Don't Come Back

 

Below is the text of an email I sent to a dear friend recently, anonymised and posted here because it belongs in the same space as whatever the other posts represent - a structure of longing.

Dear [Friend 1]

I have been meaning to write this email for months. I’ve told you about it more than once; I’ve told myself many times more. I could not bring myself to do it till now. Sometimes because things got in the way, and others because it felt like a difficult thing to get started with. But today I started reading “The Book of Chameleons”. There is an email in the book which talks mostly about how much the author hates emails. He complains that starting something with “Hi” deprives us of the chance for elaborate greetings and goodbyes; the entire length of his email is shorter than salutations between two dear friends in real life. You know what it reminded me of? Our goodbyes outside your flat in Leiden. Can you imagine the state of your inbox if they had to be put down as emails? There is so much I miss of what I can – without qualification – call the happiest days of my life so far. The walkable city, the cozy cinemas, the absence of cow dung (and cows) on the street. But most of all, I miss having so many loved ones living within reach for the best part of a year.

You know that scene in The Office when Andy wishes there was a way to tell you were in the good old days while you were still living them? I knew I was in the good old days. I knew I would look back on it exactly as I do now. The last time I sent an email – the one addressed to all the mooties – I gave it the character of a goodbye because I knew the good old days were ending. [Friend 2] spends a lot of her time yearning for that brief moment of belongingness Leiden gave her. I get that so much. I despised my undergraduate course, I despise my life now. But during the LLM, I had just a glimpse of how good life can be, how you can be surrounded by love and affection in a way that does not feel suffocating. I went into the Netherlands never having cooked a meal in my life; less than a year later, I hosted friends on Eid (twice!). Just last week, postcards from [Friend 3] and [Friend 2] arrived from [Place 1] and [Place 2] to my village in Kerala. I don’t think a postcard will ever have taken those routes before. Having friends is one of life’s greatest blessings; having friends all over the world is truly indescribable.

I sometimes think about the fact that little trinkets I’ve given you are sitting in [Place 3] – a city I’ve never been to. Tomorrow I will wear to work a shirt that [Friend 4] and her mother picked out for me in [Place 4]. If someone remarks on the shirt, I can say “Oh thank you it’s from [Place 4]”. I cannot describe what it means to me, sitting here in the capital of Shitholia. There is this beautiful Italian movie called ‘Cinema Paradiso’. It is set in a small Italian town. In trying to inspire a little kid to make the most of himself by leaving that little town, one of the main characters says “Don’t fall prey to nostalgia, leave here and never look back.” I don’t think I can follow his advice. I keep looking back: to Leiden, to being a student, to feeling happy and like I belonged. I know these are emotions I will feel again; they have to be. But when I do find a place and people, I know what they will have to measure up against, and I have a feeling they will come up short.

I don’t know what an email version of an awkward and abrupt ending is, but I am ending this by saying we will see each other again before we know it.

With love

Mishal  

 

hole

 

There was a period last year when a few friends would hop on call and play geoguessr together. While we were going through some neighbourhood in Switzerland, one of them remarked how so many of the places we saw were beautiful and it made him realise what a shithole we lived in. I could not even bring myself to laugh; he was just stating a fact. Every thing I do in this city is protect myself against it. An air purifier because the air is poison (a mask outdoors for the same reason), a water purifier because the water is poison, a VPN connection because things are banned arbitrarily, and so on and so forth.

How does a city – and by extension the country – become so hostile and inhospitable? There is a tweet I go back to often, some guy larping as Timothy Clifford said: “The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community. Once the Indian escapes India, India becomes the best country in the world & requires no improvement.” When I was house-hunting here last month, I found a real nice one-bedroom close to work at a decent rate. The broker tried to sign me up excitedly because I said yes almost immediately. He took one look at my ID and said sorry your name is going to be a problem. It is a story that surprises no one; even the well-meaning can do little more than say they are sorry this is how things are. But this is how things are. There’s no name purifier I can buy to account for your minds being poisoned. Why must I have place for a country that has no place for me?

 

Live Live

 

One time I was talking to a girl whose description of her work hours appeared nightmarish. When I remarked that it sounded awful, she confirmed that it was, but on the ‘bright side’ it was helping her ‘get to the end of the day’ really quickly. Like each day was something to dispose of. I was in awe of the fact that not only had she decided that her time was an encumbrance, she was also actively engaged in an occupation that did not allow room to think about it. A few months ago, a friend suggested that I read and reread the first chapter of Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy, saying that it would make me think about how one might live. It was a chapter he went back to often. I joked that it sounded like his Quran. It made me think about where I go (or have gone) to seeking answers to how one might live.

Yesterday, I remarked to another friend that I was more than the sum of the identities, and probably hated all of them (some more than others). That is something that definitely informs how I live. Every aspect of my identity is used pejoratively, both by me and against me. The other day my sister was disparaging how the British museum (and colonial logic) claims that by stealing artefacts from colonies, that actually ensured their security from the savage masses. I am not usually inclined to playing Devil’s Advocate, but living in a country where you cannot say with confidence that the Taj Mahal will survive the decade, it is difficult not to think they had a point. Imagine the Kohinoor if it was still in India.

So how might one live? Right now, I live by not correcting anyone who mishears my name as Vishal. Vishal offers safety and currency.  I eat less, lift less, smile less. I live as if this period is a a loading screen, waiting for real life to render. It makes me feel like Steinbeck’s quote about poor people under capitalism thinking of themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires. People without the capital to be who they actually are, but certainly expect to get there forthwith. To take comfort in telling yourself this is all temporary reminds me of another divine exhortation: to live with the knowledge that all of life is temporary.

So how might one live? Speaking of Steinbeck, I’m halfway through Grapes of Wrath. There is an idea he captures really well; that of everyone playing their part in service of a larger system whose machinations they’re not privy to let alone in control of. The incoherence is apparent to those on the receiving end. The people evicting the sharecroppers pin the blame on a faceless bank. “But the bank is made up of people,” reason the exasperated sharecroppers. They do not understand how an institution can evict them, leaving every person involved blameless in their immiseration. The giant evil killing machines would not work without a mass of people greasing the wheels, convincing themselves they are not part of the problem. They just want to be at brunch.

So how might one live? Was Ali Shariati right? What peace can one make with a world where a peaceful life for you can only come at the expense of the life and well-being of countless others? And if you are one of the others, is it incumbent on you to resist? Is it conscionable, rather, to seek a bridge to the other side knowing it cannot support the weight of everyone that might try to follow?

Might one live?

Allah is not obliged

 

“Allah is not obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth” says Birahima, before and after narrating a story that sees him end up a child soldier in multiple warring factions, brush with death repeatedly, and on at least one occasion, become a victim of sexual assault. It is his refrain throughout the book titled “Allah is not obliged”. The narrative is not particularly religiously inclined. The disinterested ‘Allah’ could just as well be another. What does it matter when referring to their lack of obligation anyway. The reason for this rationalization about Allah is self-evident in the novel. A benevolent god might look out for you, a cruel one might punish you in particular. But it is an indifferent, ‘un-obliged’ god that just lets life happen to you, and lets people hack each other to death without consequence.

The narrative is peppered with a number of refrains that Birahima keeps saying, evocative, almost, of ‘Brutus is an honourable man’. One is also reminded of Holden Caulfield at times during the novel, but Birahima’s sardonic resignation is graver and more total. He has witnessed (and presumable partaken in) incredible cruelty. He refers to himself as both blameless and beyond redemption. Almost everything he deals with is not something a child his age should be encumbered with. But Allah is not obliged to be fair about these things.  

I remember a quote from The Stranger about man being able to get used to anything. It might be something Mersault remembers his mother saying in prison. I have also seen a similar sentiment attributed to Dostoyevsky, maybe from the House of the Dead. They are right. Man can come to terms with anything. Like that meme of a guy visiting a girl’s apartment for the first time and remarking “damn b****, you live like this?”

During Christmas 2023, I was part of a small group of students ‘stuck’ in Leiden while everyone went away on holiday. We were shown around frat houses in the city by someone from the University’s well-being team; she happened to be a frat-house veteran herself. One of the party halls we entered was nearly impossible to breathe in owing to stench of beer on old wood. By her account, the odour had had over a century to take shape. While everyone on the tour turned into temporary mouth-breathers, our guide continued her narration unfazed. “I don’t smell anything out of the ordinary, to be honest”, she said. She was used to it. You can get used to anything.

In this city that is polluted like no other place in human history, people have the habit of sitting around log fires in the evening. The smell of incomplete combustion spreads in every direction, worsening conditions in a city already choking from the smoke. My solution is to shut every orifice and sit next to the air purifier, but people spend all evening sitting by that fire. You get used to anything.

Birahima mourns specific events in his ordeal. There are deaths that make him cry, other cruelties that make him feel pain. Finding out about the passing of his aunt – one he never met – brings him to tears. But he does not lament his general fate. Perhaps he does not know to; he has not acquired the vocabulary to express discontent at the fact that life is unavailable to him. He does not know to mind how unfairly life treats him. But is he unaware of the unfairness? If Allah is described as not obliged to be fair, it is because Birahima perceives unfairness. It is because he cannot explain to himself why blameless fearless Birahima falls from misfortune to misfortune. This is, nevertheless, a quickness in accepting his fate that cannot be expected of adults harbouring hopes and dreams.

I spent most of reading time at the back end of last year on Dostyevsky. It was motivated for the most part by that Baldwin quote about how Dostoyevsky makes you realise the things you are going through today are not that different from what people were suffering a hundred years ago. “This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important,” says Baldwin. As someone who lives through life expecting and treating most unwelcome experiences (and they are mostly unwelcome experiences) as penance, I found myself relating deeply with Dostoyevsky’s characters. As one of the last great conservative intellectuals, it is very clear from his protagonists that his idea of how one might live is inextricable from suffering. This suffering often appears to be in service of a calling greater than oneself, but I think one could be forgiven for thinking Prince Myshkin believes meaning inheres in suffering. He certainly thought himself obliged to suffer. I would argue he thought it increased his virtue. And he (not unlike myself), would be unable to articulate why so much penance was due. What made him start from a diminished sense of self-worth? I think I can answer for myself; I can theorize, at least. I am a collection of ‘lesser than’ identities. Whenever I am Indian, I am punished for it. Whenever I am Muslim, I am punished for it. Whenever I am Muslim in India, I am punished beyond measure for it. A name and papers that will follow me without my ever having asked for them. But Allah is not obliged to be fair about everything, and to quote poor Birahima “The same goes for me. I’m not obliged to tell my dog’s-life-story. So I’m going to stop for today.”

In the Country of Almost Men

I just finished reading In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar. Narrated from the perspective of a child whose father is hounded by Gaddafi’s security state, a decade on from the revolution. While going through the reviews of ‘The 400 Blows” on Letterboxd, I came through one saying they wanted to beat up every adult in the movie. Something similar could be said of this book, especially in relation to how everyone treats Suleiman. No one bothers to explain to him what is going on. Even at the end of the book, when his mother determines he should spend the rest of his childhood outside Libya, he is put on a plane without being told there is no return journey scheduled.

Suleiman is not the only child whose eyes the story is told through. His mother (who is only 24 for most of the story) is in the habit of getting inebriated at night and telling Suleiman all about her own childhood, including the ‘dark’ day when – at 15 – she was forced to marry his father. We see, even from the perspective of a 9-year-old Suleiman, all he wishes he could do is go back in time and liberate his teenage mother from this fate. He wonders what hopes and dreams that girl might have had, and how all of that was relegated in his interest – the child she did not want. Suleiman takes particular exception to his mother using the collective ‘you’ pronoun to include both him and his father when frustrated, making him complicit in the excesses of his father.

Reading through a narrative of living under dehumanising repression in Libya is personally interesting. I am not unaware of the iron grip that Gaddafi or any strongman in anti-imperialist states would have had to maintain on the local population. His eventual toppling and the fate of Libya since speaks for itself, but it does not invalidate the very real suffering inflicted on many undeserving people over several decades. I saw a meme recently that went something like “Arab political thought is like: I don’t care that he murdered your uncle, that man was a fucking lion”. There is not insignificant truth to that. Internal repression has often been necessary in statecraft for everyone trying not to regime changed for not bowing down to imperial interests. The cruel fate of many a leader of the decolonisation era speaks to this. Some, like Lumumba, did not even get to have a dignified burial. Gaddafi did not either. A story like that really makes me question everything. That political action is possible without causing suffering is a liberal fantasy that falls flat under any scrutiny. But to be confronted with that, over and over, both globally and domestically, is incredibly disillusioning. It asks of you, more or less, to choose between the limited upward mobility (and chance to escape) that your socio-economic condition grants or to stay and fight, risking the little autonomy that education and property has earned you. The currency of clean language and perfectly creased shirts has always represented, for me, a ticket out of here. But it is also true that it allows for an elevated voice – and an easy target – to rail against injustice. But there is cowardice in my hopes and dreams – Slooma’s mother wins in the end, she is the one who comes closest to getting what she wants. She is the first one to choose conformance.

"adulting"

 

I do not like the term adulting; it feels like a juvenile way of describing dealing with one’s own life somewhat maturely. I spent the last month cleaning up after my sister – doing everything in my power to get them out of jail and also make their stay in jail as comfortable as possible. It necessarily interfered with the conduct of my own life. I also did my best not to let it be disrupted too much, attending a number of interviews and securing a job during the same period. Someone described December as a month during which I was ‘adulting’ at unprecedented levels. I was equal to the challenges thrown my way that month, I did not let them get me down. I also had no interest in being equal to them; they were inflicted upon me. Like my country, my family, and nearly all my responsibilities. I want no credit of ‘adulting’ to measure up to these things. I would appreciate an opportunity to opt out, but that is never on the table.

There is a sort of learned helplessness we’ve all come to inhabit. Letting the phone ring out and then texting the caller back is one of my favourite examples. I have tried to completely eliminate this habit. I answer the phone; I love hearing your voice. I wish more people my age were in the habit of cold calling.

I think our relationship with childhood is in need of constant interrogation. Everyone remembers how vulnerable it is to be a child. You are never taken seriously, you are treated with an abundance of love and scarcity of respect, and there is little consideration for your agency when decisions are being made about you. Yet, when people speak about children, there appears a sense of contempt that simply forgets that we were all once in this situation. It forgets that no child chose to be born, that they are perhaps the world’s largest and least heeded vulnerable group, and that there is often no place for them to go to be taken seriously. As we speak with pride about our capacity to ‘adult’, what we are really proud of is growing out of the child within is, the one who still dictates many of our impulses, worries, and desires.

Many of the behaviours we dislike in ourselves and others are attributed to innate ‘childishness’. Poor impulse control, single-minded pursuit of pleasure, poor reactions to not getting what you want, are often written down to the way you were raised. And yet, children can be spoken about in the cruellest of terms. I am reminded of a conversation I had when I told someone I was working on a project related to children’s rights: “so, do children have rights?” I had to laugh. I could point to many instruments saying children have rights, but I did not have an answer for her.  

Spectate

 

Someone told me recently about a fun activity they were about to do. I remarked that I had just seen it happen in a movie the previous day. They responded that they were living life while I was watching it. I think they felt the weight of their words immediately because the conversation switched instantly. But they are right. Life is passing me by. I am trying to cling on to a sense that I too am living, primarily by reading and watching movies. I am, at some level, trying to live vicariously through art. It is my way to see the world, my way to imagine a life less miserable, my way to imagine happiness. Not that all my happiness is imagined. There is a line that United fans put on their flags and banners: “If I had not seen such riches I could live with being poor”. That is how this year has felt. A glimpse, nay even a taste, of happiness that was offered to me, only to have it taken away with no path to recover it.

For half a year – but especially in the past month – I have been waiting for the day I can just home, take a shower and kick back with a cup of tea. Go ‘home’, here, barely exists outside the world of ideas. When I do imagine it, however, I am thinking of my room in the Hague. The only place I have inhabited that I also attempted to populate with a semblance of personality. There was even a gavel I meant to bring there; it did not arrive in time before the last time I left India. A minor one in a string of unfulfilled desires I left that country with. Everything I came to love in my time there has become indefinitely inaccessible. I cannot step out onto the canal and read a book again. There is no filmhouse that will show Donald Sutherland’s best works when he dies. I cannot so much as enjoy a walk without being fully aware of my surroundings and worrying about being poisoned by the air breathe. Worst of all, I do not even get to not feel like an outsider; that might have made some of this mean something.