A page from Arjun's diary entry (A flat circle - prologue to part II)
Arjun had had a very long day. It was a Friday, but for his line of work, days did not mean anything. All days coalesced into one single continuum of work. It wasn’t until 7 pm that he remembered that it was a Friday, when a friend reminded him of a party they were supposed to attend. Arjun apologised to his friend and said he could not come. He had to work. The economy needed him.
He reached home at 12:30 in the night. One of his flatmates was at home. He knew that because he could hear frantic calls by him to his play-mates to cover him from incoming fire. He entered his room and realised that he had left the fan on. He momentarily thought about his electricity bill and forgot about it as he took off his shoes and crashed on the bed. He let himself marinate in his newly changed bedsheets before mustering the courage to get ready for bed. Arjun had finally made it a point to brush daily before bed, something he had struggled with the last few years. The tipping point was when his dentitst told him ‘Arjun, I don’t want to say this, but do you think that we get a new set of teeth at 30? Because by the way it looks, you will need that when you’re 30’.
Arjun remembered that today he had to journal. It was part of his act of being an adult. A little cosplay he did. Eat healthy, sleep well, process your emotions, focus on work, play sports, read books - the list went on. But Arjun rarely managed to everything, anything on most days. On days, he woke up on time to go for a walk, he would stuff his mouth with a pizza at the end of it. On days he would eat healthy, he would sleep at 3:30 am because 3 am was too risky to go to sleep. But Arjun had a little hope left in him. The very little that the world had not extinguished in him. So he picked up his journal and started writing.
8 July
I think the biggest sin in the modern world is to live an unexamined life. An ever bigger sin is to know what you should do and let life pass by. Somedays, we are all guilty of both. Other days are spent in accusing ourselves of it.
I have found it to be incredibly easy to let my life pass by, night after night. As I busy myself with the worst of my tendencies. Distracted by the lowest pleasures, and the most meaningless of pursuits.
I do not remember the last time I did not hate myself. And I know that many others around me live a similar life. I also know that this is the wrong way to live life. I have had enough therapy to know my emotions and the damage that they can do to me. But I wonder if there is any amount of therapy that can reverse the innateness with which i despise myself. The solace I have is, I am not alone. That somehow, the fact that many others live their life in such a debilitating manner somehow makes it more legitimate, more acceptable, more human. To human is to err. But if err is all you do, are you a human? Or are you a sorry excuse for a human. I do not know. Maybe my life will tell me. Or the little that is left of it anyway.
I was never good with time-tables. It was a joke in my family that all time-tables I would draft were meant for only one thing, to be torn apart the next day. And what goes around, comes around. A decade later, I still fail to stick to even the smallest of promises I make to myself.
It is a disease worse than plague to be known as a sad person. Not to be, but to be known as one. When friends casually quip that all that Arjun does is bitch and moan, and write long winded messages about how all is going to shit - it hits me. That is who I am now, to others. I am an unhappy person. That is my identity. I have tried to change it. I have tried to be a happy person. My grandmother, when she was alive, would often tell me ‘The only thing that matters is to be happy’. And when now, that her grandson is the resident unhappy person in town, I feel like I have let down the person I loved the most.
It is not depression. I am not depressed. I manage to do all the things that are meaningful and live my life as much as I can. But whatever it is, it manages to creep up on me. On a day filled with sunshine when I remember the horrible person I have becomes, or late at night, such as this one, writing this monologue of hate surrounded by nothing but contempt for myself. It is subliminally present in my being. But I am not depressed. I am functional. I have a future. I do not know if I am happy in it.
I miss college. I was a brighter person back then. I think I used to smile more as well, although it might just be hindsight bias. But I know for sure, that all smiles I have to offer to myself and others now, are as real as the Air Force One’s being sold in Sarojni market. My friends tell me that my face looks dull. And i cannot help but agree with them. A dull mind becomes a dull face.
I am committing the sin of being a bystander to my own life. A passenger on a train whose destination I do not know. Being driven by cheap pleasures which hollow me from the inside. I wonder if there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I still have hope, I still am alive, after all this. People still think I am worth something. Maybe I am.
I often wonder about what is it that I lack. What is between me and living a life that I do not hate? I got where I wanted to be in life, and ever since I have come here, all I feel is hollow. I knew that being a responsible adult was difficult. But I did not know that it was almost not worth it. I am going to be 25 in a couple of months. And yet I feel as stupid, perhaps even more so, as when I was 18. I had goals, dreams and hope. And all I have now, are regrets. People tell me I am too young to lose hope. I want to believe them. But I also wonder, if I will wake up one day, at 50 and realise that nothing has changed. I am as I was, and I will be as I have been. What does it take to turn your life around? And when will I find it?
I also have been thinking about Archana. It has been two weeks since I met her and even though we do not speak as much, somehow, I think about her often. I do not know, if I am attracted to her, or to the idea of her. I barely know her, and yet every time I have met her, I never wanted to leave. I haven’t even asked her if she is with someone. How stupid of me would it be if all along I was nothing but a distraction to her. But I suppose it is all I am now. A distraction for people to get away from their life. A brief vacation. A retreat. Tantalising enough to attract, fragile enough to not keep. I hate that I think about her. I hate it because I know how this will end. As it has, so many times in the past. The string of almosts is a curse onto itself. I don’t even trust myself now. For all I know, I will ghost her despite liking her. Because I am scared of admitting that I like someone. I’ve always felt that the only thing that such an admission does is to make a fool out of yourself. The moment you say it, you lay there, vulnerable, exposing your jugular. I despise this feeling. Of liking someone and letting that feeling linger. It is like cancer. It will eat you from within slowly until you either exorcise it, or suffer the fate of a fool. You cannot win this game. And I do not like to lose.
Wow, anyway - this got pretty dark. Keeping my issues aside (which by the way I should discuss with my therapist soon), the point is, I’ve been thinking about Archana. But it is too soon for me to tell her anything. It is too soon for me to come to the conclusion that I like her. Just look at all those times I thought I really liked someone and how that ended. It reminds me of this phrase from True Detective S1, ‘A flat circle’. That things are nothing but repetitions of themselves. One after the other. Masquerading as distinct, but all the same. I can hope that it is different this time. But hope is little to get by. I should probably not text her and see if she cares enough to think of me. That is the test yes. To see if they think of you. Anyhow, I also think all my rambling deserve the same response that Woody Harelson’s character gave to Mathew McCounaghey’s character after he said ‘This town feel like somebody’s memory of a town’:
‘I just want you to stop saying odd shit’
Amen. I hope I stop saying odd shit.