I wasn’t dead. I was taking an unplanned break. I couldn’t find anything to write, or maybe I was too lazy, or maybe I was actually too busy and couldn’t find time. <point to self: (saying) “the busiest find time for everything.” e.g. ‘R is so busy that he finds time for an astonishing number of things that can actually make you feel that he has nothing else to do.’>

I have no idea where I was all this time, what I was doing, where all my time was actually going. It’s a blur, my life, a slow, lazy, viscous blur, like lazy streaks of traffic lights in a low exposure shot of a city street. I never know what hits me. When I find time to think, I realize nothing hit me worth bragging about. Then I turn off my thought-room and let myself go again, amazingly passive with the flow of this slow current that takes me to a number of places each week, brings me round and round to see the same faces, talk the same talk, immerse in the same atmospheres time after time. Monday school, no talk, fabricate my loneliness, evening fifteen minutes of nothing, then the dragging physics class where there isn’t a single damn good girl. Tuesday oh no, maths class, I’m lagging behind in maths. School uneventful, fabricate my loneliness, reach early to maths, then three excruciating hours of understanding nothing on the board, nodding to everything, and copying everything down. Home. Wednesday uneventful, fabricate my loneliness, don’t talk much, Bibs’ car, wind on the flyover, Statistics class of understanding nothing, home. Thursday no class except uneventful school, don’t talk much, make no friends, turn boring till everyone turns away to something more engaging, then muse. Home. Friday school, Bengali class, a little nice talk while returning home, then forget everything. Saturday Chemistry early in the morning. I never study chemistry. Then FIITJEE of a net total of 8.5 hours. Sunday the same thing. Then Monday again. Paste those lines here again. And again. And again.

Nothing happens. Nothing. I don’t want fireworks or a terrorist attack in school or a meeting with the other face of the moon and her new sun, despite all I imagine in my lazy hours.

I don’t know what I want, what to wish for. It’s too much work. Make this go faster, end it quicker. Let’s go somewhere else where I can start from scratch and build a different flavour of failure. And it’s a scientific truth that life is precious. Look how I’m wasting all the time.

The other day I went to this stationery shop to buy something. There was a man and a woman buying a pen. The woman had a dark pen in her hand, making writing gestures in air. I think it was to see how the pen looks when it writes something. The shopkeeper was full of praise for the pen. You know, yes, yes, it will write very well, smooth flow, will last long, nice company, take it, nice pen type glorification.

The man with the woman (not the shopkeeper) suddenly pointed out in the middle of his speech that something in the pen had come off. The shopkeeper seemed to be slapped in the face by his nice company, frowned and tried to fix it, but of course the couple were satisfied with their feat and wouldn’t take it.

I asked for a white exercise copy. He gave me something costly. I said something cheaper.

The couple (I don’t know if they were a couple. Here it implies two.) spotted a binocular packed in a small square paper box. I guessed they were on the lookout for a gift. When they were shown the binocular, one of them asked if it was toyish or realish. Of course the shopkeeper replied they were realish. The woman started looking around with the binos. The shopkeeper intervened and told her that it could also do something else. Hold it backwards and look into it. The woman did so. Of course she saw things reduced. She was elated. Man, the binos could do so much. Steal of a deal.

I dropped the different minute parts of the pen I wanted to refill and crouched down, trying to reunite them.

One last thing. The woman said if she could have the bino in any other colour. They were silver. She said that the receptor of the gift had grey things stuffed in his/her room. (His, of course. Which conventional girl would want a pair of binoculars?) The man replied that the company, Sony Handycam, manufactured only grey units.

Sony Handycam manufactures silver plastic binoculars sold in small square paper boxes in stationery shops. Binoculars that cost around 100 and can, despite their infinitesimal price, show you reduced images if you look into it the other way.

I relocated my things and made to leave. The shopkeeper said that now that I knew the shop, I should come again.

Try me.

It has rained today. Hard. As dawn grew to morning, the light died. Then a lot of rain.

And now I’m listening to Keane. All my hormones are charging. I can start crying anytime soon. Everything that can bring me tears is playing in my head. A lot of things can make me feel sad. I’ve become that way. But they don’t play separately in my head, defining their separate causes and characters. They form a mixed, dank air in my head, like hybridizing orbitals (don’t worry if you don’t know what it is. It’s irrelevant.).

See you soon again. I don’t wanna write any more.

1Life.