Inspired from a conversation with a friend and the book, Anxious People.
This is a story about a thirty-year-old writer who read too many serious books and too much sad poetry, and now it's a permanent part of her. Does she know this? Of course, she does. There’s nothing writers don’t know about themselves, she thinks. Does she do anything about it? Of course, not. She continues to read serious books and sad poetry and dejected think pieces, because what is she if not a repository of all the universal emotions and ideas mankind has ever known? Emotions she knows exist but she will never truly get to experience.
Walking down a street sheltered by scattered but dense canopies, she wonders what it’s like to be the cheery kind. What would it feel like to smile without a reason, to laugh unreasonably with your white teeth uncharacteristically glaring at someone? She wonders what the rules are. She knows her rules. She’s spent a lifetime – okay, only about thirty years but still – mastering hers. So much so that sometimes, just sometimes, when it’s late in the night and she has already refreshed her Twitter feed way too many times, and munched on all the midnight snacks, and re-organized her photo gallery, and taken a hot water shower in hope of falling asleep because someone on the internet said it would, she doubts if she is even a real person. Maybe she knows the rules so well not because she’s invented them, but because she’s spent years penning every little quirk of this character that she embodies. Maybe she knows the rules so well because she is the only successful character she has ever written.
Being burdened by serious thoughts is a curse. A curse that is difficult to hide in the presence of others. Last month, the thirty-year-old writer got invited to a house party that she would not usually be invited to if it hadn’t been for her online-turned-real-life friend who was pretty adamant about having her there. The thirty-year-old writer felt pretty out of place in a tenth floor Marine Drive-facing Mumbai apartment, but she tried to be optimistic and play along. Maybe I can write about them, she thought. She really enjoyed being a writer and she’d moved past the need to hide it from the world. By ‘her world’, she meant her online-turned-real-life friend and Sharbat, her pet hamster. As she got into the lift, she genuinely considered hiding her serious thoughts. This was not the place for them, especially since she technically wasn’t invited and was only going as a plus one. She decided to limit herself to two drinks and focus on soundlessly nibbling on food as much as possible, but parties don’t work like that. Parties don’t work like that but I’ll try any way, she thought.
The thing about the thirty-year-old writer is that she’s often described as quiet, but when she talks, people get sick of her and start looking for excuses to get away. Usually, when invited to join a conversation, she’ll end up mentioning a serious article about something sad that she was up reading the previous night. This generally spoils the mood and she wishes she could stop it from happening, but how? What else is she supposed to do with the accumulating thoughts of despair swirling in her mind? How can she not mention climate change when someone complains about the untimely rains? How can she not bring up the utter failure that is the Mumbai sewer system when someone complains about getting delayed because of waterlogged roads? How can she not ask the host if they tipped the food delivery person, or at least offered them water?
Outside it’s pouring, inside she’s anxiously tugging on the long sleeve of the guilt-ridden white top that she bought off an e-commerce giant. She wants to go home and have sad thoughts alone, peacefully. She wants to spend hours grieving for the people dying in Afghanistan, for mothers who end up with stillborns, for the little snails in the park who get stepped on. She wants to re-arrange the crockery cabinet for the millionth time just so she can, briefly, stop having sad thoughts about the world and life and existence.
The thirty-year-old writer is not unhappy, she just has sad thoughts constantly. She tries to own them, she calls it her character flaw, and she’d probably never admit that sometimes, her mind tires her too. She’d rather be laughing with her whole jaw wide open at absolutely nothing, but she doesn’t know how to. Though she knows that it’s not her fault. The world is a sad place to be, she thinks every night before going to bed. She might be right.