Finding Dan

Let me play my violin for you

(alternatively titled) the ego of art.

Featured image: Distorted anthropology by Pranay Bhardwaj (Look his work up here)

(The piece at various points will refer to an artist. For convenience, I’ve assumed a gender. For I’m a he, so is he.)

No one needs your art.

My latest revelation exceeds its predecessor by a year. “Finally, a thought which makes all my thoughts look stupid”, I landed. As long as I can remember thinking about art, I have often attached to it the artist’s biases in life. What did the artist’s grandmother sing at night to make him fall asleep, which material of cloth reminds him of his school, did he wear a watch as a kid to appear mature and who loved him more than his siblings – you know, the basics of what make us, the slow revelation of which as adults fucks us. In my head, that’s what made the artist an artist. And it did so for everyone else who thought about the art through its creator even for the duration of a single coffee. It felt obvious but since always, it also didn’t feel like enough. It wasn’t.

The trade-off between the needs of expression and validation has now irrevocably become a subset to the larger consumerism debate. The modern human isn’t thought to be watching a film or reading a piece anymore as much as he’s seen as consuming content. When the conversation changes from experience to consumption as if the third meal on a day you barely moved – the artist, now the creator, also faces in flesh the additional subpart to the bigger question in his existential dread. Will his work be liked? Will it receive traction? Will an ‘algorithm’ support it?

The need for art to be understood and appreciated goes way back, yes, but the metrics to judge that have never been more in the artist’s face. Never has what works and what doesn’t been so pushed down our throats. Never has there been such concrete discussions on the platform and theme of art, than the content or the grammar. The how’s have stretched themselves, time has never been less and the why’s and what’s have been killed. Never has art so casually been a product of elimination of what all it couldn’t be and not a product of what it so terribly wants and – the more we tread in that direction – needs to be.

Why wouldn’t an artist today not be conscious of what could be consumed? It’s a war of attrition for time. How many will choose to spend time on his work? It’s no longer a question of whether or not an artist’s art deserves the audience’s time, its rather a) will the audience ever land on the art ever and b) will it ‘appeal’ more than the reel of a celebrity being humble 10 seconds back, a podcast of the richest men ever talking about the working class 20 seconds back, a journalist documenting the genocide in Gaza 30 seconds back and a cat falling of the bed thrice 60 seconds back. Art no longer has to just put itself out there but also be fortunate just enough to find the right gap in the audience’s day when celeb-gazing, empathy, disgust and mushiness have not already ended the audience’s capacity to perceive and have the curiosity for what the art’s thumbnail can position itself to sell. An artist 15 years back feared never being discovered. An artist now fears always being lost. So much of it is down to the lack of good platforms or their development which support the artist in elevating himself from state or corporation run narratives.

I’m aware a lot of the above sounds either too generalized or too personal. Some artists never ceased to be any less of the artists they were before forced consumerism took over chosen fascination. A lot of those who just consume also continue to organically be fascinated by just as much boredom and art as they were before. Some never faced their concentration spans as the great economical measure of our times. Regardless of them, I write this. I pen down angst and, embarrassingly, guilt over the same. In my personal fight to keep writing amidst the quakes of my career and the floods of my mental state, I surrendered to the mechanisms I fight the latter with.

Falling down any rabbit hole being self-aware is way more painful than not being so. Any reasons to re-emerge are silenced by my privilege. In this era, or at the start of a disappointing forever, I find a compulsion to re-evaluate what makes me create. For the longest time, I associated – knowing it’s an incomplete thought – my hesitance towards writing with my struggle with the noise of this world. “Who needs another self-aware self-indulgent piece by an upper-caste Hindu male while the world kills itself?”, I think every night that tried to revolt.

This is when I heard the first words of this piece. No one needs my art. Beautiful. My future self with the awareness I documented my close-felt feelings from a time my memory will soon my disloyal to – that’s my audience. To live by the sickening validations of the teachers who raised me and spotted in me a talent with the pen – that’s the purpose. To let sadness be black font on white screens. To let anxieties be objects of the room as my fingers do the work my heart could never. It’s just me, my horrifyingly coping mechanisms, my unhealthy aspirations and my hollowing guilt – everything that drives my ego. That’s what I do it for.

The ego of art is not just in its obsession with it trying to find a place in this noisy world where everyone has something to say. The ego of art is in just existing and in my case at least – in milking the artist’s late nights and noon thoughts. The ego of art is in making the artist the first consumer – one who soaks up his neurons and instincts to make sense (or lack of) on the canvas.

This is not to say that the audience is irrelevant. It is just that (most) art designed in its grammar and content for an audience will find a way to betray the artist. The tussle between the life and abortion of art begins in the mind of the artist long before he knows he’s an artist. It begins when the artist’s grandmother sings at night to make him fall asleep, when a material of cloth reminds him of his school, when first he wore a watch as a kid to appear mature and with the stranger who loved him more than his sibling. In most cases, unlike right now, it ends there too.

– Mayank Malik

The relentless hypocrisy of 2022

Having now remorsefully assigned it to my youth, I can conclude that there’s not enough literature, film or poetry on the delusion-riddled compulsive disorder that is looking back. I don’t intend to point to the vastness of auto-biographical works – the To Kill a Mockingbirds, the Cinema Paradisos and the Pain and Glorys of the world. I mean the compulsion and our fight with it. I, particularly, have struggled greatly with nostalgia and in the scuffle that broke out; I made sure it struggled with me too. As much as I resent the idea that is message-based art, because of how exhausting the process of looking back gets – I feel the need to challenge myself with the one question I spent so much of what I look back at learning – “what’s the point”?

The classic learning trope doesn’t cut it for me (it never has).

‘Looking back’ at the juxtaposition of a suffocating smile and a free tear that was 2022, I struggle with how weirdly my brain is ready to wire it in. For something that was 25 days back, I remember it wasn’t remotely as menacing or as exhausting as I’m ready to remember it as. Putting conscious effort into it, I remember I loved, learned about love and privilege, slept, witnessed and transitioned more than I have in a single year. I failed to write; I was too free to. As I struggle with the reflections of memories so recent and so fierce, my brain loses the strings that keep it together. First is the fear that if I fail to register recent events right, how do I do it without documenting? Second is the reminder that I don’t really document anymore, my writing spree is apparently dependent on the forces that ask it not to. The third is the understanding that maybe all my memories are altered anyway. Who’s to say that the summer of 2007 was really that whack and maybe the autumn of 2015 wasn’t that depressing? Fourth is the ever-present – why am I so stressed about it? I usually answer none. I sometimes click a photo. I mostly always just mourn the loss of this youth.

A compelling argument could be that it’s just me. Not humans or this generation – just me and my brain’s quick visual associations. I am mostly always a rhyme or a red light away from nostalgia. But I write this not to right any wrongs in my wiring but to somehow attempt to view them as they really were. 2022 was the chronological equivalent of an anti-climax gone right. The smile when you’re expecting a twist, the music when you anticipate a battle.

As with all art, I despise identifying years with the range of the life in it too. I know I travelled, worked, struggled and laughed all around the country with people old, new and those who’ve changed in the transition. But like all art, I particularly enjoy and cherish the depth more. Some of my favourites were conversations with cab and auto drivers. Just the thought brings so many to mind. One especially, when a conversation which started with a complaint soon had me giving marketing tips, asking him to rally his troops in an all-out war against Uber, identifying that we like similar food (bhature is the key word) and people (kind is the key word), and that he belongs to a part of the country that I’ve frequently visited in my childhood. Another is a rickshaw (which I recently discovered is a word with its roots in Japan) driver making me look for his daughter’s school-prescribed Cambridge dictionary at a local stationery.

A lot about drivers has kept me inquisitive as far as I can look back for their job provides an unparalleled crumble of laborious monotony with a dynamic experience every day. Their experiences are hour-long judgements of people as their muscle memory enables them around the city they know better than anyone. A single lapse of concentration can push them over the financial edge that they work the entire year to earn. Yet, they drive every day. As the disparity of income blooms and the upper class fails to register itself as anything beyond a modest middle class – like all labour classes – they are driven by survival as they carry the personification of their aspirations a foot away from them every day.

Curling the principles of socialism as I travel to and fro in underpaid Ubers from my ‘elite’ B-school full of denial-mongers, it only makes me further happy that my CV doesn’t have that extra bit of a POR (position of responsibility) or a co-curricular or that I’m not a 999 (loosened way of quoting your tenth, twelfth and undergrad GPA’s in the XXX format). Watching an entire batch of people I know are about to lose what stood them apart because of the absolutely insulting quantification of their lives in the form of one-pager CVs is saddening. Are we really the ‘smartest’ if we don’t understand that we pursue to kill what made us so?

Despite working tirelessly to build the home that I envisioned would make me peaceful, I now also understand we’re systematically ending the world that supports it. Yet, now as an MBA – I’m not a victim but rather a culprit in the criminal proceeding against capitalism. My only form of rebellion is this article which screams hypocrisy before it whispers revolution. Love, for the 23rd year running, has kept me intact. Once every month I feel the need to not be so. Then is when I sleep the most, wake up and exit the need for purpose. This is when I don’t calculate, this is when I don’t look out for others. This is when I write.

Epilogue to Twenty-Twenty: The year which broke us (almost).

“What the fuck was that?”

I, in no possible shape or form, want to romanticize the tragedy that was 2020. I don’t intend to find poetry in its sufferings, metaphors in its global upheaval of everyday life or hope from its learnings. Twenty-twenty shall remain the year we wished to see flying cars in or wondered how the world would shape itself as it stead-fasts into another decade. It shall not become a meme, a benchmark for unprecedented ugliness or a joke whose context the entire family unanimously understands and elevates on festive dinners. 2020’s victims were heart, souls and humans. This was a break-up. And I write closure.

Often the thought across the masses in isolation has been the one of transition. We’ve, throughout the second half of the year, talked about the sheer difference in our lives across the boundary that was the end of March. We state the difference to lament for lost prospects, like a final cry for the hours of the night we didn’t spend preparing for a tomorrow, but just to pass the now-so-monotonous night. It didn’t take a lot since the pandemic hit fifth gear for time to seem hazy. Suddenly, every day beyond that boundary of March seemed equally distant. Despite sun-time going up, days began to feel shorter. There was dissimilarity in spending 24 hours at a place we usually spent 12.

And as I craved for closure, the world pretended to not remember the severity of our last fight. As days passed, I couldn’t keep track of the people around me who – one outing at a time – deemed it justifiable to take that step outside. I don’t blame them. It was unnatural to be in confined habitats for this long and somehow everyone knew their limits. I, however, had different reasons. I was remonstrating against my denial and kept close to me the reality of my grievance. My complaints lay towards roads I took to when I needed a walk on a windy evening, my go-to park for reading, and metro. Oh, metro.

I’ve often in my posts/stories/letters talked about the alternate universe of Delhi Metro. In my college years, especially, the metro has been a symbol of a reality I chose to thrive in. Right in the heart of the absolute chaos and drama of Delhi’s bizarreness, lay eight compartments, entering which changed every street-smart instinct which made us Delhi. Inside it, suddenly people were quieter. There was peace; and subsequent recognition. You could spot families – with children standing on the seats looking outside the window for a glimpse of the capital, couples for whom this was as cozy as society allowed it to get, book-readers timing their pages with each station, corporate hustlers in blazers, old Delhi wholesale hoarders and hipsters with half-lost-a-sense of direction. Inside each compartment lay a world which saw people lose their hard-wired financial and caste discrimination like for the next hour – we were the last surviving group in a zombie apocalypse. And yet, in all its contradiction from what it means to be Delhi, the metro was more Delhi a gift from Sreedharan than the Mughals could ever – in all their luxury and real-life-magnum-opus-capacity could hope and strive for. The metro took 169 days to come back and it has been another 108 since it did. I haven’t dared step my feet back there again.

As governments took to TV and institutions took to emails to tell us “Hey, stay the fuck home”, I grieved not for these messengers or my future, but the metro. It felt like your closest friend (who you particularly refrain talking about to others just because you can’t risk jinxing the vibe of) left without a note. No final card punch; no final ride. And now when it’s back, it greets the entire group the same way. How do words explain the loss of that special status you thought you reserved with him?

All this while – as we adjusted to this wild concept of staying with our family the revised edition: now all the fucking time, it became clearer by the day – and much more by the night – that most of us had lived in denial. After the first few months of distracting, soon it got ugly. Conversations became real, questions became relevant. An already existential life now paused and looked back with urgency. The whats and whys became more apparent. Everyone knew everyone was in a stage where not only did we battle our selves, but also wonder how beautifully our sub-conscience had built a schedule back in the normal days: one which just kept us from asking these questions. The lockdown (not the C-word) in that sense, was a necessary evil. I recognize the obvious luxury in saying this. But I also recognize how hardened this system is towards the middle class. It was only poetic justice, that in the worst of times where we backed on getting an ounce of unity in this modern understanding of humanity, most people strived through art. Paints were out, tera hone laga hun covers were again a thing, books were read more than ever and cinema was fallen back upon. People turned to activities they always wanted to do, and yet never got the ‘time’ to. It is ironic how a world which convinced us that our quality as workers would only elevate our standards and push forward humanity’s ill-defined meaning of progress, asked us to be artists to see it through one of the lowest points of human history.

Today, on the 109th day since metro’s return as I complete writing this, a packed bag and a metro card await me. I think I’m going out. It’s not a patch up. It’s a Humsafar-esque (that Pakistani series, yes) understanding of standing in the same group of friends and not feeling awkward. As for 2020, the necessary evil is now past us. 2021 won’t be a train-wreck, nor would it be a last-second three-pointer. If anything 2020 has taught me holds true, it is to remember your struggles. As for judging a 366 day year, I never backed my memory enough to do that anyway. If I close my eyes to look back to this year of not looking ahead, I see myself roaming my terrace at 4:37 AM – earphones tucked in and overlooking a construction site left abandoned by migrant workers who refused to ‘work for a living’ over living. On those countless nights, often I would think of writing about the alien uncertainty that had added new questions to small talk. I delayed writing this piece, for the first time not because I didn’t believe enough in the subject or backed my own skill to sum what it felt well, but because I always knew the year wasn’t done with me.

Modern break-ups receive a very misunderstood (and desperately common) treatment. No two are equal; no two equally damaging. Yet replacing it with the prospect of having never met is as theoretical as it is tragical. Sometimes you just need to keep playing your jazz on a piano in the club you own, as you finally look at her. If what you had ever meant anything, she’ll look back too.

Happy new year?

sneak-peek-into-mess.pdf

Till now, my blog has been about things I have at some point obsessed over. And right now, the only thing I obsess over is me. So is that enough a reason to be writing this? Why should there be a reason for writing, you may ask. But there always is. You lay your words out in the open and a part of you goes away with them forever. It’s not a price to pay, just a new life to live everytime you write about how you really feel.

Lately, I have been feeling conflicted. A lot more than usual. The philosophical and the practical sides of things have really been hell-bent on being terrible negotiators. In my head, every act has always needed a reason and a principle. They clash, and most of my days are spent trying to break them apart like a parent who can’t handle his six-year old twins. “Where is the mother”, I constantly ask. Eventually, I get tired of breaking the kids apart and get pissed off at them. They come in and apologize. It’s a short lived power I am allowed to use just once in a month. Everything will return to the chaotic normalcy the next day anyway.

The one aspect I’m glad about is that *at least* I am not scared to face the truth anymore. Probably because I have made peace with its worst outcome – I am not perfect. Something which was so difficult all my life, became so easy recently. “When you grow up, your heart dies.” Can I insert a millennial-y accepted lmao here?

A not-so-wild guess here would be the lockdown. I have been trying to find my place in this universe while staying at home. It says something about the miles I have travelled in my head, the things I have seen, the people I have let go. I wish I could tell you. Maybe one day. Physical and mental conditions constantly overlap. Just the first time I let my former affect my latter.

(Don’t recommend me yoga in the replies.)

I miss people, and no one in particular. I miss how people felt. How they sounded, touched and their bloody kalesh (a Punjabi word for you know what). I miss standing right in the middle of ten and knowing I’m sorted. Don’t get me wrong, it is not a superiority complex. It is just that very specific feeling when someone tries really hard to explain a concept or an emotion, and then you say one word or a phrase – and the look on their face tells you eased their pain right there. That. You see, that moment does not tell me I have experienced that emotion before them. The number of times I have been a part of such moments, it becomes practically impossible to. It is just that when I travelled all those miles in my head, just a few of them were through me. Most of them were you, or your mom, or your dog. I love cinema. Perspectives come naturally to me. I wish I could disassociate, but it is highly improbable now. I know what you are going to think, when you would have done what you told me you are about to. But you take your time. There is nothing you could do by saving it anyway, for all though I finished our thought race first, now I’m just standing here waiting for you.

I think my constant greed to unravel is settling. Not that it is helping me, but it’s a slow process.

I think I should have stayed in denial. It was lovely up there, right next to my jokes and your expression.

For those deciphering, there is no *you* here. Except you.

It’s weird I have so many unassembled thoughts. I have never had that while writing. I’m as unsure of my next sentence as DU graduates about their career right now. Or more.

I’ll go. Its 5:06 AM. And no, I am not sleeping late. I slept at 1 and I woke up at 4. Suddenly, I couldn’t sleep again. I checked my FPL scores. Scrolled to be disappointed with social media again (why do I even try?). Stalked my own profile after ages, and realized I should just write. It’s nowhere close to how I normally do it. I do it because I’m good at it and I know I have something to say. Today, I wrote because I thought I’ll find out what I am having trouble saying in the past two months. Wild, to think that I woke up and just already had all these thoughts ready in my head. Hope I laugh at this blog-post in hindsight, or sympathize with a past self in future – both very unlikely.

PS: Football is back.

Yours sometimes and mostly mine,

Mayank

Anuv Jain – The Rockstar Who Whispers

To the anonymity of what works in music.

To music.

I never thought I would be writing an entire article about just one person in my blog, let alone an Indian independent artist from Ludhiana. Growing up, I was very similar to all the boys from the street I live in. I wanted to be a cricketer. What perplexed me though, as entire families sat to take a Dravid-led Indian team take on Pakistan in 2006 was how the people sitting around me were the same age as the cricketers, and yet were rooting for them. I couldn’t possibly imagine that as my future. I knew I would be really envious if I was not in the Indian squad by 21.

Now, at 20, I understand everything better. I see through none of it. I – like most of my Instagram neighbors – struggle through mood swings and anxieties, and like no one in my family ever before – writing blocks. A year back I was in a phase where I couldn’t consume new content. I couldn’t watch new movies or listen to a new song recommended by a friend for more than a minute. I knew my headspace belonged somewhere else. I rewatched Moneyball and Spotlight a dozen more times; I continued with my old favorites ranging between Sufjan Stevens’ Should Have Known Better and Sonu Nigam’s Apne Toh Apne Hote Hain. I was comfortable.

But like all other times I have ever been comfortable, I wanted to be uncomfortable for a while and return. I downloaded a bunch of random Youtube suggested songs to my phone (yes, I still do that and yes, I miss songs.pk). On one of the rare days I took my car to college, I remember playing a song randomly from the few I had downloaded. I also remember feeling I’ll switch back to RJ Divya. The song started like most indie songs do now – some slow music and a subtle voice with words I couldn’t pay attention to. I was so sure of what I was about to feel – nothing. But then I did. Something; smiled. I wish I knew the lyrics.

The song was Baarishein.

Anuv Jain is a 25-year-old singer-songwriter who hails from Ludhiana, Punjab. His face looks like a 90s college’s-most-popular-guy protagonist. His voice sounds like pain and hope had a love-child. His Instagram looks like a reaction to millenial fame more than advertising what he does. The lyrics to his songs read like a Yesterday scenario (the Danny Boyle movie where a freak accident removes The Beatles from history, except for the protagonist who remembers their songs and becomes successful by recreating them). In Anuv’s case, it would be an 80s Hindi poet. I have no idea what he is like in personal life – except the fact that internet issues cut off his Instagram Live a few weeks back and his mother cut his hair during this lockdown. But yet whenever I see his face or my ears are recipients to “Ab tere bina yahan meri saansein, jaise bina nindiyan ki raatein hai toh”, I can’t help but try to disassociate the artist from the art. I fail.

Anuv Jain’s latest release Maula is more Punjabi than Hindi. Although I could grasp most of it, I knew nothing of the context. Anuv mentioned the meaning of the lyrics in the comments section – the news of a tragedy, the aftermath, and a father-less sister to wipe tears of. I haven’t ever listened to an artist owning his song like Anuv. It’s like he knows every twist and curve; he’s a step ahead of you. He decides when to make you cry, if he ever wishes to. It’s his story and he is whispering while singing.

All of Baarishein, Riha, and Maula are classier poetry slams sung to you as you lay in bed with your body clenched. It has been a long day and Mr. Jain knows a thing or two with a guitar. He is spilling parts of himself in songs and as he does that with his eyes closed, you know you’ll not know what to say when this in-house concert is finished. How do you reply to tragedy? How do you reply to love? How do you reply to hope? How do you reply to your earphones?

The seasonal heart-mend of Baarishein, the melancholic outcry of Riha, and the serene prayer beneath Maula are no less than generational – for Anuv somehow arrived above the chaotic mess of Instagram covers and ScoopWhoop promotions. He is the artist who stands on the shoulders of his art and restores one’s faith in carving through the hustle. While a generation of singers struggles to differentiate their voice from others, Anuv gave his voice a voice through his lyrics. I like to believe he paid his due in a currency different from the others. I like to believe he stayed up writing when everyone slept thinking unsure about their future. I like to believe than on many of those nights – he had no option but to write. I don’t wish to believe otherwise, for this is what his art whispers to me while it builds a home on my shoulder.

In societal terms, he sits on history being written. It’s not the most uncomfortable of tasks to imagine him much more famous yet original years from now. But as what made him – him – is a question so mystical with an answer so hard to fathom, I know I want to be the last person to know what turns out of him. Perhaps, duniya ki iss bheed mein sabse peeche hum khade.

All mystical said and exaggerated, what is further fascinating is that there is something so affirmatively Punjabi about him, that as a Punjabi myself, I’ll forever struggle to convey across what it means to be soft genetically. We are loud about things we don’t mean and protective about things which are bound to test us and our loved ones. I was in no surprise when he recently put up a story listening to Siddhu Moosewala. Perhaps, it just further told me I was a bit correct in my understanding of him.

With two days to go as I turn that age of being officially unproductive by a fetus Mayank, I know I won’t be playing for India this year (the pandemic obviously). I also know I am officially not what I thought I would be. I’m writing. And so is Anuv. As a film critic, nothing frees me more than being able to think of artists as their characters and then being able to do justice to them. This piece goes out with pride and hope. The former just for existing, the latter for finding the Red to its Andy well.

“Raaton mein taaron se

Yun toot kar mere tu laut aana

Reh jaana tu yahan mere

Jabtak milun nahi taaron mein main kahin”

Lest we forget, memories of a paused war

You don’t romanticize the present. The tragedies that have happened and the possibilities which await us – are subjects; never the now. So as a twenty-year-old introvert-ish Hindu in the capital of the harbourer of the biggest myth in the world – being the largest democracy in the world – I felt at home with what had brought me up: normalcy. If you’re into the bigger picture like me, you’ll understand when I say that we disregard our problems for the greater good. It is not as if I could have sparked a revolution otherwise, it’s this potential guilt of being the privileged normal. However, you spot the symptoms of a wave coming towards you. Well, not just you, but to the people your conscience covers. I saw them coming too. And when they did, everything became larger than life.

On 15th December 2019, Delhi Police stormed the JMI campus – vandalizing, thrashing, allegedly harassing, going limits to which I failed to process every right-swiped Instagram story. Like in cinema – every story was the same, yet nothing alike. Fuck metaphors. And sit on those memories. On the late-night of the 5th of January, JNU was attacked by a mob of more than 50 masked people harassing and beating the in-campus students for over three hours. Intervening professors, ambulances, and anyone who tried to help were also beaten up. Police stood close-by. They didn’t move.

I’m pretty sure the last few sentences work just enough to remind everyone of the chronology of events that unfolded. This is not an account of what happened in the nation. I can’t possibly write that. This is an account of how a twenty-year-old felt let down. How he realized the most underlying of all his trusts was that bleak trust in the system which had made him the laborer of thoughts he was. How ‘grown-ups’ and ‘maturity’ were axes on different graphs, and how war felt closer to his ‘normal’ home than peace ever did. It’s an account of sleepless nights, feeling for a generation you recognized through Instagram, of overcoming anxiety in a larger war, offering your homes as stays for the ‘refugee’, of threats and helplessness. It is nothing. When texts from the time of anti-CAA protests will be re-read, this will not have sustained. For this, the very words derived from soulful memory of moral-less events, are mere indicators that an all-assumed-trust was broken.

The irony of being unable to understand what CAA or NRC or their adjusted acronyms was that the undertone was politically incredibly simple: it bothered you only if you were a Muslim, or had a living conscience, or both. The rest lived in the confines of either their loving homes or luxury ignorance. I have exact memories of everyone’s stance back then, and more so clearly: I have exact memories of everyone who failed to put up one. I had sleepless nights and on those I slept – I met horribly graphic dreams. For the nights between 15th and 19th December, all my brain could process was the helplessness – the rooms of my wall and the timings of my daily schedule – gifted me.

It was all until when everyone took the center stage on the 19th of December. I boarded the 11 AM metro with my friends and wondered how many who I saw were heading to the same place we were: Mandi House. I felt a bit of both guilt and redemption in my smile as I felt relieved to be out of my room. I wanted to shout. I wanted to be the crowd. But first, remove my phone’s finger proof password. And not stand with my friends. Also, get rid of that poster.

Skip forward an hour of blocking traffic, shouting at the top of my lungs, fiery eyes, and meme-worthy poster making contests, and we were all sitting right in front of Janata Dal’s office. As I was in that transition of sitting down on a road, I remember feeling, for the first time together, both peace and chaos. It was ironically obvious and righteously silent. The cinephile in me thought of Tom Hanks’ slow motions in Saving Private Ryan’s first battle scene. Like everyone fought, but just you paused and saw the bigger picture. That was untrue – for both Hanks and me. That’s when I thought of writing this.

Almost two years back, I was at evening silent protest in the aftermath of the Kathua rape case. I remember having a very rare breakdown after coming back home. It was difficult to digest not just what had happened, but the sheer number of educated people who could not be affected beyond an ‘oh geez’. It was physically painful that evening as I wondered just how illusionary the concept of society is. I was convinced it is more lies than truth. But on 19th December, it was in fact, none. There was hope. I’ll wait for the day when I could put to words the difference between the two protests. But for now, let’s just say that momentary peace was long-awaited.

If you were brought up in India, and I know most of you reading this are, you will know when I say we could always spot the evil. Mob lynching, religious propaganda from absolutely every God-fearing religion, crime to ‘support’ it, and terms like ‘mandir yahin banaayenge’ were normalized. I come from the meme-generation too. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m almost an advocate for them. But when the crime exceeds just messing with your defense mechanisms, when students are harassed, the Constitution being told there are ‘kagaz’ more important than it, and when the police, judiciary, media government, and even the opposition – collectively tell people who differ from you because they preach the Allah and not its other forms to leave the country – you can’t say that you didn’t spot the evil coming.

I remembered Orange as the colour a House in my school represented, as one of my favourite fruits, and as the sixth SPD Power Ranger. Now I think of goons on bullets being proud of being in majority. Yes, we saw the evil coming. It just took a very derogatory parliament bill for it to get us to the streets. In a larger sense, it was indeed the generational awakening our forefathers were looking for. CAA wasn’t the grenade that tossed us aside, it was the shove that pushed us over the line. Frustrations stemmed deep into a system of corruption, lies, propaganda, theft, propaganda, and ignorance. One of the most heard things in protests, at the protest at JMI, at Shaheen Bagh and outside police headquarters in ITO during these times was “Ghar pe kya bolke aaye ho?” (What did you say at home to come here?”). In the war against inequality, were battles born out of the same issue. I know many who lied at home. I also know a few who were locked in their home. In the most millenial of ways, it showed a glimpse of what revolt looks like. I mean who could even think we would get to witness “M*th maaro, bacche nahi” in a protest at Arts Faculty. Maybe through all this social media obsession, we did get a few things right. Our collective defense mechanisms were against a huge offence – one who failed to even grasp the gist of our humour. The intellectual and moral differences were always clear.

Just after that protest at Mandi House, as me and my friends meandered in the lanes of Connaught Place looking for an open metro station, one of my friends spotted an art shop she long wanted to visit. As she entered, a very detailed thought hit me. I wondered how does one switch it off: the anguish. If I was told to sit and close my eyes at that moment, I would still be watching students protesting and listening to Amit Shah speaking in the parliament. How do you switch back to normalcy? Does it fade away? What is she buying in there?

Some months later, after some of it had calmed down and the other some had escalated, I met a friend – a JMI student – at an event. It was a really positive-vibed moment, and while we stood in a group of four joking about something, there was a reference to the BJP regime. I profusely asked that friend how are things around his college. He talked about a) PTSD and b) learning to live with it.

Some few months later, I sit here writing this. I think of them, and I think of countless others who I saw at Shaheen Bagh, or the numbers I know stayed up nights outside JMI and other protest sites across the country. I know what I felt, or still continue to feel, is just a small percentage of those more directly involved did. But every time I feel people were more involved or attacked by this than me, I remember the exact reason why people who failed to take a stand did so.

Every one of those involved is still out there, in a war that has all but ended. Those who stormed the campuses of JMI and JNU, those with blood on their hands, and those with the superpower of guiltless crime. Also out there are victims, fighters, revolutionaries – who’ll fail to associate with any of these words. Much like most of the things in the world due to COVID-19, this battle becomes another non-essential service to have been paused.

Until better times.

(Saving Private reference – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqSg7WO4tT4)

Featured image captured by – Hardik Chhabra (IG: @maybe.i.am.dreaming)

The generational anxiety of the C-word

Corona. Say it once. Say it in isolation. Say it without context. Say it without words we knew before 2020 supporting its grammatical existence. Say it to yourself. Say it enough. Enough to measure its thighs and waist. And arm lengths, and chest. Analyze how easy it sounds. How symmetric it is. A consonant and a vowel – three times over. Its simplicity is fascinating, the weight on its shoulders – staggering. It’s almost as if it came to defy a race of a future, the sole representative of a wild tribe of galaxy-wide rebels, in whose head the end of everything carries meaning. It doesn’t like death. It just couldn’t take us anymore. Its as if it was fed off on concepts of anti-human ethics like we imagine jihadis in training camps of secret terrorist organizations.

Except that it is none of it. It’s more human than most humans. Its imperfect, relentless, and dangerous. Some say it started off a bat-eating incident, some say it ‘leaked’ off a lab. It’s more myth than the dungeons and graveyards of mythology. You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, you can’t feel it. You can smell it though; something is up.

For the last month, I witnessed something I thought our generation would never in its lifespan: collective confusion. Ever since the numbers in China were made public, and Italy, Iran, flights, balconies, toilet paper, maggi and sanitizer became part of my daily life vocabulary, there was a lot to anticipate. The needless beauty of it all is its equality. It hits my alcoholic neighbor, just as much as it hits Wayne Rooney, who is affected just as much as the wife of the President of Canada, who is medically prone just as much as a farmer in Greece, who is hit as much as me – who sits at a corner in his room writing this with a mood-swing for a heart. Well, theoretically. In reality, there are no vacant spaces in crematoriums in Bergamo, Italy. Army trucks are carrying the coffins out. Nurses are on 24-hour shifts. There is chaos. And ugliness. There is death. And weeping. There are empty streets. And talented balconies.

A continent and a half away,

suddenly there are no colleges. There are no schedules. You wake up every day to the count of people affected, analyzing how close the dust and thunder of an apocalypse is to you. Then you think about how it might never get to you. There is hope. There is tension. There is selfishness. You can do nothing about it. The war started when you were working late, or slept early, and no one told you. So you sit at home, scrolling through posts which make you stressed, memes which make you chuckle and judge the defense mechanisms of a generation, and with assignments which carry, for the first time, more meaning than the deadlines. Our great war is here. And in the most millennial thing to happen since the start of the millennium, our greatest disaster asks us to sit at home and think about it as it slowly walks towards us.

For the greatest part of my three years of college life, I have struggled in choosing. Such was the sudden exposure and freedom, I spent most nights deciding between a book, a movie, writing, football, gaming, you know the usual. I spent much of it introspecting, or talking to random people I met online. I had become so used to of stress in my life before all of this, I couldn’t let it go even in a life without deadlines or expectations. The more people I talked to, the more I realized it was more of a generational case. There’s a thin line between getting consumed by the larger than life aura of decision-making and existentialism. Every night, I decide which side of the line I will lay my head-on. My feet fall on the other automatically.

But the last month has been different. For the first time, all the larger than life concepts in my head are true. I am doing what I have always wanted to do: normal things with the extra twist of partially less stress. This doesn’t mean the impending danger is any less, it just means there is so. The very presence of this danger means I can (we can), for once, look back at our lives. For some moments and thoughts, December 2019 can be as far away as July 2015, or May 2007. Our mistakes can be ours, our achievements can be ours. We can weigh what we actually value. Do we really regret what we thought we did, or do we see the bigger picture? Was all that time we spent with someone really a waste, or the highlight of the terrible-at-box-office-but-critically-acclaimed-because-PaulThomasAnderson-directed-it that is your life. I ask you to do that, not just because it is a better thing to do than counting viruses across continents. I ask you to do that, because in all this helplessness, loneliness, and umm..cleanliness – not once was there hopelessness.

Three or four blog posts back (I refuse to count because it makes me look more of a regular writer), I talked about how ‘we are always growing’ is a myth. We grow when tragedy strikes. For the first time, a tragedy has struck the entire selfish world. Expecting everyone to grow up is the first trait of a toxic relationship. But notice when people will still wash their hands for twenty seconds, or probably takes scientists more seriously. One can only hope. “You should title this post Hope”. Shut up.

I wish I could tell everyone the secret recipe of navigating anxiety, laughter, stress, and life, during a time like this. There is no time like this. This is The Time. The eternal relevance of its individuality makes one want to think over everything. So no, I won’t tell you the trick, because everyone gets to make their own. Like you built that relationship. Like you talk to that teacher. Like you closed that door. When so many different lives come down to a similar conclusion, I can’t help but think of one of my favourite scenes from Band of Brothers – a series on a company of soldiers in WWII. We get introduced to the war through the protagonist – Capt Richard Winters. As his company gets past the first day of being in war, he takes a moment to acknowledge what they have all gotten through. He overlooks bomb-shelling tearing away the darkness of the night sky, like New Year’s eve. He stands, and narrates –

“That night, I took time to thank God for seeing me through that day of days and prayed I would make it through D plus 1. And if, somehow, I managed to get home again, I promised God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land someplace and spend the rest of my life in peace.”

I had words when I started writing this, and have just emotions when I end. For the longest time, I thought they meant the same thing. It was one of those myths I knew I had to shatter one day. And for the many other such myths I have to break, promises I have to fake, lands I have to wake up on, and people I have yet to break hearts of, I now value the opportunity of getting to. See you on the other side.

Existentialism of The Third Kind: Rang De Basanti

“I always believed there were two kinds of men in this world, men who go to their deaths screaming, and men who go to their deaths in silence. Then I met a third kind.”

In a mela in some corner of Punjab, a crowd of villagers surrounds a circle. A huge wrestler is challenging civilians for a fight. DJ’s friends raise his hand up as a joke. He is in the ring and is somehow escaping the demon’s grasps – just until he gets him. DJ is lifted and thrown back to his friends. Outraged, now the entire group is a part of the fight. They take the demon down. The crowd wins.

This is how the chorus of Rang De Basanti’s theme song unfolds. I first watched the movie in a theatre in April of 2006. For fourteen years, my love escalated and my viewings elevated. This was one of the many pieces of cinema I was addicted to. But like most things you grow up with, you don’t know how to look at them with a different perspective. Every first thought normalizes with time to become a fact; such you even forget you gave birth to it. The same was the case with RDB, as kids around me would call it at that time.

However, things change. You learn, and more importantly, you unlearn. I learned new meanings. And I unlearned that some things don’t have one. I learned that the wrestling scene in the theme song was the entire movie. A bigger evil – who had been established as too big to be taken down – was challenged by one man alone. He lost, but his loss sparked a revolution. Soon, the good trumps the evil. Nothing is ever too big, sacrifices are a way of life and Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra respects the capacity of its audience and the permanence of changing times. This realization changed everything. Maybe I had been overthinking and it was just a funny scene placed right in the middle of the theme song. Maybe. But that’s what we do. We – who admire art. Everything in the frame was my muse. Rang De Basanti asked to be watched again.

We observe RDB’s Delhi through Sue McKinley who intends to make a movie on Indian freedom movement revolutionaries inspired by his grandfather’s diary (once a ranked officer in British India). She is our eyes, our ears, and our hearts – as she observes winds of change similar to those narrated in that dairy. We see DJ, Sukhi, Karan, Aslam, and later on Laxman – all as entities of a modern time. Each with their self-made ideology, or uniquely lack of it. They individually and better together – reflected an entire generation. A part of Mehra’s skill was how comfortable it made you feel. Protected – as an institution would. Their group was the institution. Together, bike stunts and falling into lakes all resembled the riskiest tricks of the easiest chapter of the book. Azad, Rajguru, Bhagat, Ashfaq, and Bismil were the milestones. The transitions were elementary – fast music, diagonal shots, sepia and out of context. That trick was there to be seen and everyone aware of the events around 1919 knew what was transpiring.

The tragedy that served as the purpose in these young men’s lives paralleled the Jallianwallah Bagh incident. The police battering at India Gate paralleled the British retaliation to ‘Simon Go Back’. Ajay’s mother’s coma contrasted Lala Lajpat Rai’s death – both pivotal points in the decision of violent retaliation. A statement needed to be made. The killing of the Defence Minister paralleled the parliament attack. Mirroring was key for Mehra, but the identification of the reasons for its provocation was the movie. That was it.

For the group, their ideologies had shifted and a heart had been awakened. It prompted the movie to be thought of as a portrayal of generational existentialism or prolonged realizations. But it was more. Rang De Basanti took you back to their lives after *that* realization. There were hints all along. Ideas of youth flowered and cross-fed. Under all his charm and confidence, DJ hated his guts for their failure at accepting a world outside college. His mother remarked “Waise bhi Punjab mein toh har maa, apne jawaan bete ko fauj bhejti aayi hai. Main kyun peeche hatun? Peeche hatega toh DJ tumhara.” It was ironic, considering the no questions asked freedom DJ had. It seemed like years ago a decision had already been made. A younger DJ probably told his mother about his wish to go and live a college life out of the famed Delhi University. His mother just smiled. And now, he was here longer than anyone else ever had. For Bebo, she had, in retrospect, lived to the promise of every Punjabi mother. Her son was that famous soldier in the army who kept the camp’s morale high. One who knew better, or dash and of dare, and who just couldn’t convince himself to go back to civilian life. University was his army, his friends were his comrades. All he needed was his war, and when he got it – he was the last to go out.

Sukhi remained in the shadows. The funny one, the one who feared dying a virgin and the one without a plan. The dangerous thing about Sukhi was he had an option. Right before walking into the confession, DJ said to him “Kake, samjha kar. Ab toh aar ya paar.”, to which he replied “Waise bhi bina tumhare na mera na aar hai na paar hai“. Mehra identified that not everyone understands political spectrums, ideation or poetry in protests. Some just know their friend died and want to cry about it. Sukhi didn’t seek revenge for redemption, he cared for the group like kids care for their parents after their grandparents die. He cared and that was his only reason for action. Fittingly, he was the only of the original group whose family wasn’t shown. Sukhi was born because there was a group.

The most peculiar case though was of Karan. He, despite all those capitalistic resources and power – could never buy a leather jacket better than Ajay. He, despite being around all the time could never get Sonia. Somewhere when Ajay left for his duty, his permission for Karan to take care of his jacket seemed like a last message. Ajay knew where he might be headed and Karan’s love for Sonia was so obvious – it needed no words, songs, eye contacts, or goodbyes. It was prominent like a cigarette. And Karan loved smoking. Mehra placed frames so obvious, he later even admitted of the sub-plot. Of all the things that lived a little more after dying in Rang De Basanti, his love was the most real, and still the least tragic.

The rebel in Aslam would advocate for the sovereignly secure state in front of his family and yet fight with a Hindu political worker every day. The friend in him would sacrifice and die. The poet in him managed to live. Laxman switched sides but remained himself – an exception. His taunting with Aslam would turn to a bromance and eventually to them dying holding hands. If looked at closely, appear to be saying their last few words to each other. It is extremely subtle, and the music silences their words. Is there a subplot? Am I ruining a movie or being too woke when there is no need to? That’s what Mehra probably felt. And hence, he left hints for those who looked. Looked, not listened.

Like all chapters of replicated reality, Rang De Basanti ends unfairly. Crushingly. A tragedy. Five friends hugging each other in the office of a radio station as they have just won an ugly war with now the most humane element of all – a clear conscience. They expect prison, and they get killed. DJ hilariously remarks “beer-sheer sab band” – a testament to how the events transpired have changed their lives forever. The war won came at a cost, but more importantly, they aren’t scared anymore. They are the system.

For all its lalkars, Rang De Basanti, eventually, whispered. It told us that tipping points hadn’t disappeared in the last hundred years, just that our normalization had dominated. Somewhere in our identities still lay boundaries, margins, borders and limits, across which normalcy couldn’t be retained. For Bhagat, Ashfaq, Rajguru, Bismil and Azad , it was their realization of freedom in a country everyone identified with the absence of it. For Karan, Aslam, Sukhi, Laxman and DJ, it was about recognizing there was a freedom to be won. Their smiles in Roobaroo answered their existentialism.

The movie starts with the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. It’s narration, as we discover, is through Sue’s grandfather’s diary as she reads it on her couch. For years, I thought she fell asleep reading it. But being at a protest for a freedom our youth recently realized needed to be won, I had a realization. Sue didn’t just sleep, words gave her a space to dream. Her eyes close. The book falls. The movie begins.

Marriage Story Review: Criminalizing a Separation

Love is difficult. It demands patience, asks for sacrifices, and makes you lose perspective. It changes you. You forget how you were before and every effort in recovering traces of a self that is unadulterated from all that came to be since the four-letter-word took form, seem futile. It’s messy and chaotic. Love is difficult.

Marriage is worse.

Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is a third-person view of a couple we never see together. It isn’t a falling apart story or even a ‘what went wrong’ letter of regret. Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) are somewhere between their last fight and their first court hearing. In their quest to be in sight of both – their dreams and their son (Henry) – the couple fights through its understandings of each other.

Of all the things Marriage Story chooses to be real with, one that stands out is the ugliness. Not for a momentary pause do we not believe in the stories Charlie and Nicole tell us. Both are correct, for both are artists; all they know are opinions and provocation of thought. Through its small imperfections, Noah Baumbach’s story makes us fall for the couple. As a lengthy narration starts the film with the only traces of flashback we get, we learn of Charlie’s polite way of telling people if food is stuck in their teeth and Nicole’s absoluteness while cutting her family’s hair. We learn of him being the genius theatre director who loves to be Henry’s father and often gets lost in his own world. We learn of her as the star actress in his theatre who knows how to handle the difficult ‘family shit’ and ‘really’ listens when someone is talking. In a leaf out of Sean Maguire’s book (Good Will Hunting), you would smile as the two get into the idiosyncratic meaning of Sean’s ‘imperfections’. You get to like them.

But then they are criminals. Marriage Story gets ugly fast. There are lawyers, arguments, settlements, manipulations, deals, and regrets. Noah Baumbach’s version of growing out of love is judicial yet cold. It is so careful yet so smooth. You could be bouncing around sides – for there are now two – and yet never decide the side to stay on. The secret is you know you would always return. In this third-person viewing, you question if you are Henry – the child of this marriage – for you know nothing of the past as well; he jumps around the sides too.

In its skill of separating the worlds of that beginning narration and the rest of the movie, Marriage Story moves on from nostalgia. It is like an old feud taken care of. The world almost forgotten is New York – where the once happy family once stayed. The world which builds the new reality is Los Angeles – where the separation takes place. The intimacy of art in theatre versus the commercialization of looks in show business; the voice-less versus the speech-less; the past versus the future.

Sequences are lengthy, everything is brought to the table and yet there is no closure. Even as the audience, you can feel that suffocation. The ‘what has this come to?’ question becomes so loud, Charlie and Nicole can’t hear their demands anymore. In one of the many gut-wrenching sequences which make no eye dwindle from the screen, Nicole explains to Nora Fanshaw (the commanding Laura Dern) – her lawyer – what led to the fallout. In her words, were her excuses; in her pauses were her answers. Scarlett Johansson takes you back to Lost in Translation, but now more experienced and less broken. Adam Driver runs the movie, for his conscience challenges the test of intentions the longest. Both complement each other so well, you wouldn’t even want the happy ending, just to watch the two artists complete their acting masterpieces in isolation.

Come award season, when Joker, The Irishman, and Parasite will be making waves of nominations and award speeches, Marriage Story will remain that one intimate experience of the year which will out outlive red carpets and monologues. In Noah Baumbach’s portrayal of a family struggling to live together, she reminded us of the luxury of one that does. Love is difficult.

It is also worth it.

Living a longing: The story of a trip where I met seven strangers and me

“Are you about to sleep?”
“I won’t.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I can’t sleep on trips.”
“You haven’t slept for five days?”
“And five nights.”

On December 15th 2018, I left for a trip to the absolute unknown.
In August 2016, I met a school senior I had never talked to in school before and vibed immediately.
In July 2018, he created an underground traveling community – trips where you don’t know where in this democracy you are going.
Somewhere in the meetings between August 2016 and July 2018, every time I met him, I knew he couldn’t sit quiet and still would make the least noise. Somewhere between that time, I decided to follow where he ends up.

On December 15th 2018, I left for a trip to the absolute unknown. Well not absolute it just sounds more invigorating with unknown (and I just used invigorating). I knew we were going to the mountains in December, which now when I think of, 365 days and nights wiser, seems like a childish thing to do. But, somehow, that was the point. The build-up to December 2018 was such that I needed to do everything that had seemed arbitrarily impractical up till then. I knew that in the bigger picture my first trip with strangers, with no luxuries and minimum budget, could change things for me. And I needed change. Or rather, to be more explicitly me, I needed the process. I wanted to be hit by something larger than life and more importantly, I wanted to see it happen.

I packed like I would need that last shirt from my cupboard and I walked like a walking enthusiast would – all at once and then none for some. Everything – from the bus that got us there to the snow that arrived a day early – had me asking questions. Mayank – a nineteen-year-old – often called out as “too mature for his age” was asking stupid, erratic questions. You could be convinced of the idea that “you do not know where you are going” but not that “to live is to not know”. The trip resembled a life. It started and I was an infant. A new world I knew nothing of. I was curious because I wanted to ‘live’ longer. I asked of anything and everything. But then just as I started getting tired, I grew.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not grow just because you have known more or seen more. You grow constantly is a belief, just until its a myth – just until a tragedy strikes. Everyone has that one event in their lives which made them see their environment at its worst. I believe that is when you grow. When you know what is on the other side – when you are not scared to flip the coin. The trek that ensued on the night of 16th December was that tragedy. Eight hours – from the darker 5 to 1 – with a heavy bag, snow on the sides, -5C temperature, seven strangers constantly changing pace, hunger and absolute wilderness. The last any of us saw apart from each other, was kilometers back. It was so quiet, my mind stopped playing songs. It was so dark, I did not realize my eyes were closing until the lids hit the skin. Everything was cold. Nothing was a mess. The sky was as blue as it had been in my dreams, Red, and the stars were..there.

When I was five or seven or three, and alive and well were the full seven members in my family, power cuts were common. Often, we would go sleep on the rooftop. Now, I was never one of those kids who loved rains or flowers or dogs or mountains. I loved safety. Anything wild would cause tremors to my soul. I valued my family just enough to be scared from a night on the rooftop – for the Lord knows what could strike or hit or capture. My family would sleep like they normally would; I couldn’t. I would often stare up and find some stars staring back. I would often sleep while looking at them.

Now fourteen or twelve or sixteen years later, I saw them again. The same set of stars, finding me alone – again. At one in the night at a place I couldn’t name – every step dodgier than the previous, snow normalizing the meaning of land to me, I knew I remained the only woke person from my family. I looked at the stars not like I wouldn’t see them again for decades, but with a smile, for I knew they value their disappearance. I knew they missed me.

My vulnerabilities were reduced to a point that I had removed all layers of me that I had added since I was born. Now, it was just me, and that was it. I was so tired, I stopped thinking of what could happen. I didn’t care. My brain took me to Elio Pearlman, to my sister’s wedding, to Stamford Bridge and to people I cared about. I thought about them a lot – for the only time like a virgin mind. Unfucked.

I stopped asking questions. The infant had grown. The rest of the trip was a hangover of what the night trek gave me. I could go on about the fact that we didn’t eat for twelve more hours, I shivered through the night, that the next morning was one of the most beautiful of my life, that we trekked further and I started talking to people. I did that, and a lot more. I did more than I could ever put on paper or on Google Docs. But those were just four more days where I eternalized my hangover.

The next morning – I woke up and stepped outside the tent to find sunlight the most God-like thing in the history of fucked mankind. I walked to a lake, where I was told I would find phone signals. As I walked, I smiled at the fact that for kilometers I would not find another human. How stupid we eight would look from the up and how my life up till now was based all in a small corner of the world. I was wrong. At the lake, I met Anshul – a nine-year-old kid who was trying to pierce the frozen lake with a stick. We talked. He remains the only person to have talked to the most me – me. Soon, I would find out that he was the son of the man – Govind Bhaiya – who was here to help us. We would spend two nights at their home. Anshul – and his brother Rahul – thought One Plus Three could get them Talking Tom 2. Little did they know about Idea.

I remember each of the seven like comrades from a war won. I remember their little secrets they could tell just strangers. I remember Govind Bhaiya’s kitchen – the warmest place on earth. I remember the three girls of the group – spending an entire day on art. I remember how beautiful everything looked. I remember the bus journey that got me home. Oh, and I remember Mandy.

I have been on more trips since then. I went to Mumbai thrice – all alone. As a twenty-year-old, these feel.. good. Good – yes, can we keep it that simple? I have traveled with Bin Naqshe Kadam twice more as well. I met more people than I ever did. I vibed a lot more. I wrote a lot more. I told people about this trip and that trek. And I have always maintained, I had it coming. It wasn’t a frustrated student escaping a life. It was a nineteen-year-old boy, who saw enough in his life and believed enough in the universe, that he knew he would be somewhere he would never be again before the year ends. I don’t believe it was just the strangers, or Rubhen, or the physical conditions. They led me to those points of unmasked, unabashed moments of truth – but I know something would have led me there eventually.

You see, I don’t write this one year later because the December wind makes me nostalgic of lands which couldn’t be straight for more than a foot, or of people, I have reason to believe, still live in that same house, still cooking those three meals a day, still troubling their shoulders with weights exceeding their ambitions. I write because I know that one of these celebratory boring days in that household, Rahul and Anshul will sleep to the same December wind and think of those eight. The happy few, the lucky few.

It was 20th December 2018. Someone had just told me she couldn’t sleep the entire trip. I wanted to know the time. I checked my phone. It was 4:21 AM. We were two hours from Delhi.

Talking Tom 2 had just finished downloading.