Image credit – piqsels.com

You say you have come here to learn because nobody ever told you that survival is a lie. A gruff voice booms through the speakers in the gallery, as our Theory professor tries to explain Derrida’s gradual manoeuvre towards politics, disconcerted as it appears to our unbridled minds. My eyes take a quick sweep around the hall as I survey faces which I have come to identify as classmates. They do not understand how important it is for you to pass this course and get the degree. You are the first in your family to come this far, to have made a stride in academics that will forever set a precedent in your lineage. At this point, if someone told you that this sullen frenzy of passing exams to land somewhere respectable was a hazing, you would kill them. I smile at the thought. But I know what is due to you so much so that I understand this cacophony of a race isn’t a gimmick. You are thirsty, for knowledge. You realise that the world outside the periphery of your one-bedroom house lures and this temptation is not always destructive.

You sit at the back, second from the last. Your eyes strain over a used book trying to swallow words that are incomprehensible to you, failing which, you frown. You frown a lot. A few days back, I had to sit next to your cocooned corner, because I deliberately reached class late enough for the front desks to get occupied. On any other day, I would have avoided anything beyond the middle of the classroom, because I had been told to avoid dawdlers. “Backbenchers are a waste”, I had cringed at the remembrance of my father’s words. Pulling fragments of memories like that, I had saved myself from wasting away. I do not want to waste my life like my mother, who spends many a sultry morning washing her blood-stained arms, nor like my father who devotes his evenings to scandalous excursions. I don’t want to waste my time on you, even if it means underselling my ability to feel.

“You understand this?”, you had asked, ogling over my notes. “Can you help me with Theory?” you had requested as if it was obvious that I should. As if first benchers like me owe it to the like of yours, as if mediocrity exists because intelligence does. Before I could refuse, you had pleaded, backhandedly. You had told me why you were here. You are here because you want to live. And I have no right to deny you your choice.

These days, evenings pour in quickly. The cafeteria is lit by oblong tubes of florescent. We pick the last spot to sit. I carry my Grammatology and notes from the class. We sit adjacently and the gap between us is filled with the smell of your sweat smeared t-shirt. Before I begin telling you why Derrida toys with his own ideas, barely remaining true to his discourse, you ask if I would like a cup of tea. I nod, but I do not offer gratitude in return, I do not tell you about my antagonism with coffee. “Do not give them power”, my mother’s voice wells up in the same space and how can I disobey her command, how can I let you overpower me, when it is you who needs saving?

Low murmurs interspersed with gales of laughter seep in as students occupy the other, empty seats. Friendships are often made over food; bonds solidify through shared jibes. It is that forte of social life which I avoid, not as an attempt to appear mysterious, but because I am afraid of allowing anything temporal decide my preference of people. As I am about to sink in my vortex of misadventures, you pull me out of my mind. You ask if I would like a cigarette and I shake my head, I don’t smoke. “I don’t like to smoke, either”, you say, dragging the butt, “but it helps me concentrate”. I fake a smile. This is called response to stimulus. Cigarette is the stimulus your concentration responds to. It is always in the brain. Every thought, every damnable thought erupts from these enigmatic retreats. It is important to shackle them, subdue the mind to your sense of practicality and I know I ace the art.

“So, let’s begin”, you say, stirring in your seat, your cigar almost burnt up. “Derrida always worked on his theory, he was never satisfied with what he had started”, I try to sound helpful by telling you that your ambivalence is not different from Derrida’s. Your eyebrows furrow, but you nod. “He saw deconstruction as a bridge to understand politics and the world at large”, I make two circles, connect them with an arrow- the bridge in Derrida’s theory. The bridge that tells us apart. “But, didn’t he say that there is nothing outside the text?” “He did. He did. He said that for sure. But, it has more to do with interpretation.” “Fair enough”, you smirk “so much for being a philosopher”.

Two weeks later, I still help you after class, except for the weekends. You need to rejuvenate yourself every Saturday, you tell me. On weekends, you do not stay back. Your escapism takes you to places which abound in green. You climb mounds around the river that borders the districts in and around ours. The following week, your social feed floods with your half-naked boisterous photographs; images showing your guileless bravado which fool girls unaccustomed to your fallibility. Weekends allow me time to catch up with my classwork, prepare notes in the library and dig into books I would have otherwise never been able to buy. My bicycle takes me nowhere farther than the immediate circle of our campus, and while you scale pretentious mountains, I count moments.

December comes clad in opaque, misty mornings. Your presence within the campus becomes a rarity and we seldom meet. On evenings when you are in, you like to spend time with your gang of hipsters. I see that you no longer need my help and I withdraw. We barely talk now, save for the occasional interrogation about who is teaching what. Sometimes, if you catch me pulling at my bicycle, loaded with books less known, you offer to walk me to my hostel. On such evenings, the sky changes its tonality for me. Silver linings appear everywhere above, blues dissipate from my metaphysical firmament and the air starts to smell of you.

“I heard your poem that day. It was beautiful”, you compliment me on such an evening. I fail to recollect the specifics, but I thank you. The literary club is a small, twenty membered group. I do not understand when you had heard me recite. You are never there, and if you were, I would have known. Perhaps you sense my befuddlement for you clear it up. You tell me that your roommate is a member of the club and that he records my poems for you. Half the time, you barely understand what I speak, but you go over them, repeatedly, until they make sense to you. I give my neck an abrupt twist, how was I to react to this candid confession of yours!

My palms become moist and I clutch to the handlebars tightly. The grip digs deeper into my skin, but I do not mind the pain. I want to cover my ears, the only part of me that betrays all the eccentric emotions flaccidly, turning brick red and hot. I feel my stomach drop to my gut, as longing surges through me. For once, I do not find the murderous cold vindictive. ‘Adrenaline’, I tell myself. This is adrenaline; the logical conclusion to us, more so, to me. That it is my hormones working up saves me from falling down your rabbit hole: one of uncertainty.

When we reach my hostel, you meticulously slip me a piece of paper. It is a riddle, you tell me. You believe that I will be able to solve it, because, “I have seen you write your notes in anagrams”, you smile and leave. Except, I cannot solve it. The syllables are different from the only two languages I know. The script is Devanagari, but the words demand brainstorming, made difficult because it is in your first language, foreign to my unpractised tongue. I have heard you speak the language a thousand times before, with your friends and through your captions. Once I had asked you to translate a sentence for me. You had laughed your goofy smile, tried hard to translate but had stuck at the word ‘you’. You told me that there is no hierarchy in your language, unlike mine which places ‘apuni’ over ‘tumi’ and ‘tumi’ over ‘toi’, the farther the diminutive goes, the more intimate the relation is. You had settled with ‘toi’ for me and I never asked why you did not choose a more formal salutation.

The next semester starts after a fifteen days long winter break. I see the same faces again, except yours. A week goes by before someone points out that you have left the course. I meet your roommate at our literary events. This Saturday, he calls me after our mandatory performances. Do I not want to know about you? he asks. I shrug. He tugs at the hem of his shirt, “I see. Perhaps, you have solved his puzzle,” he eyes me. I look at him, sharply. “Oh, you haven’t. It doesn’t matter now. He left. The last time we talked, he said he wouldn’t come. He asked me to inform you. And also, to see if you have read what he wrote.” “I could not understand the language, so I abandoned it”. “It’s fine. He isn’t coming back, anyway. Do you really not want to know, why?”, he asks again. I shake my head. Suddenly, a pall falls over all the reasons you had refurbished. Everything you had said about ambitions appear futile, banal lies. I do not want to know what compelled you to leave, I will not become the confidant of your effacement. “He indeed lives in a different zone. Quirky, really. He asked me to record your open mic performances last semester, did you know?”, he laughs at that, a laugh reminiscent of my father’s, the one which he used to undercut my confidence. “I’m sorry”, he adds. I scramble to my feet, trying to excuse myself from the unease he tries to conjure, but before I could move, he concludes, looking at me, “He was right. You are beautifully sad.” It is my turn to laugh. It comes out as a snort.

The same evening, I take out the riddle you had left me as a keepsake. I carry it to the cafeteria, the place where we once pretended to be intellectuals. Our spot is taken, which seems fair. I take a seat near the reception. I remember that the boy who sits at the counter knows your language. Hesitantly, I ask him for help. He comes to my table. I hand him the piece of paper. At each syllable, he pauses, looks at me, and resumes.

“To be honest, I cannot make out what he means”, he huffs. “It is just two sentences”, I chime in, exasperated. “Well, yes. It sounds like a lyric picked up from an extremely old song”. “What does it say?” “‘A willow grows out of sight, do what Antoinette did in her plight’”. I snap the paper from him, I know what you mean. “Thank you, I think it is just a prank”, I say, pick up my bag and leave.

The mosque outside our campus reverberates with prayers that echo through me. All it takes is a moment, everything that follows is an ‘after’. I have lived through many afters, wishing, praying, begging to change many befores. Before school was over, I prayed to walk into a house without my father. Before leukaemia killed my sister, I begged the Lord to kill me instead. Before Baba came home drunk, I wished for more time with Maa. Before anything ever happened, I steeled myself for every loneliness which was to follow: which was to make many daunting afters. And now, you have asked me to wait, to prolong my belief in you. You have asked me something I cannot do. Infinity, for me, exists in math alone. It does not transcend to occupy space in my life, meddling with my ‘before-after’ charade, prolonging temporality. Waiting is diabolical for people like me, people who cannot be loved and therefore should not be gifted finite moments with infinite promises.

In my fist, your riddle crumbles. “You were an interlude, that’s it”, I say to myself before tossing it away in the dustbin.

I look at the sky. It is amaranthine, beautifully sad.