Hi everyone! I’m writing a short story. As you can see it is (weirdly) titled ‘A flat circle’. The choice of the title will become clearer in future editions! I I intend to write this story in a series of posts over time. It’s a story that I’ve wanted to tell for a long time. It’s essentially a story of all of us. I hope I do justice to our tales. Here goes part I!
Chapter I
Arjun rarely looked up, but it was one of those days.
He looked up at the sky. It was 11:30 in the night. Usually he would be working at this hour but at this moment he had a can of chilled beer in his hand. He caught a faint glimpse of the stars in the sky. He immediately thought about the star lit sky he would see every night as a child from his terrace. But this was Delhi and the smog was denser than the people. Although Arjun would say it’s an insult to smog. Arjun looked up at the sky again, searching for the stars. He had just finished working. It had been a long day and he barely had any time to himself. The last hours of the day were his. The few moments where he was his own self. He was thinking about a million things but mostly Archana.
Arjun had met Archana on his recent trip to Mumbai. It had been a chance meeting at a friend’s party. The chance meeting turned into a long conversation. Long enough for them to forget that it was Monday the next day and the economy needed them. Arjun met Archana a few more times before leaving Mumbai. On his flight back to Delhi, all he could think about was her.
And now that Arjun was back in Delhi, in the midst of the mechanics of his ‘high-pressure’ corporate job - he missed her. It was an unusual feeling. Not because Arjun was one of the self-proclaimed toxic fuck-boys of Delhi who only chase women as a commodity. It was because It had been a very long time since he felt anything. For anyone. Arjun had accepted that he may never feel anything for anyone and was coming to terms with this new life. Until Archana decided to run his monotony.
Sipping the last few sips of his Budweiser, Arjun chuckled at the childishness of missing someone he’s only met a few times in a foreign city. Arjun belonged to a generation who considered it a sin to accept one’s emotions. Like many in his generation, he had been brought up on the steady diet of ghosting, being ghosted, almost relationships, intense heartbreaks and situationships, although he could never understand what those were. It was also a generation that was broken in so many ways that everyone collectively decided to give up on love.
But back to Arjun. He opened a dating app to scroll through the horde of pretty women around him which the algorithm promised were ‘compatible’ with him. He casually scrolled through feeling astonished at what the algorithm was spewing as compatible matches. Disappointed, and still very much thinking of Archana - he locked his phone. There was a gentle breeze blowing. Arjun lived in a rented house in a posh South Delhi neighborhood with some of his friends. Arjun closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking of Archana. There was a certain blankness that settled down in his mind. The back of his eyelids still carried the imprints of Archana’s silhouette, laughing her heart away at Arjun’s lame jokes. Annoyed with himself, Arjun got inside his room to sleep. Everyday around this time he had to take a call. He could either decide to watch something and spend more time with himself until later in the night and sleep at an ungodly hour, or he could sleep now and wake up early in the morning like a good child still trying to gain his parent’s approval. It was a perpetual subconscious pursuit. Sysyphian almost. Just that the rock kept getting heavy, and the destination more elusive. Arjun shut his eyes and slept.
Chapter II
Arjun was born in a small town in North India. He was a kashmiri pandit. He would often tell his friends that his generation did not belong anywhere. He was a kashmiri, who had never seen his homeland and the land he was born and brought up in, never accepted him as one of his own. He could not speak kashmiri very well, nor understand the language of the people where he lived. He was a ghost in the annals of history, haunting various lands, unable to call any place his own. He delayed this existential crisis by deciding to move to Delhi.
Nobody in his family had attended Delhi University, DU as it is popularly called. On his first day in Delhi, after his father had dropped him off at his new home, a single room with three other people - he looked at himself in the mirror and gave himself a speech. He told himself that he is here to do great things and to make his parents proud. He could afford no distractions. His parents had given him a long lecture on the many vices that will come to him in Delhi. Drugs, women, having fun in life and so on. Prepared with all the archetypes and stereotypes of the world, Arjun began the long journey of growing up.
By the second year, Arjun realised that he did not want to continue with Mathematics, the subject he loved and adored and his major. The monotonous classes had killed his curiosity. The faculty which was permanent did not care to teach, and the faculty which was adjunct could not find time to teach, as they kept protesting against the administration. It was ironic that the person who told his classmates on his first day in class that his dream was to do a PhD in theoretical mathematics was looking at liberal arts courses by the end of his second year. In conversations with his friends, Arjun loved to point out that by the end of his degree his department had managed to convince most students to quit mathematics rather than to pursue it.
Cut to today, Arjun works as an impact analyst with a philanthropic fund which helped social welfare programs optimise their impact. He had proceeded to quit mathematics and join an economics program at Ashoka. He still did mathematics, but at least he now thought he could use it to change the world. He could not recall his time at Ashoka very well. Half of it was spent studying online due to the pandemic, and half of it was spent salvaging the rest of his time at the campus. He did learn a lot there. He fell in love with the theories, the concepts, and the sweet sublime promise of economics. A promise to change the world. Like many other young bright minds, he was tricked by the subject’s grandeur and decided that a philanthropic fund was the best place to utilise his talents. After all, he was impatient and curious. And the world needed his talents to save it from itself. He wanted to do everything as soon as possible. For him, lack of experience was an excuse that people used to justify their incompetence. He was bright, but also young and foolish. Arjun wanted to change the world.
Arjun had moved into his South Delhi apartment around a year back. He looked around his room, still barren and white. He had many plans to decorate it with bookshelves, lamps and aesthetic props. He even had a separate folder on his chrome tab titled ‘to buy after job’. The job started but he never bought any of the many items he had bookmarked. Days went by, one after the other, until they all became one single dreamy sequence. A concoction of days, nights, drinks, cabs to office and back, trips, fights, screw ups at work, and silence of time. Arjun looked at the huge pile of books lying around in front of him. He had kept them stacked one against the other, slanting in a straight line. Everyone who visited his room complimented him on his collection. But he was shy to tell people that he had not read most of them. He was guilty of Tsundoku. The act of buying books but never reading them. The books lay there, unread and almost unhappy.
Arjun smiled.
‘That makes two of us’ he said to the books. He settled into a meditative state. Thinking about all the things he had promised himself he would do, and had failed to do. He thought of the promise he had, and what he was. He liked his work, but he knew this was not it. He thought of all the things he could have done/ should be doing. A waste of time is how he looked at his life. He kept thinking there was something better, more important that he should be doing. What he did not know yet. People came and went in his life. But this feeling was constant.
Ultimately he buried himself in his bed. It was a Saturday, and he was lucky to be free. But all he could think about was how unhappy he was with his life. He kept thinking about this until his phone vibrated. He looked at his screen. It was a message from Archana.
I hope you liked the first two chapters! Please consider giving your thoughts, feeling, feedback and more on the story :) Until next time!