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?