Mumbai

I should be happier. At long last there are things of to be genuinely happy about. Mumbai, for instance, has been sort of a surprise. The city though did live up to its promise of being miserable for a while. During my first week here, what surprised me was how a teeming, sweltering city of more than ten million- where bodies churn together quite regularly- could be this lonely. Of course, I’m talking first and foremost about the miracle of the Mumbai suburban railway: so many bodies, so many touches marked by resentment- a place where everyone wishes every second for there to be less people.

Life has been better since. I’ve grown accustomed to the overcrowded trains the overwhelming downpour the dismissive autowallas the pain-in-the-ass traffic, among other things. Work is great; partly due to the ridiculously low expectations I had of it, and in part because of the wonderful people I’ve met there, who’ve been, on the whole, very kind. I’ve discovered new friendships here. Old friends and family live in Mumbai too, and I now sense it’s a place where I can probably drop anchor.

Despite this, I become very pensive at times. There are some reasons I know of: I’ve been slacking off on my ‘speech’ of late, resorting to avoidance behavior. Love- or the lack of it- is a perpetual reason. I was discussing this particular subject with a friend today, of elevating love as some sort of panacea, a cure-all, and maybe setting myself up for a major disappointment in the process. I told him we should stop philosophizing about love, stop plucking the idea apart with our conversations about its nature, its meaning and rest of those lofty discussions that make its absence bearable. We should try and stop thinking about it entirely for at least six months, I suggested. He gestured to the sea, and said: when you sit here on your own, how could you not think about it. Who are we kidding.

I write this guilty; as if I’m wallowing in something that might not even exist. Worse still: I am a whiny little prick with a high sense of entitlement. But sometimes I do feel detached from the world. What can I do? I feel like a boat unmoored, drifting through the night. And I ask myself: is loneliness just a state of mind? Then another question: why don’t I tell somebody, anybody, how I feel? And why do writers write things that they might not tell another soul?
I don’t know.