dilli, in a year

a month after i moved to delhi, my nana ran away from home. he was gone three days, spawning a police investigation and a nation wide family reunion, everyone asking my nani what the last thing she scolded him was about. following cctv footage across kozhikode, they trail him to a railway station. i wake up in delhi on the fourth day to a call from my dad. they saw him get onto a train that was reaching nizamuddin in twenty minutes. what if he came to visit me? but he didn't have an address or a phone, please don't come to visit me nana, i live on a floor mattress. at the station, i meet four of my uncles living across the NCR region who i was procrastinating meeting for a month. we say hi & look for my missing nana. mom had just boarded a flight from dubai to kozhikode. we rewatch the cctv footage at the station, & nana refuses to be found, so we decide to have lunch instead. an hour later, my dad and a neighbour standing on the main road outside our house in kozhikode watch him get off a bus at the bus stop. they walk home in silence. “i had had enough” is all he says. we disperse after lunch & promise to meet again soon. my mom is still on the flight. it would take another hour for her to find out her father was safe.

i was hopelessly in love with kattu. she was the only thing about this strange new city that made any sense to me. i think the city agreed. but the falling soured quick, & i had to confront the city, my place in it, & lack thereof. thursday nights at summerhouse pulled me out of my depths, but i couldn't go without arnav, i still don't know how to dance without him, & with every new outfit, i made my entrance into the city, & the “this is living” lights on the terrace stood stoic against the sky. i dance alone on my terrace sometimes, i sing, i cry. i remember. i abuse the metro, sometimes, i exist in an orbit from noida to gurgaon, 2 burgers for 79rs at hauz khas metro station. ambition slows you down somehow, if it wasn't in the plan, it isn't happening, i dissociate, i am broken up with but i don't lose. everything returns, i think, like my nana. but i can't go back home until i make a man of myself. i need to remind myself it's okay to breathe.

you aren't older just because you smoke cigarettes or tried to kill yourself once. you still have time. the detours make life worth it. or you would just be a story. breathe.

i thank god for vrinda. i thank vrinda for the rest.

everybody visits, nobody stays. nobody comes to save you. nobody leaves to hurt you. it all just… happens. and you're standing in the dust, in the rear view mirror of someone's life, as all the gravity of the world seems to spin around you, and things cling to you for a moment before they fall away again, life is a storm, you wake up late, always late, you fall asleep only when you're tired, otherwise you just talk to yourself quietly for hours on end and call it a night, then you take your dishelved hair to your routine the next day, and the people that see you everyday slowly forget who you used to be until one day suddenly there is no light in anyone's eyes so you carelessly bump into each other, ruin each other, and nobody apologises anymore, because what's the point? what's the point? you know you're fucked the day you start asking that. i told pritika that i would hate if they died before me. they didn't understand. they said it’s always a want, never a need. and i disagreed till i wept. i wept till i lost them.

“maybe i’m just crazy. & we’re not better than anyone else.” i wrote in a song when i was 17. i thought i knew everything about life back then. but the more you know, the less you know ig.

one of my best friends in my new college tried to kill herself in the second semester. we never really recovered from it. she was not allowed to write the exams cuz she couldn't meet the attendance requirements. i fought with my professor about it until i could blame him for losing faith. i do this, i outsource all my revalations. i beg the world to spell it out for me until i have a story to tell to justify every horrible thing about me. delhi is where i chose to write my villain origin story.

but i don't want thick skin. i want porous skin, like kattu. the world falls into her, and she plays with everyone. i only met her a handful of times, we talked on the phone mostly. that was part of the problem, how little of me i gave her. but in those few times, i was always so lost in my admiration of her. she can articulate your anxiety as her own, as a fact of being alive. she can remind you you are free with just her eyes. i have missed her since the day she first texted me. but i am confusing. she followed all my confusion sincerely until she couldn't anymore. & i am simply unravelled. i was heartbroken, but she was stubborn, she found my heart by the beat and held it back to me, like, “see? no. it's completely fine, actually.” & i sit with myself, legible again in her eyes, but feeling strange. i hardly recognise myself. i don't know what to do with these hands. i guess i’ll find out.

they're all wrong by the way. about plans, about discipline, about trying. and if you try even once to live by an ideal, to live in the name of any god that is not simply this moment, you will fail in a way that doesn't even feel like failure. you will be left screaming, “but i did everything right!!” to an empty sky. you will be left telling a story you don't even remember properly.

take care & keep it. the normies are lying. they have forgotten what broke their heart. they have forgotten what hope felt like.

i hope by next year, my life is my own.