Life: Forever Jigsaw, Forever Straight

I don’t know if I am sick, or it is just a bad taste in the mouth. Or, is it the mind that is playing tricks. I don’t know my state, but I would be lying if that is true. I think I might know: it’s the woman next door. Yes, I think that is what it is. You should see how unattractive she is. But she may be beautiful inside; I don’t know that yet. So, I live with the feeling.

*

Five years ago, I played a game with my friends; a game I think now can qualify to sit on the extremes of silliness. But back then, I was happy with it. The game was simple: scoop back the girls we fancied back at the school. Internet, my friends screamed. I think I spotted my own voice in it too. We failed, all of us still children. I guess, nobody grows.

*

I don’t like my job; I don’t like my not liking it; and now I do not like writing about my not liking it too. It is difficult to say you don’t like something. Its rejection; and it upsets me. It is one thing being cynical and quite the other rejecting it. If you are cynical, the creator of the thing cynical according to you has a chance to work upon it, or plain leave your cynicism all by itself. But if you reject, you make the creator reject your opinion, or hate you altogether. But I still choose to reject. It gives me hilarious pleasure, because in any case no one seems to be bothered about what I think. I am nobody; and nobodies can reject all the same.

*

There are sixteen varieties of bananas available at the fruit-seller near my house. He sells vegetables too, but I don’t need them as I don’t cook at home. The bananas, each variety, he explains comes from a different island in the Andamans. But there are 570 of them, I know, so I ask him why not so many varieties and he smiles, saying wisely that he doesn’t know. I like the man, so each time I go there I ask him why only 16 varieties, why not 570 and he just smiles, thinking I am joking. Sometimes he doesn’t charge me money; I think he is dealing with guilt that he can’t answer such a basic question of a weekly customer.

*

The other day I was at this bar: dark inside, smelling of sweat and roast peanuts, fans whipping the cigarette smoke into concentric circles. I don’t go to such cheap bars, but I did, and it surprised me a bit. Just a bit. So I asked the barman, a young man with a curly moustache and small eyes. He said I might have remembered that I owed him some money. I had to leave the place in a hurry. I don’t have money for such scoundrels. And I can’t remember taking anything from him.

*

At the airport last week I came across an old man. He was reading a book and there was this permanent smile on his face. There was something strange about the man, so I bought a coffee and sat next to him. An hour passed without him turning a page, or that smile slipping even a wee bit. When the boarding was announced and he got up to go, he answered my query without my asking, ‘I have read this book a hundred times. I was recalling my childhood.’ I smiled and he continued, ‘you know when I was a little boy I could fool everyone at my home that I was studying whereas I was not. Just like now. And I think I have been able to fool you too.’ I smiled, thinking, yes, we remain children throughout our lives.

*

The watchman of our society where I live keeps sleeping the whole day. What do you do at night, I asked him one day? What does anyone do at night? He looked surprised, while I waited. ‘I sleep of course,’ he said finally.