To Delhi and to Love

 

How do we measure familiarity? By how many days you have known each other? Maybe how much time has been spent in each other’s company? The nature of said company? Little details can have incredible impact on familiarity: liking the same book, finding the same things funny, having irrational hatred for the same condiment. Like everything in my life that defies explanation, I attack this question with all kinds of rationalisations. Some people, however, feel familiar from the moment you meet them, reminding you of the prescient words of a great poet of our age: before you came into my life I missed you so bad.

One of the crueller jokes I think fate plays on me is burdening me with a life and disposition given to constant movement. Most of the people I love live on my phone, and the list just grows all the time. One constant in this random journey of receiving affection from many quarters is how abruptly and painfully I lose the ability to see these people. Sometimes fate is kind enough to give a few months, even a year. Other times, the rug pull comes after just days. One of my favourite most romantic lines I have ever seen is from the movie Casablanca. I will admit to always tearing up watching Humphrey Bogart say “We’ll always have Paris” to an Ingrid Bergman’s character, both fully aware they will never see each other again. I have had to say that many times in my life: fraternally, filially, and fortunately (?) on occasion, even romantically. What I did not expect, however, is to have say we would always have Delhi. I arrived in a state of emergency, against my will, with the intention of wrapping things up as quickly as possible. I leave this city now, four and a half months later, having contained perhaps just as many lifetimes in that duration. I cannot say I have changed my mind about the several awful things I have to say about that city. However, I have lived and felt what it is like to know that among the millions of residents in the national capital are people I love and cherish and know I am loved and cherished by in equal measure.

With little over an hour left for my flight to start boarding, I waited outside Delhi Airport for a man whose phone was unreachable. I stood there knowing I would always regret not having stayed for the goodbye if he got there and did not find me. We got our euphoric two-minute goodbye, he gave me his necklace that he had not taken off in three years. He said he had forgot to bring his wallet in his hurry. I did not know what to do faced with such love. I promised him I would wear that necklace; it is the most meaningful piece of jewellery I have ever received. I don’t understand why it makes me feel sad to feel loved. I teared up inside the airport, and they were not happy tears.

Other familiarities are tougher to talk about. There are words to skirt around. Concepts to be communicated using a language not all are meant to understand. Of the things I take from Delhi is the knowledge that I cannot play NYT Connections, use orange zest in cooking, or even say dammit without a little pang. It is the certainty that some movies, some songs, some drinks, and even some colours, will always remind me of people I might never again have access to. No one bothered to defend Delhi on the same terms that I shit talked it; they all said something to the effect of assuring I would grow to like it anyway and that I would leave it but with a heavy heart. I do not think I grew to like it. I did, however, leave it with a heart much heavier than I imagined would be the case. That I found myself trying to cheer up by telling myself this departure was something I had wished for, and a precursor to a positive step in my life, would be incomprehensible to the man who landed in Delhi in November desperate to get his sister out of jail.

I like to think of life as a collection of people I have met along the way; it is only thing that comes close to giving it a semblance of meaning. I feel burdened by the realisation that it will never be a collection of people I feel like I have loved enough. I can try to convince myself these are all accidents, and not evidence of a tendency to cut and run.  For the past few months of my life, and especially the last few weeks, I hope it is enough to promise I will put a little too much salt in my food and walk out of an underwhelming theatre after 10 minutes every now and then.

I will tell you the truth completely

 

I like lying. I enjoy it in all its forms. I like lying by omission, deliberate obfuscation, and just saying patent untruths. I enjoy it more when it is inconsequential, like narrating a story about my breakfast and saying I had something other than what I did. I sometimes connect this to my love for cinema and literature, two of the most beautiful ways to enjoy dishonesty. I also connect it to my fear of being known; it is easy to avoid being known if not everything you say can be taken at face value. But there is more than that to lying. Any good story requires embellishment. I’ve always maintained that all communication is miscommunication. Meaning is often negotiated by so many (mis)understandings between the speaker and the audience. I’ve also always felt that the fact that interpretation is a discipline of its own is evidence of the fact that things are rarely self-evident, even when we try to communicate clearly. But I’m sure it does not help that I lie on purpose.

A debate I have seen sometimes when talking about state obligations to curb misinformation is the question of how to define it. There seems to be an agreement, in principle, that freedom of speech includes the freedom to lie online. Lying is not automatically deceptive. The obvious question of where we draw the line is one I like to inhabit in regular conversation. I saw a joke once that you could just claim to have a phd because no one really checks. Sometimes I think really confident people are also lying, it just manifests differently.

There is security in lying. No one can draw a conclusion about you that is true to your person, even if they have great judgement. No one can always know what you are up to. No one can know whom your friends are and whom you cannot stand. I have often thought about the fact that if a lot of people show up to my funeral, it will be a huge collection of people who are strangers to each other. My worlds might only collide when I get married or die.  

Sometimes I wonder if the people I don’t lie to know about their privileged position. It is sort of like the personalised notification tones I have for them on WhatsApp; it is a feature of my relationships with them that they have no idea about. Over time, I come to associate these sounds with the people themselves, often forgetting that they would be meaningless to them.

I’ve had friends complain, on occasion, that they do not know anything that is going on in my life. My parents do not make this complaint but they also never know what is going on in my life. Does this also count as lying? I am aware of my reluctance to share details that I consider trivial or temporary. The problem, of course, is that most of life is about details that are trivial or temporary. What book you are reading right now, what I made for lunch yesterday, why this girl keeps coming up to me at the gym…these things make up your whole world. And yet when I go to bed today, they becomes yesterday’s news. When someone was asking me for life updates once and I glossed over an entire incident, I felt a mild reprimand from them for not giving details. I tried the excuse that they were asking for yesterday’s paper. And when she said “but that’s what I want to read,” I could not think of a response.

When something does happen to me, I am already thinking about how I might make comedy out of it. It cannot be tenuous, it cannot be laboured, and it cannot be unfeasible. It cannot also be gaudy. The point of embellishment is not to paint myself in better light; it is not to present me as the version of myself I wish I was. The point of the story is the story. The value of it is in the narration, and it stops being meaningful as the conversation ends. Of course, some movies can be watched many times, but most movies are to be viewed once. Then you move on in life. My mother always says I am terrible at lying. She has a point, but I am also really good at it.

drifting

 

I type a few sentences and then delete everything. A few more sentences and then the same thing. I’ve been doing this for what fifteen minutes. Nothing of worth seems to come out right now. I get up and pour myself a glass of orange juice. Since I’m up anyway, I also get a snack. I don’t want to get my keyboard dirty. So while I snack, the reasonable thing to do is put a show on. I’ll put on Scrubs. I’ve seen it several times, I can watch it without it demanding my complete attention. It gets none of my attention; I am scrolling on twitter already. I should do laundry today. Is the gym open yet? I can never remember to ask if it opens at 4 or 5. It does not matter anyway, I should not go immediately after snacking. Let’s see what movies are on my watchlist. This one I just downloaded is 171 minutes. I am not ready for that kind of commitment. Should I pause the show? I’ve missed so many jokes. Let me go back a bit. This fan spins so quickly. It is loud outside. What should I make for dinner? Who’s going to be home for dinner?

I’m getting up again, toilet this time. I sit down and watch a whole episode. I check my phone now – 7 messages. What a rush I will get from replying to each one. There are also a few emails – not as juicy. Still, I open each one and reply to what needs replying. My legs are shaking. I stop them shaking. I’m drifting; I feel myself drift in real time. I let it happen for a second before pulling back. I need to get back to the paper and start writing again. I am at fewer than one hundred words. My legs are shaking again. I turn on the speaker and start playing music at a really low volume. No I don’t like that song, or the one after. Let me make a playlist right now, I can’t go on listening to music I don’t like. I know this is my own playlist. Should I get up to snack again? It’s 5, the gym is definitely open by now. Must be empty at this hour, I’ll be back soon.  

Privation

 

Ramadan means many things to me. One of them is an annual look at my relationship with my body. Every year, it opens with really intense caffeine withdrawal. For the first few days, my head feels twice as heavy, and I try to beat drowsiness all day. The cold-turkey absence of caffeine and reduced sleep combines with hunger and thirst to make you feel like a shell of yourself. Every year I feel the same confrontation: how much of my daily life is made possible only because I have a young and able body that I can push to certain limits. I anticipated the caffeine withdrawal this year and quit coffee more than a week in advance. It did make the beginning easier; my head felt lighter and I was not as drowsy. Ramadan still follows a relatively similar pattern for me every year. The first few days shock the body, it cannot understand why it is being deprived of things it expects on the day to day. Mentally, it takes almost no toll. I always used to joke that the energy that comes during Ramadan is delivered straight from Allah. Normally, one skipped meal or a day following inadequate sleep feels unbearable. Sometimes even knowing lunch will be delayed by a few hours will have me thinking about it the whole time. But during Ramadan, these things stop occupying your brain completely.

Another thing that takes time to get used to is finding moderation after sunset. For years on end, I found myself gaining weight during Ramadan. Not only was I eating enough to make up for the several hours of fasting, I was spending Ramadan eating more food than I did in other months. There are many ways to explain. Earlier when I lived with family in Kuwait, it was quite straightforward. It is a month where everyone is trying to feed each other, there are so many iftar parties all the time. But it continued beyond this period. I was putting weight on even fasting in my university where they made no arrangements to facilitate fasting. It prompts one to question their relationship with food, especially when the idea of (even temporary) privation is introduced. I would not call it simply a self-control problem. If it were, it would not be limited to Ramadan. It feels more like a negotiation with the concept of timed and deliberate deprivation. As if I were a camel with the capacity to prevent the effects of thirst and hunger by consuming extra beforehand. It does not work like that, of course. Iftar approaches each day, and I am hungry no matter what.

Fasting also strikes me as the most secular amongst the pillars of Islam. Secular not as the opposite of religious, but secular in the sense that it is less an act of faith than an omission ‘of’ it. You cannot look at a person and determine that he is fasting, as you can with a person who is praying or paying Zakat. It is the most private amongst that acts that establish your relationship with God. At sunset each day, there is no one else who can be certain of just how honest the fast was.

I often ask myself why I hold on to this religion despite the many quarrels I have with it. Islam represents many things to me. It is a call to action, a lens for me to view the world, to feel the tinge of anger I do when I see injustice, and in many cases, the strongest influence on my moral compass. On that canvas, fasting occupies the biggest place. It is the clearest and most continuous way in which my commitment to faith survives. I fasted yesterday, I fast today, and inshallah, I will continue fasting tomorrow.

Ramadan

 

I remember describing 2022 as the worst Ramadan of my life. It was the first one back in college after covid. The summer was unbearable and the university (and mess) made no accommodations. Without any way to store food in the room, I was basically fasting most of the day. That passed, and every subsequent Ramadan was easier (each spent in a different part of the world). This year, I find myself back in this part of the country. The summer, of course, is not as advanced. But in every other respect, it is vying with 2022 for the title. One of the reasons I like holding on to this tradition is the feeling you get that you are participating in something universal. An incomprehensibly high number of people – maybe a billion – are engaged in fasting all over the world. But when you fast in Delhi – and when I fasted in Patiala – you could be forgiven for feeling like you were the only person fasting. In Delhi this is obviously untrue, but because I am not living in a visibly Muslim area, and working in a kind of institution that Muslims do not usually get to, I am surrounded by people who seem not to have the faintest idea that a season of fasting is ongoing. It makes a world of difference, the feeling of solidarity from knowing other people are doing the same thing. Despite living in a city with over 2 million Muslims, not even a suggestion of that makes its way to me.

This invisibilising of a large minority in social cultural and professional spaces is a major reason this city – and the country at larger – presents to me as a hostile space. I have one of the most common names in the world. And yet not a classmate or coworker I’ve had in this country shares it. I would also say something similar for being from Kerala, caveated by the fact that they’re a much smaller proportion of this country than Muslims, and still do find representation. But it adds to the feeling of not feeling represented by anything this country projects outwardly. I would not be any less represented in a different country. They might even be less hostile. I remember an occasion I had gone to the immigration authorities in the Netherlands to renew my residence permit. The civil servant on the other side was a Hijabi woman who when she noticed I had studied human right asked me what I thought about the ‘situation’ in Gaza. I was apprehensive about giving strong opinions to someone who held decision making power over whether I could remain in that country. She offered her own opinion first, perhaps in an attempt to be reassuring. It was a surreal experience for me; this clearly immigrant Muslim woman could find herself working in the immigration department. In India, you could travel far and wide and struggle to find a Muslim woman in government employ, headscarf or otherwise. The invisibilisation is so total and unquestioned. We just do not belong.

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 misery. 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?