Last Night’s Wind Brought A Familiar Fragrance

I live in a small basement flat towards the edge of the building, so that my room’s windows give me an open view of the mountains that the building overlooks. My room’s door to the outside opens to a wall whose top end joins with the ground floor. As I went outside from my room’s door to look at the hotel lights, at the top of the mountain ahead of me, that shimmer in a distant dream, I smelt of a nostalgic fragrance — a body odour.

To know me, is to know that I’m a very forgetful person. Google keep and Google Allo reminders are akin to life savers for me. But there I was standing with my chin up, letting the cool monsoon breeze play with me, suddenly aware of this fragrance, and that too nothing other but a body odour. I even asked myself in the initial moments, out of disbelief — How do you know its body odour? I couldn’t answer, but I knew it was that.

I closed my eyes and I saw a familiar face of a now dead person — Malvika Khurana, the first love of my life (1st grade — 5th grade). Slightly plagued teeth, thick lips such that the saliva would often find ways to stick while the lips parted, like pizza cheese struggles. Shoulder length hair, mouth never stopping speaking. Unusually big brown eyes, cold skin whenever one’d touch. She used to threaten so perfectly, it left I was with a troop leader – I felt like following her all the time. My favourite time with her used to be Saturday end of the day hourly activity periods, where she would take my sweaty hand, not minding the wet, and we’d rush to the activity room together. My most jealous times used to be when my classmates would pair her up with Suryansh.

I do not know how I remember her exact body odour, a mix of sweat + the innate body fragrance (I like how bodies smell). I stood there, wind present still, bringing this odd fragrance after all these years, like it was yesterday that I left our school to join a new one in 6th grade. It’s been 7 years since she died in a car accident, it’s been 15 years since I last saw her. I do not know why the wind would bring me a fragrance so familiar, memory so fresh that I’d question my mind’s sanity. I think, among the dreamy lights that were on the top of the mountain, I myself went into a dream for a while, or perhaps time traveled a certain way which is yet to be explored by science fiction writers. I could taste her fragrance on my tongue.

My mother called me inside for dinner, I sighed. Only if I could have been with her a little longer. Would that have made a difference?

When The 🌬️ blows 🎐

I picked up guitar after a really long time, after half a year. Today the wind blows hard, so much I want to surrender to its wavefronts, stand so still that it feels I’m flying. Sit so still, that my fingers and hands feel missing. Today, there is this light orange shade all around, like the bad crayons during school time — orange would turn out very light, so you’d colour by pressing the crayon candle really hard, before giving up.

Fast blowing winds are like a slap to me — they order me to wake up and slow down. Unlike the breath of a person, this wind doesn’t know how to negotiate for which spaces to touch, the wind has no hole source, it’s created as if by magic, out of nowhere, only if science was not there to explain it.

Don’t you feel so? Things keep getting explained, either by demands of the world, or one’s emotions, or by loose motion like persistence to name things, know them. Know them. Why?…Why? Know them.

The wind’s music, amidst the thunderstorms and the light all around which would make just woken up person confused — what time of the day is it?, shuns everything down — people’s chatter, my mind, the road beneath the landslides somewhere, water pipes blocked because of it, time. Yes time. The winds blows at a time akin to the shedding of the scab over the wound — things are okay, finally, totally, before they are no longer. Before the sun will steam us mid air, before the winds would have no control over their temperature. But what a wind it was, and it will be, ah… the wind that places cherry on top of the mountains, the wind that takes you places, with your feet at a standstill.

Sanjay Uncle’s Ignorant Bald Face

Song to listen to while reading this — Society by Eddie Vedder

Being unemployed, especially when you are ‘educated’ and living in a society could be a nightmare. Not as much because of the lack of salary, but because of how people start seeing you suddenly — Loser oozing out of their eyes and head bobs and false nods.

Sanjay uncle is father’s old colleague. They used to work together at a different place from where father is now. I had to give father’s left over clothes to him, because Sanjay Uncle was going where he is now — in Shimla. As soon as he saw my face, my grown unkempt beard, my long scrubby hair, he scrunched his nose almost automatically, I can only guess, in disgust.

I only smiled and answered the same question over again, when someone at the back seat of the car Sanjay Uncle was sitting in the front of, asked me —

Beta, what you are you doing these days (which implicitly means, where’s your job at?)

Update — 5 Days Into Boycotting Social Media

About 5 days ago, I decided to not use Facebook and Instagram, my main source of wasting time since 2011. It’s difficult. I didn’t know I had this addiction. I’m constantly drawn and tempted to open these social networks more out of habit, and less out of anything else. It’s almost involuntary. I’d be typing something away, like this blog post, and my fingers would automagically hit command+ t to open a new tab and fb.com and hit enter. Of course, I’ve made myself clear that I’ll quit before anything loads on the page, so I do.

It’s also scary. At times when I would feel fidgety or scared of the uncertain, unknown future, I would be tempted to just madly and baselessly scroll through the social media feeds to keep myself acquired, so that I wouldn’t keep scratching the edge of my thumb or forefinger away. But that has started becoming harder — people are going aboard to study (the most unserious person I know got admitted to Carnegie Mellon, what the fuck is happening in the world) or to join jobs. I get jealous and or wistful. Then I wouldn’t be able to handle it and then I’d quit the browsing session anyway. So I thought what’s the point of going there at all.

I read 100 pages of a book in the last two days, quite quick from my standards. I take months to complete even an average 350 pages book. So far so good 👍.

Why I Don’t Share My Anxieties With My Mother

Because I can’t. There is possibly no way for me to tell her that I didn’t want to meet with our relatives because moments back my poem had not been accepted in a competition I was positive about. I can’t tell her the inadvertent spiral that went from my throat into the chest, swirling there in a whirlpool pushing me to lay back on the bed for a while, staring at this dot on the ceiling beside the fan, so that I wouldn’t be able to think about anything for a while. The whirlpool on hold storms into a wreck when I get back to my laptop in the form of feeling like I should run in the mid daylight, under the scorching sun to the juice shop, just so that I could be alone for a while without telling anybody. But I can’t not tell anybody because I’d have to come home sometime. And when I would I’d have to answer.

I can’t tell her the infinite loop that starts without a base quit case, when this rejection stumbles onto my inconsistencies and incapabilities towards the work I want to do. Like a termite slowly ticking away wood, cloth fishes slowly eating away the clothes so dear, my dreams are a time bomb waiting to explode. And in the middle of pursuing them is the constant nag of having to explain things to people. WHY!

I can’t tell her that these episodes of lows are sometimes necessary for me, they come as a break essentially. But nobody would consider crying for no reason as a celebration celebrated with a break. Breaks are meant to be relaxing right? They’d say. It is relaxing when not prodded about.

I have to rush to cry peacefully in the bathroom, sneaking away from the relatives in the other room, just so that I won’t have to explain why I cried. All this makes me want to run away for long. But where?

My TEDx Talk Is Out!

Hello! Last October, I gave a TEDx talk at my Alma Mater. And it’s out! Check it out if you’ve got time?

Weekly Good Reads – Week 2

1. The Viral Bad Dating Fiction Story – Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian
2. Why the above short story was written, a short interview in New Yorker by its fiction editor Deborah Treisman with Kristen Roupenian
3. After reading the above interview, I listened (this time) to the story again, like you watch a twisted plot movie again to truly understand it.
4. The Unedited Truth About Living And Loving While Both Numb And Electrified by Erica Price

5. In the slums (Poem) Beaton Galafa

6. Clear Night (Poem) – Charles Wright

7. Vegetable Market Pantomime – a poem I submitted to The Bombay Review.

https://soundcloud.com/arihant-verma/vegetable-market-pantomime

 

The Scars With A Funny Story Background

After A Year At Home

I quit my job 11 months back. I couldn’t exactly tell why. There were things going on at home and I thought I was needed. My brother was soon going to be battling the most baseless competition of his life – Engineering Exams in India. I felt I needed to be there in case he didn’t get in, which is what happened. Also, I felt connected to none of my team mates except Anusha, for the mutual love of reading. Nobody had a real sense of purpose. Making 💰, getting prompted, providing for family, being pragmatic at work to be able to bag foreign work trips are not purposes. At best they are goals, motives. They are more like parts of the cake in the fourth spatial dimensions of which only sprinkles or cream are visible in the third spatial dimension. Our mind has been practised on senses for so long, it’s very easy to stop asking oneself What is my purpose? very easily.

I felt trapped. I was learning technically, but I wouldn’t have anything to talk about were we as a team to hangout sometime. It was to such an extent for me, that I didn’t even say good bye to anybody from my then team and just rushed off at 5 pm to spend the next 10 days that I had specifically spaced for myself. Because I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy solitude for a long time ahead. I think that was the reason that I booked my flight tickets for 10 days ahead, because I somehow knew it already.

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Stories I Read This Week

I’ve started reading short stories lately. I think it’s extremely exciting to deconstruct how they are written and learn from them. Here are the two that I read this week.

1. “Hiddensee” by Michelle Hart
2. The Husband Snitch