hey lol
The audacity of this idiot to ramble about consistency and then just stop writing for an entire month-
This is awkward. And also my fault. As it should be. Against the better judgement of every remaining, functional brain cell that I have (I’ve been told on multiple occasions that the number is most definitely in single digits and less than three), I resist the urge to start the next sentence with a “In my defence…” , mainly because it feels like a cop out, and wouldn’t really be fair. I am what’s considered on the streets as a ‘professional’ when it comes to belting out excuses, so trust me to defend this wouldn’t be much of a stretch for me. I could say that I didn’t write because I was busy, because I was too tired to write, or because I just didn’t have the creative wavelength to do so. And all of those would be lies. Don’t get me wrong, the past month has been busier than usual. There have been days when I’ve been really tired, and days when I just couldn’t muster up a word on screen. But those have been few and far in between. The real, honest reason why I didn’t write, is simply because I didn’t want to. Yep. That’s about it. Do what you can with that information.
There were times when I felt I had things to write about. There were times when I had the time, energy and bandwidth (this is starting to sound like the DMs of a mass media kid going through their first breakup) to write, but I just didn’t. There was absolutely no part of me that felt even the slightest bit of encouragement to go to the keyboard and just start typing. It’s a very hollow sort of feeling, just this large void in a place where once existed some form of motivation. It’s like at the center of all this tangled mass of ambitions and hopes and flaws and frailties, there’s just a teeny tiny black hole. Devoid of anything substantial, just existing. There’s just, nothing. And it’s scary, because I couldn’t make sense of it. I still can’t. All that I know is I should’ve probably grabbed a coffee and started writing.
Now before you start feeling like a judge on Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa (yes I went all the way back to 2012 for that reference), let’s get the sob story out of the way and go on with the regular programming,
If you’re reading this sitting in Mumbai, first of all my condolences. Secondly, summer’s here! As if it ever left lmao. I use that exclamation mark to hide the terror in my words and the impending doom they herald because in case you don’t know what’s gonna happen, let me paint a picture of what this city’s gonna be like for the next four months. Imagine a microwave oven, and fill it up with twenty million people. Now, turn the dial all the way up to a temperature that is beyond digits, and can only be described as that vague feeling you get when your insides burn and and all you wanna do is crawl inside your air conditioner and cry, but you physically can’t because you’ve been sweating bricks since morning so there’s not much fluid left in your body anyway. To put it subtly, it’s somewhere around gaand lagne wali hai °C. Also, it’s dusty. Because when you ask Mumbai to make you feel like the main character, it will happily oblige. Except this city’s idea of a main character isn’t letting you sit at Marine Drive at 3 in the night with the love of your life as it rains all around like the third act of a coming-of-age Ranbir Kapoor movie. Waise Ranbir Kapoor movie bola toh coming of age bolne ka zaroorat nahi tha, but okay I’m digressing now. Instead, this city’s idea of a main character is making you feel like the protagonist of a twenty minute parody of Dune that was written and directed by Farah Khan after three other people said no.
In hindsight (which for me is literally two seconds after writing that last line) it feels like I put too much into explaining a metaphor about dust when I could’ve just left it at that. But this is personal, because I fuckin’ hate dust. Dust is like that one ex-talking stage you can never really seem to shake off. It is annoying, fucks up your mood, and worst of all, is EVERYWHERE. You open your laptop, there it is. Turn on your phone, voila. Go out in public to enjoy a slim ray of sunshine before you lock yourself in your room to stare at a screen for eight hours and call it productivity, and it’s there too! I read somewhere that a lot of dust is composed of dead human skin cells. The sad thing is, I can’t remember if that was a Wikipedia article or just another slam poet on Instagram trying to be dramatic without actually taking the effort to rhyme words.
Wikipedia, or Instagram. On one hand, a platform that is literally begging you to donate less than what it costs to get a coffee at one of those aesthetic cafes we all go to so we can lie to our followers that we actually have a life. All this just so it can help you, turn in a better assignment the next time you realize in the middle of a random weekday that you have a 3000 word paper due in two hours that you have to submit if you don’t want your marksheet to look like the bar chart of Adani Enterprises stock every time someone in another country publishes a piece of paper on the internet. And on the other hand, an app addled with shitty Tera Nasha edits that only exists to take every ounce of attention you have and turn it into engagement so that Agastya Shah can sleep soundly at night thinking he has a career. I know there was no reason for that comparison to go that far, but I’m trying to see if there’s a point here. Would it be more convincing if I showed you a reel of a person dancing to Bones by Imagine Dragons and just before an overused The Boys logo graphic is about to hit your screen, there’s a text disclaimer that tells you how dust in homes is composed of about 20-50% dead skin cells? Would you be less likely to forget it then? Something to think about.
Sometimes I wonder where this newsletter would be without the occasional personal attack. But then I remember that I’ve only written two of these, so I should probably shut up and go write more before I get all self aware about the kind of impact I’m having on the three people who are still here reading this paragraph that has the intellectual worth of a cat meme rendered in 144p so you can’t see how bad it really is. And on that note, I think it’s time to shut shop for the week. I really wanna say that the next one will be in your inbox in seven days, but I feel like I’m the last person to make promises of discipline right now. But I’ve really had fun writing this, and I hope you maybe had a fraction of that fun reading this. If not, then that’s too bad, we’ll try again next week. Maybe go watch a reel or something, that’ll help.
This is around the time where the year starts to go to shit for most people, so I hope you’re taking care of yourselves. And if your year’s still going great, then don’t hog it, take two puffs and pass so everyone else can have a drag too. Stay hydrated (mixer or spirit, I don’t judge) and as was usual a month ago, here’s a tweet to cap things off.
Have a great week!
"I read somewhere that a lot of dust is composed of dead human skin cells."
It was suite life of Zack and Cody