Solo

I’m writing a story that is yet to be decided, yet to be thought of, yet to happen. It’s part of me and not of me as well. Like a stranger’s story that resembles your existence so uncannily that you almost mistake yourself as the protagonist. But you are not a hero, not a lover, not a tragic; you are just you. An office-going 32-year-old bachelor, without any ambition and so boring that even his dog’s tail falls limp seeing him. (Don’t worry, dog lovers; he is perfectly fine and healthy; his tail goes whoosh like a helicopter seeing a random stranger, and he doesn’t forget to hump the sofa corner at least once a day whenever I’m not around.) Tej’s (dog) ailment is mine and mine as well.

Although I’m still perfectly fine with it, my life moves on its own and keeps on moving without any self-regard. Probably I stopped caring a long time ago or have forgotten to care about it. Anyway, what I mean to say is I have friends; I’m not lonely; I’m just boring. But I have friends in the office and from before. We do have to get together every once in a while, getting drunk, dancing (swaying more or less), and then falling apart in different corners here and there. And I even had a girlfriend. Six years ago. So I’m pretty average in many ways, as I am not so special in sadness, happiness, or talent.

But inferiority doesn’t kick in because you are satisfied with yourself; it is pulled out by this random man with a smile so wide it will haunt you in your dreams and the confidence and care that they exuberate from their presence in front of you, and finally when you see him holding hands with your crush and only ‘true love’ (I’d like to assume) so far in 32 years of your life. That’s the point when existentialism becomes you, especially when you know you have your birthday in a week.

Where did birthday come here all of a sudden? I’ll tell you. Wait.

Birthdays are the beginning of it all. The first cry, the first light, the first desire, the first thought, the first smile, the first fear, the first realization of the overwhelming shrouding of the world’s existence over you, and many more endless firsts to come.

Somehow the child’s eagerness and happiness he exudes so diligently on his birth day is inversely proportionate to his age. The lie of being of value and deservant of being celebrated looms over the person in his adulthood searching for the meaning of his life and existence.

Sounds Pessimistic? But that’s how I get when it’s this time of the year. When the calendar flutters and almost with the precision of an invisible highlighter pulls my eyes towards my ‘Birth Day’ without fail. As if no other day exists in this month.

My grandmother once questioned me in her sweet, ever-curious, childlike voice, ‘Why do we celebrate birthdays?’ ’ She was from a household where most people didn’t even remember birthdays. (I hope I can forget mine, at least for now). And as childlike as I was in my new pubescent voice, I said, “To celebrate, of course.” She replied, What’s the point of celebrating the nearing of one’s death—one less year to live? And I think back now, it is exactly that—one year less of misery.

So getting back to me that night in a supermarket, looking at this man standing, confidently talking nonstop to me, and my ‘true love’ standing beside him who doesn’t even know me (we’re colleagues who sit at far opposite corners from each other in either side of the office, and we exchange smiles once in a while when our eyes would meet.). And yet this man seems to know me more than her just because I’m her girlfriend’s colleague—who smiles. Even I would have fallen in love with him; he was that good in conversation, though. I’m straight as a line, by the way. That’s why I didn’t fall in love with him; I was jealous of him. And then, I sulked at home over the miserable myself after overcoming that jealousy.

The next few days in the office, my ‘true love’ reminded me of not the yearning I have for her but of the yearning I didn’t know I even had. Of different myself. She transformed into the embodiment of my misery and reflection of everything I’m not. And I was getting miserable and miserable.

Although being miserable is a fascinating phenomenon. It takes you on a whirling journey into your past life and possible future. I think it’s very enlightening—in a negative sense. You become self-aware of all the things you haven’t done, all the things you have done (most of which were mistakes), all the things you missed out on because you were in bed getting bored, and all the things that could have been different in your life. It’s like a black hole of awareness, and nirvana is probably the state where your mind says, “SO WHAT? ”But my mind isn’t that simple. So when I was flipping pages of my not-so-interesting life book in my head, sitting beside my not-so-interesting friend who was as bored as me, a chapter in my life flickered in my head like bright, shining sunshine in the middle of a black hole. This chapter of me didn’t really exist; it was an imagination, a possibility of another me. And suddenly the puddle of all my collected dump slowly dissolved into the whirlpool of flush with satisfying slush in the end. I see my friend’s face smiling at me as I say, “I’m not feeling good,” and I know instinctively what I have to do. I have to get away from a bore like him (my friend) and my dog, who was humping him. I have to do something different and something exciting to bring back life to me. Something I have never done before. Something that wasn’t me.

I said, “I think I should go on a trip.” However immediately I regretted saying it because my friend's excitement over my trip to an undecided place was more than mine. And he glued on to me till evening until a place was decided; tickets were booked, even though I had changed my mind multiple times over the course of his persuasion. Yeah, that’s why he is a good friend.

And so it was decided—my very first solo trip on my birthday.