Passing on road a few days back, a woman spilled some stuff from her grocery bag on the road. All of her small violet-coloured pseudo-spherical roots were spread on the road. Cars went over them. People crossed roads and she saw those onions being crushed. Her hard-earned onions. They were pressed upon by tones and tones of mechanical mass of several of those vehicles that those poor onions were sticking to the road. With their nutrients splashed all over the black tarred surface, the onions must have been crying. Money, got waste. Food, got waste. Nutrients, got waste. Onion tears, got waste. She tried to gather as much of those onions as she could. The bag felt heavy on her old worn down forearm. And when a few onions went from my hand to her bag, I could see a vein contract near the place where her forearm met her upper arm. The bag must have been heavy with those other onions in it that were then stuck on the black tarred road. Money, got waste. Food, got waste. Nutrients, got waste. Onion tears, got waste. Waste didn’t go my generous effort to hand her over a few onions. Nothing hurts more than being mocked at while standing in the middle of a busy road with nobody to rescue you in that position of innocent fragility and compromise.
The white coloured wall in front, it stares back at the man who is typing something in Windows 8 Office Word file on his phone. That piece of art which he is typing, in coming years that might be of great memory among people who survive on deep philosophical memoirs. People, who are constantly being pressed upon with unjust notions of happiness, those same people lose their contentment at the lure of just another chance. Buy this. Do that. Travel here. Work there. More and more and more of what we don’t want makes us live in cringe and despair. You then wonder where the fuck is that happiness that was once promised. All around you lays a longing for more and more and more. Some more. To find happiness, we need not live a myth and follow it blindly. The road doesn’t end. You have more to seek from what the world offers whenever you face the reality of being happy in present, only to realise a moment later, you are not happy. And if you are, at least not as much as you wished. After all, you haven’t watched the next season of that so and so sitcom. It has been promised to be a great one. You’ll be then, happy, as it is called. Maybe never, will you be happy. The white coloured wall in front eagerly waits for me to look at it. My ideas get me back.
Things are neither good nor bad, they just exist. The white coloured wall in front just exists. There is full freedom in your hands to colour it with broken kindergarten kid’s crayons or glue a Sylvester Stallone poster to it. The wall is white, you know, just like the mind that we once used to have. A mind once existed, neither good nor bad, just like those things. Things, those simply exist. And we as supreme rational and logical beings demand extensively from those things. Demand greatness. Demand pleasure. Demand enjoyment. Demands, they don’t end. What ends is our life. And the end doesn’t end very happy, as it so often does in those stories that we have been told since the time we used to shit in our pants. The teachings of culture, they are crap. And crap is this constant dream of being happy. Things, they just are but we don’t face that, for we care about happiness. A perfectly shaped curve of lips that projects shine in the surroundings from a number of those calcium phosphate entities present in mouth, we care for that. Fuck that smile. Close mouth is just as fine. Tight lips are also fine. What fine is not is this illusion of perpetuating Pollyanna crap that is so hard to break out of. And you end up forcibly flashing your teeth with others doing it too. Who succeeds? Nobody knows. Everybody who lost, knows.
The white coloured wall in front, it still stares back. A look from me and it doesn’t flinch. Strong wall it is when compared to humans who intentionally answer incorrectly whenever asked whether they are happy or not. What the wall is now wondering is out of my grasp. There are other things that create mess in my life, this happy ass nonsense; this is majorly one of them. The phone lock is opened. The drop down menu is brought down. Data connection is pressed. H+ symbol is visible. And then something unbelievable appears that makes my intestines curl and scream for rescue. Some sips of water help the dry throat get wet. Some more sips give me the necessary strength to open WhatsApp and check the messages. Messages that say happy Holi, those messages remind me once again that you need Holi to be happy. That might not be said explicitly, but it is said. People who sit in front of white coloured walls staring back at them; they don’t appreciate these kinds of things. Happy Holi. Happy New Year. Happy April fool. Happy b’day of your unborn kid. What the fuck is so happy about to be happy in the first place? When you get an answer, don’t tell me. There is no need to make me a part of this conquest that only seems more and more rewarding and less contenting.
The wall stares back. There is no reply from me to its stares. When contentment and satisfaction isn’t coming to you after years of chasing, it makes sense to me to live like it is. Some will call it sad way of life, be it. At least there is no false hope, unlike the illusion that is making lives miserable in the promise of greatness. Sadness, let me embrace you dear, for your other half isn’t consenting enough to even be touched. The white coloured wall in front of me seems to be agitated. That’s what she feels because she isn’t busy in a desperate chase as some people are.
Arpit Chhikara 