Category: contemplation

Chronicling the Mundane

I had plans to write a piece that documented my reflections at a recent experience and use it to outline the nature of a few of my personal qualities that I find undesirable. However, this weekend turned out to be more painful than I had anticipated, so I couldn’t get started on it. I do want to stick to the weekly cadence of publishing, so I am sharing something I wrote back in November of 2021.

I’m trying to write about today in a way that is not just documenting the events but also paying attention to the way I write. Let’s see what I produce.

As expected, the two alarms set five minutes apart from each other failed to persuade me out of a brief period of lingering on the couch. This lack of urgency was made possible primarily by the fact that it’s a Saturday morning; there was no need for the usual rush to get to the gym so as to ensure adequate workout time before I start office work. Two glasses of rum I had had last night and the questionable quality of pork that caused a funny feeling in my stomach immediately after I ate it—in addition to the usual nausea associated with pork fat—added to my dysania. 

The mind buzzed back to work the moment I was awake like a computer that was turned on from its sleep mode with multiple applications open: contemplation, regrets, mental checklists, future planning and a million other usual post-sleep mental activity. Sometimes I wonder if those people who claim to have clarity and peace of mind in the morning have their brains wired differently. A steaming cup of coffee began to infuse gradual wakefulness and energy as my thoughts continued to jump from pleasant to painful to equanimity, from my ex to one of my friends to the two women at the gym, from Sam Harris to Krystal Ball to the Buddha, creating a muddled state of consciousness. My hand instinctively reached out to the TV remote, but retracted once it received a brain signal about the futility (or worse, any number of undesirable outcomes, such as skipping workout) of turning the TV on. 

As both of my workout shorts were still not completely dry and I didn’t want to wear the pajama with stripes, I fished out a pair of trekking pants. There were a few moments of hesitation because of the relatively diminished stylishness I perceive when I wear them. I went ahead and wore it anyway—with a corporate-branded synthetic shirt—after I realized that the gym is likely to be emptier on a Saturday morning, and, more importantly, the two women are likely to be absent. I had to pick the blue pair of Decathlon shoes because the old pair of Nike still carries the dirt and sludge as though I am keeping it as some sort of an evidence to prove my visit to the Mahabodhi temple, an evidence perhaps to refute any allegation of a weekend wasted at home.

It was leg day today per my new weekly mental schedule that now includes two days of exercising my leg muscles. My own mild insecurities related to the shape and size of my legs compounded by a compliment from my ex recently about how thin my legs were nudged me to accommodate an extra day for my quads, hamstrings, and calves to flex. I must clarify that I am not ashamed of my legs; I wear shorts, and I like them. But I think the way my legs are can make a reasonable case for some additional resistance to the muscles inside them. Also, the intensity of a typical leg workout done twice a week will certainly be helpful in my weight-loss goals.

The workout was quite satisfying as it has mostly been since I started two weeks ago. Whatever hormones were released as a result of the resistance—created with dumbbells, plates, and the stacks of weights in various pieces of gym equipment—to the movement of my leg muscles certainly put me in a relaxed state of mind. I completed the episode of the Seen and the Unseen with Snehal Pradhan; what a strong-willed, competent, and skilled human being! While she was narrating the stories of various projects she undertook post her cricketing career, which included writing, my dormant dreams of being a writer slowly came alive and made me write this rambling piece. Unlike the earlier attempts, which were about writing a short story based on my childhood, this exercise of chronicling the mundane is aimed at gaining some practice in writing. There are no specific immediate ends to meet with these entries, but just a hope that one day they would help me effectively articulate in writing my thoughts, stories, and experiences. 

Tiny Righteous Rebels

To what extent do our expressions—verbal, facial, and even the impersonal written—betray us? In the absence of a practical way to have a live feed of our faces sent directly to our brains, how many of us can even detect any incongruence between our words and facial expressions? Many of us can easily detect it when someone else is struggling to prevent their face mirroring their true feelings that they are trying to couch with words. We can sense our own failure at such an attempt as our cheeks go flush and ears get uncomfortably warm. But what about those instances when we are certain about the coherence of a lie? What about the times when we lie to ourselves, and not just to others?

Can a text message betray us? Is there a group of tiny Righteous Rebels spread across one’s being—in one’s veins, bones, skin pigments, hair follicles, remote corners of consciousness—who from time to time foil one’s attempts at dishonesty by using methods so devious and subtle that they have successfully avoided detection by our paleolithic brains? For instance, when one sends a text message outlining reasons for one’s disinterest in a prospective romantic companionship, do these Invisible Insurrectionists for Integrity intercept the brain signals on their way to one’s fingertips and corrupt it just enough to cause a tiny mismatch in tone, grammar, or vocabulary so as to create a vague, inexplicable suspicion in the recipient’s mind? 

I was compelled to ask myself these rhetorical questions after an eventful night I had recently. These questions had to be framed with such unnaturally pompous metaphors because I am trying to write a piece. The day went quite well, even better than I expected. The mild anxiety generally associated with hosting a bunch of people slowly evaporated as the meats got cooked, munchies got delivered, and the first guest arrived. The afternoon progressed leisurely as gradual inebriation calmed nerves. The conversations went from nervous to relaxed to intimate to humorous while the food kept the palettes satisfied prompting repeated praises that I humbly accepted. I talked about my breakup, Sam about his stalled companionship that he was quite invested in, and Ben discussed his plans of coming out to his parents as an atheist and a pansexual. As he sought our views on the topic, it turned into a long discussion during which we all learned surprising new things about his family. 

The evening took an unexpected turn after everyone except Ben left. Ben was in a state of inebriation that one reaches only a few times a year, the kind that completely removes all filters from one’s vocal chords and hands control of one’s speech and actions over to the aforementioned Rebels fighting to preserve honesty in human expressions. But few rebels make effective administrators. With the usual, self-improving command and control system in abeyance, the rebels run amok. Their inexperience and their sole focus on honesty at the expense of all other aspects of one’s behaviour result in one experiencing severely diminished cognitive and motor abilities. This manifested hilariously in Ben’s failed attempts to eat his dinner, find his spectacles, and find a cab home followed by his long rambling trying to articulate his attractions towards me. The relevant parts of his long monologue, which went back-and-forth and round-and-round, can be summarised as thus: he was sexually attracted to me, and if I so wished, we could engage in any form of intimacy that might seem appropriate. He was also attracted to me intellectually, and if I was also interested, we could together explore it further. 

While he was professing his affection and confessing his desire to have sex with me, it also became clear that he’d hoped I’d reciprocate or that he’d sensed a hint of interest from me. 

If I keep my own instinctive denial aside for a moment, he was completely right. I have indeed thought about him, have allowed myself a flight of romantic/sexual fantasy that involved a young, tall, thin, precocious man; an arm candy who’d bolster my own credentials as a desirable and sexually evolved elder millennial. As with many of my relationship fantasies, predictably, this one also originated from my deep-rooted insecurities and revolved mostly around potential opportunities to show off and virtue-signal among a non-existent bunch of peers whom I am always looking to impress (I am trying to impress the same group of people with my metaphors that this piece opens with). Although I like his shapely face and slender build, which I do in many men, they don’t evoke sexual feelings in me. I like them because I believe if I had those features I’d be more attractive. Also, his patchy facial hair brought back memories of stubble scratching against my face, quite opposite the sensation I desire. His offer didn’t have the effect it would have had if a woman had offered it. Instead, it put me in a bit of a difficult spot because I couldn’t say a straight No due my tendency to avoid conflict. I also liked the idea of the prospect of sex being on offer although I didn’t want it that night itself. 

Predictably, he was hungover badly the next morning. He spent several hours on my couch before he left. I liked it, unlike those times when I wanted my sexual partner to leave the next morning. I do want to spend time with him. But I don’t think I’d enjoy physical intimacy with him. 

After he left, I have been mildly paranoid about how the thoughts and feelings that I had only entertained in passing may have evaded scrutiny of my rational mind and got detected by the object of my fantasy. When I messaged Ben a few weeks ago inviting him over, although I tried concealing my motives—borne out of a passing fantasy—by expressing my intention to have other friends over along with him, the Microscopic Mutineers Against Misleading Messages seem to have had a successful mission.