Writers Jam

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The sky in Bangalore is usually much more blue than Delhi, there’s a cool breeze at most times of the day, except the accursed summer noons, making it the perfect weather for ditching office work and spending the day blasting synth music with earphones on at the small tea joint outside the building complex, for badly burnt tea and never ending smokes. “Also getting really high”, I thought to myself, smiling. It had been a rough couple of years, “Couple of lifetimes”, I agonized, heroically. I had a theory going that the searing pain life had inflicted upon me to wallow in must have overflown from deeds of a previous lifetime, for it is not humanly possible to accumulate this much bad karma in just the 21 years of my blurry existence. I coughed, “LOL”, I thought, I was really into romanticising the mundane and melancholic back then, “It isn’t a phase but a lifestyle choice”, I used to tell myself, maybe I had slightly masochistic tendencies, I used to shudder. There wasn’t a concept of this world for me where I wouldn’t be a self deprecating man child riddled with thoughts of braggadocious machismo and self importance, although blissfully unaware (and high) about it, I should add. The only negative Bangalore has in the rainy weather are the confounded potholes that swell up with murky water in the rainy season and you have to acrobat across the street rather than cross it as the average happy go lucky chump roaming around blazed outside their internship office. The only positive thing about the office was the chubby, brown eyed goddess I was always hoping to run into, we worked on different floors and I had met her 15 days ago, on my first day. It had been the highlight of that day, the low point was when she told me how busy she would get working on a separate floor and had left me crestfallen, heartbroken and a little jealous since she was interning at the CEO’s office, I was still a brash young intern with hopes and dreams and hadn’t realised the plight of actual work that my non working lazy ass had never dreamed of getting used to. “Ah, to be young!”, I thought to myself, cringing immediately.

My fantasies of her waned as the days passed, whenever I would fall out of sync with them, I would just think about her again, forcing them into submission to my escapes. I would sneak to my apartment, not far from the office, during lunch breaks, smoking up in mid summer rains, listening to peter cat, alone. I had nothing to think about, she was a prospect, I was hollow and empty, trying to fill my solitude with thoughts of companionship. Escape is difficult, reality constantly tries to crack your shell, you try to curl up even more. She wasn’t but she was for me, I was but I wasn’t for myself. My skin felt like a stranger’s, my face in my thoughts didn’t match the one in the mirror. I was faceless in my thoughts, albeit well built and tough. She would glow radiant. The attraction in Lifafa’s music is his effortless nostalgia for the present, making the past second bear down on the current one, hinting every fleeting moment with a note of reminisce. The sad part about music is once the song is over you’re back on earth and it still sucks and the present moment is unbearable, just like the one before it was (unless you hit autoplay). She was an escape from this loop, she was like a Lifafa song, except I had created her and she was mine. She was perfect, every memory of hers was, I just hadn’t lived them. 

I didn’t really get along with my teammates, I existed in a shell of self isolation and disliked getting close to other people, when your mind gives you a good social balance by its own you don’t feel the need to outsource it, the cost of you messing up and creating imperfections and dwelling upon them is simply too much. You simply shun away all thoughts of it with a cup of coffee, earphones and a joint in the morning. My boss abhorred my presence, I wasn’t motivated and I definitely wasn’t a diligent worker. In my defense, I didn’t really try to be, the work sucked. I didn’t really talk to my parents at the time, it felt difficult to confide in anyone not exactly like me, nothing personal, I just didn’t feel everyone would understand me. 

One day as my internship drew to it’s long awaited end, I was sneaking off away from my teammates and other interns to have lunch alone in peace when it happened. I finally saw her again. She was just there, plate in hand, waiting for her friends to join her. I reacted on instinct, backing away and stepping into the other direction, but it was too late, she had already spotted me. She waved from afar, smiling. I smiled back, it was too late. She greeted me, “H-hey…”, I replied back, trying to feign confidence as best as I could. “How’s your internship going?”, I added right back, trying not to come off as someone whose nerves had just been touched. “The work was too heavy…I decided to switch floors”, she gave me a longing look. “I am just about to have lunch, maybe join me?”, she asked, looking hopefully at me. “No, I just got done, I’ll catch up with you later tho, maybe join me outside?”, I replied, on instinct. I regretted it immediately. She looked a little crestfallen, “Alright”, she gave a brief nod and walked away. I never fantasized about her again.

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