S

[veena 🖤 @xxivorys]

i hope from june to december, our lives change for the better

[vishal dayama @VishalDayama]

I am fascinated by old houses. The houses that have raised three generations of a family. The houses which used to be homes. The twelve pillars in the verandah, which used to stand in a perfect circle to teach the kids, and their kids, and then their kids how to count, are still standing. As if they are meditating. But they aren’t. After the kids left, the only job of the pillars was to carry the roof. “A rather thankless job”, murmured one pillar to the other, a few years ago, before breaking down. The small corner right before the store room on the third floor misses its favourite kid, who used to hide there. Only the kid and that corner shared this secret. Once, many years ago, the kid wrote his name on the wall of that corner. He hid there for an hour. Even the adults started searching for him.

The corner advised him to go, or else everyone would get to know about their secret place. Nobody knows where the kid is now, but that corner is still there. A tenant put an almirah there many years ago. An unknown person’s name is still written on that wall. The secret is safe. Is it still a secret if nobody cares enough to pass it on? I will think about it later. The tattered walls still long for their owners, who have shifted to some foreign land. Once every couple of years, they drop by. To paint them. To whitewash the old memories. To make them new. The walls are broken from the inside. They are suffocated. The owners don’t know. The rooms, which once made millionaires, are now being rented out to people who can’t afford a house with modern amenities.

A few years ago, I planned an impromptu trip to a village somewhere in Kerala. I had had enough of life. People tend to do stupid things when they don’t have many responsibilities. Like keeping a hundred plants on the balcony or following their passion. In my case, the stupid thing was escaping for a bit. I always used to do that. The constant seeking of companionship is the root of all the problems. My beliefs were pretty weird back then. Some of them still are pretty weird, but with age, you choose to hide them or just let them be there at the back of your mind. I know someday they will crawl back and it will be hard to ignore them, but till that time, let’s enjoy the party. I had planned the vacation just for a week. Perfect, I said, when I spotted the right house on Airbnb: a 6BHK villa. It didn’t cost me much, probably because of the location. It was a small village, with each house separated by at least 300 meters of green fields.

The caretaker used to come in the morning and in the evening. In his broken English, he told me I was only the second guest there. The first guest (a couple) came a year ago and stayed for a couple of months. Then the floods happened and the owners had to fix the house, which they kept delaying because, well, they don’t live there anymore. “It still isn’t repaired”, I told him. “Yes, that’s why five of the rooms are closed”, he replied. When the caretaker would go, I’d open the other rooms and inspect them. One of those rooms was quite unusual. It had an old-style wall clock that was stuck at 3:35, a desk so solid it could put IKEA out of business, only one bulb which flickered along with its switch, and the painting of a boy staring at the sun. I took my luggage from the allotted room and kept it in this room.

It was around 7 pm and I went to bed. I was tired from all the traveling and wanted to explore my surroundings early in the morning. However, I couldn’t sleep. So I started writing. I used to write fantasy back then. I don’t even know if we can call it fantasy. You know those stories where people suddenly enter some other dimension and choose to live there only to realise that their own world was better? Or about an airplane that never lands. Some weird stories. But that day, I decided to write a journal entry. I even wrote about how I was tired but wasn’t able to sleep. I was capturing every thought on my phone. Like if I was thirsty, I’d write “I am thirsty and I will keep the phone aside now and take a sip of the water from the bottle placed near me”. And then I’d go on to do that exact same thing. In fact, I started enjoying the process. So I wrote about everything in that room. The clock, the broom, the painting, the mattress, the bed, the bugs. Everything. I still wasn’t sleepy. In fact, I was wide awake.

It was around 11:30 pm. I decided to open the window. “I am opening the window now”. The caretaker had warned me to not open the window as there were a lot of mosquitoes out there. But I just wanted to see the view. At first, the window didn’t open. After a few tries, I noticed that it was an unusual window. Have you ever seen a jet black glass-less window? I hadn’t. And it had six latches. Why would anyone waste six latches on a window? After about half an hour of struggling, I managed to open the window. And that’s where I almost shat my pants. Bright light entered my room. I closed the window instantly. How can it be? How is it day outside? I checked my phone. It indeed was 12:15 am.

I opened the window, this time very slowly. And sure as shit, it was bright outside. The sun was staring right back at me. Something weird is going on. I hurriedly packed my luggage and decided to move back to my allotted room. I opened the window of my allotted room and it was indeed dark out there. The nightmare was over. Or the daymare, like I call it now. After a few minutes, I realized I forgot my phone’s charger. “I will take my charger tomorrow from that bright-fucking hellhole of a room. The day has ended finally”. I wrote this and decided to sleep. But how can one sleep with that window in mind? Did I shut it? Will my charger be there tomorrow? Was I hallucinating?

I decided to enter that room again. I was fooling myself that I am going there just to take my charger. I entered the room again. It was bright, yes. It’s indeed bright. Not as bright as before, but still bright. Evening-ish. I went to close the window and just then I heard the ticking sound. The clock was moving. It was 4:45 now. I almost shat my pants again. I quickly took my charger, closed the window and left the room. I peeked back inside to check if the clock was still moving. It wasn’t. It went back to 3:35. I decided to leave the house and walked back to the nearest railway station and stayed the night there.

Since that day, I have always wondered about what would have happened if I had jumped out of the window. Or just stayed long enough to make it dark outside. Or just kept the window open. Was I the boy in the painting who was staring at the sun? The story is fading from my memory. The journal I wrote isn’t to be found anywhere. But I think, I made the right decision. Somewhere, in the remote part of a Kerala, I now know a house, where the sun always shines. I keep checking that house every now and then. It’s still listed on Airbnb. It still has only one review. “Bright”, I had written.

I think, one day, when I will be done with all this, I will buy that house and list it on Airbnb as “The house with a weird window”. And a couple of months every year, I will take out some time to live in that room. And make paintings of the boy who stared at the sun and the moon and the stars. And when I’d leave on Sunday, I'd close that weird-glitchy window at 9 am for my next guest. Because sometimes, all you need in your life are a couple of days of Sunday mornings.

I think this is why, I am always fascinated by old houses. Because, sometimes you can find another world inside them. A home away from home.

[𖧧 @mothintoflames]

kafka

[woman of modest income @Tellemmmmm]

Me to my salary

[Kanan Bahl @BahlKanan]

I used to agree with arguments like: "Why a temple/statue, and not a school/factory?"

But I dug deeper to find that the Ayodhya Ram Temple🚩 will generate at least ₹4,00,000 Crores every year🤯

Here's how India🇮🇳 stands to benefit from the Ram Mandir [A thread🧵👇]

[S @onlysimpfans]

@neilzsche but who's gonna watch you 🥺🥺

[S @onlysimpfans]

@neilzsche Trying

[The Cinéprism @TheCineprism]

The two highest-grossing films in Hindi cinema are arguably the two worst films in recent times. This goes to show how mediocrity sells and how storytelling has been reduced to formulaic narratives and banality.

[S @onlysimpfans]

@adhan42 ok adhan

[vishal dayama @VishalDayama]

living on the edge and all is good but if someone can give a good push it would be even better

[vishal dayama @VishalDayama]

I rarely take a bus to any place. I've earned enough to avoid that torture. Of course, I used to travel by buses when I was younger. In fact, I used to travel bloody every day. From one side of Delhi to the other side. It used to take me a good 50 minutes on one of those godawful Blue Line buses. You remember them? Those Blue Line buses used to run over so many people in a day that a joke went around that the safest place in Delhi was to be inside a Blue Line bus. Why did I travel in a bus? I had enrolled in one of those coaching classes because my parents thought that teenage life wasn't torture in itself.

I was in Kashmir a few years back. Nice place. I don't remember why I was there though. Does that happen to you? Where you forget the key information from a memory and all that remains are bits and pieces? It happens to me often. I should get it checked. Or maybe not. I have started liking my memory loss now. I remember walking towards a hill in Kashmir. Alone. I didn't know where I was going. All I remember is seeing that hill and that I was going towards it. I often do that, so it's not as weird to me as it might come across to you. I go for long directionless walks. Sauntering. It's comforting and makes me realize I am an animal, after all, just a really, really structured one.

And I was walking and walking and walking. There weren't many people on the road. In fact, from what I remember, there weren't any, but that seems highly unlikely so let's just say there weren't many. Suddenly a bus came from behind, honking. I remember thinking about why it was honking as there was neither a person nor a vehicle in sight. I turned around to see that it was honking at me. I stopped and looked at the bus conductor. He was an old man, wearing lots and lots of sweaters. If I had to guess his name, it would've been Ramlal Winter Collection.

He asked me if I wanted a ride. I said no and started walking. Bus ride? In a different city? Never. The bus driver was this tall guy with a scruffy beard, and he looked familiar, though I don't know how. I tried to stare at him, but he drove the bus right past me. As if he was furious at me for rejecting his offer. I managed to take a quick glance inside the bus, and it was empty. And by empty I mean it felt like nobody had stepped a foot inside it for months. What a strange bus; good that I didn't get on it. The next day, I was going back to Delhi. On my way back, the cab driver informed me that a bus had fallen off the cliff the previous evening, two dead. I wondered about the incident from the evening before and thought about it for the rest of the journey. Strange. Anyway. That was the end of it and I didn't think about that evening again.

A few months back, I was in Coorg. Nice place. At this point, you should assume that I only go to nice places. Haha. This time I went there with a couple of friends. We went hiking and stuff. A good weekend. Except for the hiking part. While coming back from a restaurant there, I asked my friends to drop me off 200 meters from our hotel. Our hotel was located on a small kind of hill. I wanted to walk and also click some pictures. It was evening-ish. I started climbing towards the hill. There was not a single soul in sight. So peaceful. I should come here every month. Lost in my thoughts, I kept walking. And then a certain sense of déjà vu hit me. It felt like I was walking in Kashmir. That same evening. I knew these were different places but they looked exactly the same. Déjà vu is creepy some days. I tried to distract myself from spiraling. And the view helped. It was gorgeous.

The property we were staying at was chosen by a very rich friend of mine. Frankly, it was way out of my budget and I was kinda hoping that by the end of the trip, the guy would say that the stay was on him. There were orchards and fruits and coffee and stuff like that all around. You could literally see the horizon without a fly in your way. I clicked and clicked and clicked. All of the pictures were Instagram-worthy. To remember this moment, I decided to take a selfie with the fields in the backdrop. I opened my front cam and that's when it hit me. I looked exactly like the driver I saw that day in Kashmir. Literally the same. The thought gave me chills. For a moment I started wondering if that was real or if this moment was real. Is it even possible? Was that a sign of something which was beyond my comprehension? Was I even alive? I couldn’t tell for sure.

I walked quickly towards the hotel and met my friends. This moment indeed was real. I didn't say any of this to them. That would make me seem crazy. That night the hotel staff made a bonfire for all the guests. It was so pretty that I almost wanted to flirt with it. We sat around the bonfire, some of us were on our phones, and some of us were just lying around, looking at each other. And at the sky. At some point in the night, my friend, who had recently lost a closed one in a freak accident, looked me in the eye and asked me, “Does this grief ever end? Will it ever end?”.

My friend somehow hoped that I might have the answer to his question. Sure, I don't talk much, but not every introverted guy is a deep thinker. Some of us are hollow from the inside. Maybe we just don't have anything to talk about. I thought about his question for a bit. And then a few minutes later I asked him, “Do you want it to end?” I think that was the best I could do at that moment. Because really, isn't grief what makes us human? Makes us stronger? Makes us sort of vulnerable, but in a good way? Is it really a bad thing?

As I was thinking all this, the night grew darker. People started singing songs and shit. I don't like this part of the party. Not because people are bad singers, but because they force you to sing. I am terrible, and I am running out of excuses now to not participate in this sort of activity. After my repeated "no's," they gave up. Right before going back to our rooms, my friend asked one of the guests the same question. “Why do we feel sad sometimes, for no reason at all?” I don't remember what the guest answered. I was too busy thinking about my walk towards the hotel earlier. “Maybe we are grieving for ourselves,” I muttered. I took a bus back to Bengaluru the next day. Nothing strange happened. Or maybe everything did become strange after that day in Kashmir. Nobody knows.

[shayla @callmeMaharani]

I'm kind of an absent friend like I'll love you with my whole heart & go out of my way to give you any help you need but i tend to live in my own world & suck at keeping up communication, and I'm really sorry to anyone who takes that personally

[S @onlysimpfans]

@adhan42

[S @onlysimpfans]

@neilzsche 😒

[nay🎀. @fineassnayyyy]

I do not like spending nights at peoples house.. I will leave at 4:21am 😭

[Poem Heaven @PoemHeaven]

Hello September.