voices in my head

I read '1984' by George Orwell a few years back. I could only read up to 70% of it for some reason. In the first chapter, the protagonist secretly writes a journal entry as a sort of protest, or a way of telling his story to future generations. Thankfully, we're not there yet, but I imagine sooner or later, we as a collective world will reach that level of dystopia. I can't help but wonder, 'Has the world always been like this, or I'm just noticing it? ' Maybe yes, but the amount of injustice and horror that has been happening around the world has definitely only increased with time. There is so much injustice, violence, and horror happening around the globe, and the fact that I was born in this godforsaken country. It's awful enough to be a citizen of this country, but being a Muslim in India is only worse. The only thing I can do is be grateful for the fact that I was born in the South.  And all of this leads to one being in a certain dilemma. Do I try...

I’ve always been pretty conscious about myself. I am not sure if that’s a good thing or not. A bit of both, I could say. Being fully aware of myself has always helped me to know what I want in certain situations, with people, etc. I know what sort of person I want to be, in general. I’m 100% certain about the vibe I want to give out to people, and I am sure that for the most part, I’ve succeeded in doing the same. But still, being super conscious most of the time has not helped me figure out what I want to do with life. This has been my life’s biggest dilemma. I used to be ambitious growing up, I guess up until end of the college. Maybe corporate did it, perhaps I did this to myself. I am the most unambitious man I know right now. Does that scare me, I don’t know. I see people around me hustling, switching techs, and companies, climbing up the ladder, making huge life decisions, and moving out of countries. I feel nothing. There is nothing I want to be.  Sometimes I feel like I pea...

I keep having this recurring nightmare, cutting myself open, with the sharpest blade. My face and my arms. It is not a pretty sight, but simultaneously so calm and soothing. I keep thinking about it throughout the day, trying to find out the meaning behind it. The visual keeps popping up in my head, how blood, red as wine kept flowing out of the slits smoothly. I tried to taste it in my dream but woke up just before I brought it to my tongue. I feel like buying a typewriter, and typing out hundreds of words, and then burning those papers. I want to write about grief. About loneliness, and the dark dampness of winter. About mothers, and fathers. About crippling anxiety, and the labyrinth of adulthood. About how your world becomes less and less wide as you grow up. About the helplessness of it all. About the hopelessness of it all. About the pointlessness of it all.  I have become emotionally numb like never before. It feels like a dam of tears spurring and stuck inside of me. Unatte...

  I have never celebrated New Year's in my life: 24 years and not even a single year. I don’t remember doing the countdown ever in my life. I never really saw the point. Also, the timing never came right.  Arguably this might have been the most difficult year of my life to get through. It has definitely been the loneliest year. Nothing much really happened. I learned a lot of stuff, career-wise, and life-wise. Human interaction was at its lowest. I made one new friend and lost countless. But I’m sure the one I made is for life, so that’s good. I really had to throw everything in and give my absolute best to get through this year. There were days when I felt like giving everything up and going back home. I still do, some days, most days. I don’t even know what’s keeping me here.  Though sometimes I like the uncertainty I have with my life. I have never been a planner. Nothing in my life has been planned. School, college, career, friends, love, heartbreaks. Everything just ...

Dear Rahel, I feel like we're heading towards the end of this story. No matter how forward I look into the future, I can't see myself at peace. I am convinced that this is how it is going to go down. This feeling, this constant feeling of helplessness and chronic dissatisfaction. It is here to stay. This is how it is going to be forever. I don't feel like a real person anymore. I feel like the memory of a person, and memory's fading. Soon it'll be like I never existed.  I have been having these episodes of grief lately. Why do I call it episodes of grief you may ask. I have been having days where it feels like someone had died. It's somebody's funeral. And I sit through the day trying to figure out who had died. It sure feels like someone I knew very closely had died.  Maybe I'm dying. I feel like I've been forgetting myself lately. Like you know how you used to be friends with someone back in school. You used to tell each other everything. And now y...

To make life more bearable. It's been six months. Can you believe that, Rahel? Six months. It hardly feels like it has been a month. You know, all of this feels unreal sometimes. Two years back this time I was on a train to Kashmir, and it was snowing. We drank tea and smoked four square cigarettes to keep us warm. The dogs were all fluffy and the kids looked like little apples. Everywhere I looked it was all green and white. Now it is all black and white. It feels unreal. How did I end up here? The dots and lines that led me here. I wish this was just a nightmare I could wake up from. I’ll wake up back in my room, and my friends would still be in the same city and we could just sit on wooden benches and drink tea and stay like that forever.  I read somewhere when they were planning this city, they planted trees for all the seasons, so throughout the year, the city will be covered in colors. As I am writing this, the city’s all covered in pink. By the parks, through the lakesides, ...

    Day 140  I am scared that I will forget how happiness felt like. That I will never feel the same way again. Even if good times come, I will fail to recognize them. What if I fight them off mistaking them for something else?  Day 141 All I want is for things to go back to when they made sense. Day 145 So this is how it’s going down, huh?  Day 149  We’re still here. I thought I would’ve found a way to get out of this labyrinth by now. We’re still waiting. For someone or something to take away the pain of life. Days are passing by like hours. I don’t even notice when a week starts or ends. It's like clockwork. Some people call me a machine at work. They call me alien. Or a robot. I took leave the other day and this guy said he didn’t notice because I am too silent. They ask me do you work all the time to avoid talking to people. Why are you like this? How can someone go through an entire day without talking to anyone? This guy said, “I have never seen too ...

  I am the kind of person who reads poems and interprets them in my own way. I do not care what the poet meant. I kinda let it wash over me, and then write about how it made me feel.   I stumbled upon ‘dreamlessly’ by Bukowski at a very strange time in my life. I don’t know how many times I have read it since then. Like Nic from ‘Beautiful Boy, Bukowski has played a major role in my survival in this city for the past four months.  This is a sinking ship Every day is a battle We’re fighting a losing war Captain, we’re surprised we made it this far Though we may drown any day And no one may even notice We’ll go down head held high For that, we tried And we fought.  Dreamlessly is about, well for me, it’s about having nothing to look forward to. It is about loneliness, and not being loved. It is about having no one and nothing to care for. It is about thousands of souls in every city, for whom every day is a battle. How do you wake yourselves up every morning knowi...

I never thought of love as a necessity, you know. I’m talking about the romantic kind here. Like I always thought of it as a bonus thing. Suppose you have it, good. If you don’t, well you can still live. But these days, I realize you need love. It’s like how you feel all tired and grumpy if you didn’t have a good night’s sleep or a decent breakfast. And now it doesn’t necessarily have to be from your boyfriend/girlfriend. It may be from your parents, friends, or siblings. You need some kind of love to survive. And the lack of it doesn’t make you grumpy or anything. Well in my case, these days I don’t feel like a real person. You know, like I’m here, I’m going to work, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m showering when I feel like it. I’m sitting in the plastic chair and watching the sun slowly turn orange to black in the span of a few minutes. Then what, the rest is a blank sheet. I feel like a soulless person. And I have all this love and words to give, but it’s just me. I feel l...

I have always been a summer person. I have always loved wearing just boxers on an April evening, a book in my hand, a pencil between my ears, pretending to be Elio from Call me by your name. I have always loved to be the one to collect newspapers from outside the gate, and the sun is already up there. I have always loved how my room fills with light even if I close the curtains, to dance myself off. I have always loved coming home after playing or going out, and then opening the refrigerator to find the water bottles my Mother kept there.  She’s not here now. Nobody’s here now. I still yearn for the summers I spent at home as I wake myself up on another cold, chilly December morning. As I pluck out weeds from the plant pots. I let some of them live a day or two, I’m kind like that. Chuckles .  But, Rahel, this one is not about cold chilly December mornings or my mother’s water bottles.  It’s about my bus ride back from work. How the view through the side glass slowly chan...

Mondays. On Mondays, I do not experience Monday blues like every other adult. There really isn’t much difference in my life whatever the day is.  Mondays. On Mondays, the neighbour kid wears a white shirt and blue pants, with black shoes. He pets his dog one last time before getting onto the scooter with his dad. The mother waves and sends them off. There are no cows on the road. The veg restaurant remains moderately busy. The highway underpass seems darker than usual. There’s this guy who passes by me every day infant of the police station. Every day he wears a yellow shirt with the “Bingo’ logo on it and a badge. Does he work at the factory where they make Bingos?  On Tuesdays people slowly get settled into reality. I’m still floating. I wear light green to look fresh and bright. I plug in my earphones while walking to the bus stop. Women wearing green and yellow night dresses wait outside the dairy farm to collect milk. A recently married couple comes back after their ...