve been so content during this time of lockdown, besides my apparent privilege, is because I always did it all. It sounds a bit smug, I’m sure, but I’ve rarely missed meeting other people. In fact, at one point, it quite literally became my reputation. If I said I’ll be there, there had to be a grave reason for why I couldn’t show up. I always showed up. Perhaps, that is why I am not as sad.

If I missed something, there had to be something else that physically made it impossible for me to be in two places. Otherwise, I spent my days from cab to cab, bus to bus, flight to flight, and I showed up. I showed up tired, exhausted even, and I could get drunk with friends and get my work done late at night and that was fine by me.

It makes me laugh when I remember changing clothes in a booth in an airport or at a bus station or even a mall, and brushing my teeth wherever I could, and renting a cheap hotel just to get a shower, and making sure I arrived.

Perhaps, that was the secret, not that I knew it until now.

You couldn’t be happy all the time but you could be content. You could be content knowing that when someone needed you for a shoulder, for having a laugh, for a cup of coffee, or for losing your shit out with some beer, that you showed up. Nothing was more important; nothing can ever be more important.

When life goes back to normal because it will, a friend might invite me to something, and I’ll tell them, “I won’t miss it for the world”, and I won’t, no matter where I am in the world. I’ll be there, even if I have to cycle cross country or spend the night at a bus station or take six flights in a row. I’ll be there.

What else is there to do?

Whenever the world goes through a crisis, the first song everyone starts to sing is how the world has changed forever now, and how the world may never be the same again. That’s idle talk! That’s the expertise of humanity: shifting the blame and acting like victims. It’s us who has to change.

The world is much bigger than us. It’s so much more than just one species of thinking apes. It has always been so much more. Any crisis for humanity is but a smidge of turbulence for the planet humans so quickly claimed as their own. It has existed before us, and it will endure after us, and we have but this little time here.

I have always looked at any event, large or small, to be a better version of who I was before it. That was the only thing that made sense. A different circumstance, a new challenge required a different, a new side of myself. Any crisis, inner or external, is a call to action to go back to the notebook and to begin anew.

But for people, it is people doing what they do best: turning the narrative when they say, “the world will never be the same again” because now, they don’t need to be better; now, they just need to cope with this all too terrible world that has changed for, as per their narrative, the worse.

Inactive fools! The onus is on us; the onus was always on us. The world doesn’t give a shit about you or how you think it changed. Stop removing the responsibility, I say. I’ll rally it from my window instead of throwing a clap of applause every Sunday if need be. “Think more, think deeper!” I shall scream from the balcony. “Read more, read what you don’t agree with, and read it quietly!” I shall cry. “Get a reusable cup. Be kind. Help others. Let people off the leash, sometimes!” I shall yell. “Stop bickering and squabbling about undeserving Gods, alive or otherwise!” I shall riot.

The world doesn’t owe you shit, it never did; but you, you owe it everything; you always have. Be better, you fools, try and be better!”

I don’t want to be bitter anymore. Honest, yes. I’ll be honest, every now and then, yes, I’ll do that. It may send a shiver down your spine or make you just think for a wee second but I’ll not be bitter. I am happy. It’s a life I’ve worked hard to build. I’ve taken my time to step off the rollercoaster I was unknowingly on for years, and I’m alright now. I don’t want to be bitter anymore. I want to talk about the human experience. I want these words to be timeless; to not be barred by some agenda or class or issue in the world. The world has always had them, and the world will always have them. The human experience — the sadness, the pain, the laughter, the fight, the anger, the camaraderie, the every day — will remain forever. That’s what I want to talk about. I want to make you smile and I want to make you think and I want to do it forever. That’s what I’ll leave behind if nothing else. I’m a man out of time and place and that’s how I want to be read forever. That is if anyone ever finds these words hidden in the most obscure corner of the world. I’m happy. It’s a beautiful life, and I’m finally happy. The world is for the taking now, and I’m ready for it again. It’s been years but here I am, and now, I don’t want to be bitter anymore. Honest, yes, but not bitter. That’s the word I want to write starting today: honest, sometimes happy, but not bitter.

The one thing I’ve learnt in the short time I’ve spent on this planet is that life would always change. It is not in the nature of life to stay put. Time would pass, and what once seemed like an immovable part of the scenery would become nothing but a prop for the next—temporary and unnecessary. Life would always change, and one could hope it changed to their liking and preference. Yes, one could hope. That is all one could do: hope for what never came to pass.

In the end, at least the beginning of the end, I figured the only thing to do was not care at all, to have a collosal underappreciation for everything that was not beautiful or didn’t bring me joy, to dance through the city lights and listen to my music and pass everyone by, in synch with the natural rhythm of my life or to stay at home, lying on the couch, sipping coffee in blissful comfort. The ugly words could stand on their own, by themselves. The criticism could wait in the corner or on the stage, and I wouldn’t bat an eye or buy a ticket. Life was too short to worry about something as insignificant as trivial people. It had been in my experience that there was only one responsibility on us—ourselves—and it had been my learning that if we managed to do that right, everything else soon followed.

“In the end, everything was a metaphor,” I’d tell everyone else, “that is what I love about life.” One could take anything, anything at all, and pick it up, and talk about life. It had this very meta nature which was absolutely beautiful. An old, torn, busted shoe which still manages to hold on? There’s a lesson in there somewhere. A bird sitting at the window sill, chirping? That’s something life is trying to tell you. Overhear a conversation two strangers seem to be having at the table behind you? You’re bound to hear something that sticks with you forever. A favourite mug, terribly cracked, and yet not broken, sticking, and holding on for over a year just because you happened to bring it up as a metaphor when you first mentioned it? It was all there. “Why won’t you see it?” I’d argue. It’s all about how far you’re willing to see, and how far you’re willing to go. Life was always telling you something. It’s all in the damned, in the unexpected, in the persistence of it all. That’s where it all was, demanding for us to look at it, and we were particularly blessed to see it. Everything was a metaphor. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I remember starting out as someone who really wanted to bring about this… change. I wanted to save the world. I did not know what change or what saving the world meant to me or to anyone else. It didn’t take me long to face the world. When I faced the world though, it made me look inwards, and I saw the truth. It was all grandiose idealism. It was far too complex, the world, and I reckoned that the one way anyone could save it was if one chose to focus on the good, and so I did.

I took my time but I learned my ropes. It was then that I understood that I was no leader. I had never been one. I was far more suited to a different role. I wasn’t valiant and surely not brave, but I was patient. So, I took the role of the pillar, the support, the perspective. I looked to save those around me instead: people I could see, people I had met, people I had once known.

I would sit and converse with people, hear them out, and sometimes hope to point out their fallacies only to help them get closer to the truth, whatever it was for them. Often, it fuelled them further but I understood. They’d still reveal their exploits to me, and I’d listen, patiently.

I knew them well enough, and I knew they would go fight their wars regardless of what I or anyone else had to say. So, I’d let them go. As I’d see them off, before they rode into the horizon, I’d hand them a letter, and I’d ask them to open it when they’re well on their way.

I’d write,

When you’re done with your wars, I hope you win, and even if you lose, come home. Don’t you worry, you can count on me. I’ll tend to your wounds and offer you a pint. I’ll listen to you talk about your victories and your scars, and the sun will still shine the next day. As long as there was someone to listen, the sun always managed to shine, and the world was saved a smidge. So, when you’re done with your battles, come home, wounded and frail, and I’ll be there like I never left. You have my word.

I was cooking today when a fly buzzed around unexpectedly. The possibility of a fly entering the apartment wasn’t much since I hadn’t opened a single door or window in three days. Yet, there it was, buzzing around. I started trying to chase it out. I followed it to the hall when I paused, and there I was, standing in my shorts, a spatula in one hand and a flip-flop in another, chasing a fly out, and looking absolutely ridiculous.

In what seemed like an out of body experience amidst the absolutely mundane, it hit me. It hit me that while I stood there, someone just might be making a decision which affects me, and I could never know it. It could be anyone, and maybe I knew them, and maybe I didn’t, and yet, all I had in that moment was immense hope. It was this hope that this life was changing forever, and I couldn’t see it but I felt it.

Us human beings, we don’t have much to go on but hope. We are a particularly hopeful species. We tend to look on the bright side more often than we don’t. Things have been bleak currently, and yes, it seems like the end of the world, and yes, there will be repercussions, but we will get through, and it’s important to hope for it.

We don’t hope because it is the right thing to do or because we read it in a book or saw it in a movie, we hope because we’ve evolved that way. We hope because it is quite frankly, our best shot. We keep doing what we do, and we keep hoping, and often, chasing a fly becomes a story of a lifetime. Maybe not mine, no, but that’s not how hope works.

You see, hope travels with the randomness, with all the decisions each one of us makes, stacking on top of one another into an epic collision course until it all aligns for one person on a random day. We push hope around, ever so slightly, hoping it hits us right back, eventually.

Hope hits us when we least expect it. It hits us when we’re not looking for it. Hope is sneaky that way, it comes in from behind, and engulfs us completely. Hope is sly. It comes when we’re standing with a spatula in one hand and a flip-flop in another. It comes in as a fly that somehow sneaked into the apartment whose doors were closed for days.

I don’t write for glory, money, or to make a change in my immediate society. Of course, I throw out a piece on how to do things every now and then, but most of my writing is because I like how words appear on a page, or a screen, straight out of my head. It’s magical to me; almost unbelievable. It baffles me each time how all those random swirls of thoughts and agony going around in circles take the form of shapes and characters and words and lines. So, I spill my innermost workings just to see, to experience the magic again and again. I do it not for anyone else but myself, and myself alone. To a lot of people, this process is but a means to an end – they use this to do something, to change something, to affect something. To me, it is the beginning and the end. It starts at the first word and ends with the last line. I don’t see my words affecting anything large or small because I truly believe people are always going to do what they are going to do. We are all subject to our whims and fantasies and heartaches – you have yours, I have mine. There’s nothing my words, or anyone else’s for that matter, can do about anything. People only feel what they already feel. Any form of art just makes it more apparent to them. I’m only in it for the act and how it makes me feel, selfishly so. Anything you take from it is yours and yours alone.

People often ask me how is it that I can manage to stay by myself without going insane, and today, I feel I can divulge that secret. The truth is you must be absolutely goofy with yourself, and your relationship with the self must have a sort of third-person friendliness. At least, that’s how I manage it.

It wasn’t like this earlier. As much as my disposition to stay alone existed, I felt terrible about it. It hurt me to be alone and so I made it a point to do things. I thought the productivity and keeping myself busy would take the emptiness away. That too, hurt in the long run.

It wasn’t until I met someone who taught me, not by saying it, but only by how they lived, to have a certain leeway with oneself, to be funny and crack the most terrible jokes with oneself, to be able to laugh out loud without anyone to laugh with, to be completely nutty, and to like it, to the point that it starts to trickle down to the times when you’re not alone.

It comes as a surprise to people when they meet me or spend time with me, the fact that I am rather stupid, as serious as my words make me sound. It was but one person who changed the entire course of how I lived by myself.

They are not in my life anymore–people who affect our lives significantly seldom stay–but when I’m alone in my apartment, reading, talking to myself, dancing, stubbing my toe and then bursting out into laughter, looking out my window, sipping coffee, clumsily spilling coffee and then shouting at myself for spilling coffee, I think about how if not for them, I would’ve pulled my hair out, if not worse, by now.

It was always in my disposition to stay by myself–that’s how I had always been–but they made it easier for all the days to come, and that in turn, made it easy for me to be with others. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of them every other day–no, not out of the feeling of loss or pain, not anymore.

I guess everyone fulfills the idea of forever differently.

I wanted to make a quick grocery run. It had been a week since they asked us to lock everything down and four full days of staying inside my apartment. On my walk, I passed a familiar café, but there was no echo today, no laughter, and no music. The roads were eerily empty. I walked further down.

Restaurants closed. Cafés empty. Doors bolted. I stopped by one of my favorite ones. “Come inside and have a warm cup of coffee,” the little sign on the gate read. The chairs stood on the tables, upside down, where just four days ago, people sat and laughed and made jokes about the new disease.

No one on the roads. At least, not around me.

At one point, a stranger and I walked toward each other on the empty road and almost instantly started to walk in opposite directions, until we were on too different ends of the sidewalk. She gave me a smile which said, “I’m sorry if I was rude, I can’t walk too close,” and I smiled back with mine. “Don’t worry about it, I understand.” We walked away.

This was a noisy neighborhood, you know? I reached the main road. A police car patrolled up and down, announcing for people to stay away as much as possible and not come out, if at all possible. They stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told them it was a grocery run. They advised me to get it done quickly and go home as soon as I could.

I reached the grocery store. It seemed to have been raided. I could get a loaf of bread from there, and some juice but not the one I liked; we were beyond petty preferences. The helper at the store told me the loaf of bread had my name on it, and that someone had kept it in a different corner and he had just then put it in the right place. I headed back home.

I’m sure it won’t stay this way but, it seems, for the first time, I felt alone not because of some inherent issue within but because there was no one around, literally.

As I reached my place, a familiar dog’s ears perked. He looked at me, puzzled. He turned his head in confusion. He walked towards me and then, jumped. He was excited. I rubbed his head and petted him thoroughly. I have a feeling that he, missed me, missed people.

I realised I, too, missed him, missed people.

You don’t see it coming—the feeling. It won’t visit you for days, for weeks. Sometimes, it wouldn’t visit you for months. You can’t see it. It comes right after you get back home or disconnect the phone or in the middle of the night. It comes on its own.

It starts from a thought, but now you know, so you put the water to boil with as much as a hint of its arrival. The kettle starts gurgling and bubbling, and as you hear the steam rise from it, you also feel the feeling growing inside you. It’s coming, and you know it too well now. So, you walk in your dark apartment with only a dim lamp from your bedroom lighting your path. You walk the same way as you think—in circles—until it arrives.

Then, you sit on the floor, pressing your back against the wall, breathing as deeply as possible. A hot minute later, the kettle clicks; the water has reached its boiling point. You breathe; deep but weak breaths. Nothing makes sense, and gravity feels ever so powerful, and so you find yourself sinking. Before you know it, you pour yourself on the cold floor as some tears pour out of your eyes. You wonder where they came from. “”But I’ve been so happy lately””, you tell yourself. You lie there.

Minutes pass, then you start to take the control back, slowly. You open your eyes, and it leaves right as it had come—on its own. You get up; the gravity doesn’t entirely pull you down anymore. You walk to the kitchen counter and pick the kettle up. The water has reached the perfect temperature, so you pour it on a teabag in a mug.

You take the tea and walk back to your couch. You sit on it and turn some music on. It mumbles in the background as you sip away. You know it too well now. It came, and it passed. It’s all over—the tea, the day, the song, the feeling. You know this all too well. You’ve done this a hundred times now. You pass out on the couch, exhausted.

Let me tell you something about the city where nothing ever happens—not a lot may happen there, but there is an absolute uniqueness to how the rain arrives. You see, in most towns and cities, you can almost always figure out whether it’s going to rain or not, but that’s not a given for our little city in question. You may check your reports, you may look at the sky, and you may hang the dolls, but it rains when it has to rain. The sun might be shining for a week without so much as a whisk of a cloud in sight, but then the rain would come, and no one can rein it in once it begins; it comes and leaves on its own.

Now that you know how it rains in the city where nothing ever happens, let me tell you what happened a week ago. You see, I was walking down a familiar alley, and there wasn’t much to think about. So, I continued walking and not thinking about anything. It began slowly, you see, a few drops at first, and then some, and then within a second, I found myself drenched, covered with the hood of my jacket out of instinct.

You see, I have a reputation for hating the rains, and more often than not, we tend to take what they say about us to heart, but that evening as the drops landed in unison, something changed. Under the hood, all I could see was the drops hitting the road with a splat, and somehow, I loved it. So, I ran; I ran out of excitement, not fear.

I started running as if I was back to being eleven, and I ran without a care in the world, and all I could see were the drops. I wanted to stop to take a picture, but I was free, and I asked myself, “Who should I record this for?” And when I couldn’t answer the question, I continued running. Now, I shall forever remember drops the size of pebbles landing near my sneakers as I ran through the evening lights of the traffic like an eleven-year-old. It’s for my eyes only.

You see, that’s how it all plays out, more often than not, in the city where nothing ever happens. It has this absolute uniqueness to how it makes you feel. It could make you hate it, and yet, rein you back in with a simple, unexpected shower, bitter cold and yet so warm, almost like a hug—ten years too late, but arriving nonetheless.