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I watched two incredible movies in the past couple of days. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink. Freddie is a man who cannot serve a master, but seems to want nothing more than to be able to do this. His wildly violent reactions to any criticism levelled at the master stands in contrast to his own frustrations with his methods. Barton Fink’s insincerity to his craft presents a powerful critique of the emptiness of producing art under capitalism. His common-man tourism proceeds while actively refusing to listen to the only common-man he knows. That he came to know him only because the man took kindly to Fink’s noise complaint highlights the writer’s disconnect from the subject he wants to exalt above all others.

Someone who “hates small talk” asked me the other day where I thought meaning came from. It reminded me of Marx’s quote about men making their own history without being able to do so as they please. The tradition of dead generations weighs most certainly like a nightmare on the brains of the living. What traditions weigh on me? I am not even in touch with all of them. My passport, driving license, and voter ID all have me down as being from a nothing village in the north of Kerala. There are traditions here I am well across, and ones I have never heard of. My history is inflicted on me in a way I am almost unaware, let alone having bargained for. It is hardly a tragedy, but as Emile Cioran once said, each of us do consider ourselves an unrecognised Job. So where does meaning come from? Calvin’s dad believes suffering builds character. Of course, this characterisation implies that one can be both with and without character, instead of the idea that character inheres in a person and can be subject to critique. What does it mean to be of sound character? Does it mean coming across well? Giving a good account of yourself? I love catching a sunrise. On a bright sunny day, I love the incredible explosion of colour that you see in this nothing town. When I am alone, I let most bugs scurry or flutter across the room. The bug spray is for when someone else is bothered. Is there meaning in letting a spider as big as my fist live in the bathroom?

I have been using this time of relative ease to immerse myself in other people’s creativity – primarily through cinema and literature. There is something extraordinarily meaningful in reading about lives lived incomprehensibly far away from you –in time and in space – and seeing yourself in their sorrows, worries, joys, and irrational frustrations. Wanting to curse at people who do not understand that there is a time and a place is apparently a sensation as old as time.

Is it the search for meaning that pushes people to join cults? Freddie moves from master to master in search of meaning, exiting in fantastic incidents of self-destruction. I do not think I can say he finds meaning in the end, but he does as he does, and he appears not unhappy. There is but one thing that makes sense to him, and one occasion where he knows what he is doing. I know not what to make of it except to say he seems to have figured at least one more thing than me.

I, too, cannot deny the charge of looking for meaning just about anywhere. Even an elusive search for the right combination of hairstyle and beard is in some way an attempt to find me, my essence. Easy for me to say I am more than the different specificities that I present. I am, however, also not less than their sum. It reminds me of the occasional query about why I go by Mishal over Mohammad. It was not really my choice, as most people know, but I would never switch. Mohammad carries with it all the historical baggage of a name that I have spent twenty-five years not being. I prefer a two-syllable name too. Mohammad is, perhaps, a rather loaded name for this exercise; one that lends itself to deliberate overlooking. Nevertheless, I do not think I would be the same person if I had lived my twenty-five years as Mohammad and not Mishal. Mohammad is a part of what makes me, but it is even more a part of what makes ‘not me.’ Mohammad, I think, would be serving a different master. Not that I know the master I serve now; I have nothing to report, nothing to let you know.