An obtuse life

I sound contrite and fake and like a sixteen-year old with frizzy hair, barely there goatee in a message tee, dirty designer-faded jeans and converse shoes regurgitating that same old lesson of doped make-believe cynicism that we all thought was poetry after OD-ing on that Morrison fellow. But the truth of the matter is that I feel lonely, cooped up in my little head. Cramped. Brittle and parched. Desolate. Bitter. Barren and oh-so bland. I can’t find colours anywhere. Its as if an epidemic of dullness has just washed across the world around me. Nothing inspires romance anymore. Nothing makes you get up in the morning and feel like running away to the hills to live in a dark, dinghy cottage where the dampness from the dew settles on everything like the faint gossamer of a nostalgic sepia of a bygone youth.

Oops.

There I go again sounding contrite and fake like only a sixteen-year old. But man that is the truth. The whole goddam truth. I mean figure this out, wherever I fucking look it’s the same fucking scene. Broken buildings of no particular colour, cement and cheap paint with a mind of their own take over building after building to reduce it to nothing but an ode to dull monotony. Tin chawls, little huts with kids being bathed every alternate day to save from that elusive two buckets of water stolen from somewhere by their mothers whose unkempt saris smell but they couldn’t care to do anything about them since they have to run away to some ‘malkin’ or ‘babus’ house to wash their clothes on dishes or both. I mean its fashionable to sound cynical but I feel it crunching into my bones.

This… this sense of an obtuse reality. An obtuse life.

I know, you are already puckering up your face in disgust. “Hah,” you are saying – “… pretentious moralistic bastard. If he so cares for that woman who washes his clothes, why doesn’t he go work in an NGO or something. Sure his MNC marketing job and weekends at Hard Rock Café are not giving him too many hangovers. Bloody urban yuppie asshole.”

You are right man. I am a fucking, urban, yuppie asshole. I mean the other day my super-rich girlfriend (No you ass, I am not showing off – I am making a point so bear with me) started bawling after seeing people sleeping under a flyover. I mean like really bawling and all, and right there in the middle of the fucking road. While I saw her cry and heard her call herself ‘pretentious’ or whatever, I knew she cared and shit because she’s preparing for the IAS and all. But me? Well I d don’t get what all the fuss is all about when she tells me she was feeling sad looking at a eunach with a steely stare looking out of the local as if he had a story to tell or when little children swarm around us begging for a one-ruppee coin as we step out of Baskin-Robbins with our double-fucking scoops of dark-chocolate or green-mint (I personally think it tastes like frozen toothpaste, but whatever) ice-creams. I don’t get it… I really don’t.

I mean it sounds cool and all. I mean I get carried away and feel like I should do “something” you know, especially when she stalks so passionately about it all. But its like that same feeling you get inside a multiplex when they play the national anthem, and when the music hits the overture at “Jai Hai.. Jai Hai… Jai Hai…” – yeah, it kind of gives you that goose-pimply lump in-throat feeling.

I mean I am a patriot and a committed nationalist and all, but even I sometimes wonder what comes off from this “Pop-patriotism” where you make people who can obviously afford Rs 200 on a movie and another Rs 150 on a large-popcorn and coke combo, to stand up and show solidarity to the union when at that very moment some thousands of farmers commit or contemplate suicide from debts and huge tracts of the country are in the grasp of parallel governments run by Naxalites or insurgency movements.

I mean most of these guys in the multiplex hire professionals and pay them by the thousands to understand how to avoid paying taxes so that something can be done to avoid such a situation. I know. I know, because I am one of them.

And the more I think about it, I realise my life has become like a circle, running on an infinite symmetry of a never-ending Benny Hill Show. Monday morning,s uncomfortable office lunch, elevator smokes, monotonous sex, overpowering sexual fantasies, draining heavy masturbation, more uncomfortable office-lunches, coffee, black coffee, diet coke, leftovers for breakfast, power-gymming on weekends, multiplexes, shopping malls and the reminder call to parents in a different city to remind them of my well-being. Twice daily.

That’s the gist of what I have contributed to humanity in the last seven years, give or take a night-out at a pub. I mean its all so repetitive, the tax returns, the excel-sheets, the ever-upgrading new mobile phone and the raising of the daily POs and shit – even my goddam breaks seem the same. Living life off those little blocks on my table calendar which the promo guy from Taj gave to my team. Stealing life… from those little blocks with dates written in thick, black Calibri font – I run away for a “guided trek” or a shopping trip to Singapore or Thailand.

The A/C in the car stinks off a stale perfume bottled and advertised as the ‘scent of nature’ or some such shit. The office seems too cold and the tubes seem sickly white. The clock strikes ten in the night and suddenly I don’t want to watch the TV anymore. I am lying prostrate on the couch. Eyes glazed. Catatonic. Blank. Everything seems vague and remote… this is not how it was supposed to be. This is not what I was promised.

This is not me. This is not my life. Sigh... This too shall pass.