Psychiatrist
Of course I’ve seen a psychiatrist. She’s a lady in her thirties. She lives alone. She calls her subjects (or objects?) to her house. I see some irony in the fact that she’s divorced. I must say that she, with a spunky bob-cut and in a light-coloured top and linen pants, is quite attractive. And chirpy. I’m not a psychoanalyst, she says often, I’m a psychiatrist. Or maybe she says that she is not a psychiatrist but a psychoanalyst. I don’t know. She did explain the difference between the two to me once, but I’ve forgotten. Anyhow. I sometimes fear that, more than listening to my afflictions and remedying them, her agenda is to seduce me. The first time I met her (the psychiatrist), it was about nightmares after losing her (my love). Recently I’ve met her for loss. That I would choose nightmares over loss is not saying much. She told me that if my nightmare ever came true, that is, if ever I were to separate from her (my love), the greater loss would be hers (my love’s). I think this was her (the psychiatrist) trying to manipulate me into health. There is really no way to convince me now that the greater loss has been hers (my love’s).
In our last session, the attractive psychiatrist told me that I’m neurotic—that I’m neurotic about my love and my writing. Neurosis is not a bad thing in itself, she tells me. Everyone is neurotic, she adds. Can you tell me what she, my love, is neurotic about? I ask her. Maybe happiness, maybe she is neurotic about the abstract concept of happiness, she says. I mull over this. It seems right, so right that it makes me visibly disconcerted. To save myself, I ask her, what are you neurotic about? The psychiatrist laughs. She’s really pretty when she laughs. She says, I’m neurotic about neuroses, maybe. That’s complicated, I say in a funny vein, but in truth I’m now thinking about the infinite loop of neuroses. The bad, mad infinity of it. I ask her if I need therapy or medication. Yes, you need some help, she says. I don’t know why but I sense some malice in this statement, or maybe I sense a lie. The room constricts a bit. Is it possible to live with neurosis, I ask her. Yes, she says. But it needs to be kept in check, she adds. Okay, I say, somehow disbelieving everything she has said, and then I rise from the tiny designer ottoman that I’m sitting on. I look at her, sitting on a couch with a question in her grey-black eyes. I don’t wait for the answer to come to me. I walk toward the door that will take me out of her living room, out of her house, out onto the street. As I’m leaving she asks, will you come next Sunday? I’ll let you know, I reply. It’s nice to see you, she says. I leave.
I don’t go the next Sunday, or the next. Which is to say that now I’m living with unchecked neurosis. Of love and literature.
I walk on the street and I see unhappy men and I think many things. I think that all these men and all this unhappiness are my creation. And I think, how can all this, this passing by unhappy men on Mumbai’s streets, be made literature? And I think, how will someone neurotic about happiness react to all this unhappiness on the street?
Maybe she’ll just leave Mumbai.
A Portrait of The Bachelor as a Symbolic Man
The Bachelor as a symbol of dysfunctional individuality. The Bachelor as a castrated revolutionary. The Bachelor as an empty gesture to literature’s status of being a sword in a nuclear war. The Bachelor as an indicator of the tenuous tenability of sexual love. The Bachelor as a fatherless figure, and a figure that will never be a father. The Bachelor as a paean to the project of scribbling without a cause and without a centre. The Bachelor as a slave to enjoyment. The Bachelor as a signifier of the successive erosion of all that was virtuous in the abstraction of twentieth-century youth. The twenty-first-century Bartlebyan Bachelor, who does not prefer not to anymore, but who just can’t, and still does. The Bachelor as the last generation that might still make it right—it being the world and all the love in the world. The Bachelor who faces a wall so big that the only way he can see through it is by closing his eyes. The Bachelor to whom history is the correlation between infinite independent variables, very similar to the present, and as impossibly vitreous.
Another Day at Work
I’m in my cubicle and I’m building a model that tracks the correlations between lead and lag measures and I’m fantasizing a bit as I do that. I’m using fantasy as a cunctation simply because there is no deadline, which is simply because the task is considered so path-breaking that my boss’s idea is to allow me a stress-free working environment. If my rising up from my seat and going to my boss’s cabin and confronting him is a lead measure, how would it correlate with the lag measure of he losing his cliché-spewing face for the first time ever in his life? Not much. Because the lead measures are unrealistic. The idea of tracking lead measures is to track actionables and not fantasies. Although actionables is not even a real English word while fantasies is.
Suddenly an unrelated thought comes to me, which I write down in words:
Interred deep within the labyrinth of my inner life is a masterpiece, though I shall require a talent as good as an oil rig to make it gush forth, and even then my broken imagination may prove to be that faulty little part, that worn-out safety-valve, that allows everything to spill and burn, and then all we would have would be the silent ashes of my masterpiece, though that shouldn’t bother me much, for floating ashes are what all masterpieces end up as.
I sigh when I read my thought. I close my eyes and press my eyelids and tears come to my closed eyes because I realize that every anguish of mine is in words; I’m such a compulsive archivist of myself.
I Think of Interlaken
At best, a short story can only approach perfection, never attain it. A novella has to be perfect. A novel has to be a sprawling mess. I am thinking of these things as I walk around my neighbourhood in Mumbai. The streets are wet from monsoon showers, which abated only half an hour ago. Growling autorickshaws find their way through puddles, sometimes splashing water, and I hop and skip to avoid being at the receiving end. But this is a futile exercise, so I tell myself to just walk, unmindful of how dirty I get. I am walking because … because after months of separation she has invited me to visit her. In Interlaken. As a friend. And so I am thinking of Interlaken as well. I resolve to only write novellas. On the street I see seven kids, all around twelve or thirteen years of age, all dressed in spotless white pyjamas. But then I notice that these are not pyjamas. The kids are returning from an evening judo class. They all have yellow silk belts around their waists. I don’t know why but I think of an elite squad of pre-teen assassins, out to execute the enemies of the state. Executing through a judo kick delivered right in the middle of the chest. Then I think of Interlaken. In. Ter. La. Ken. It sounds like a resort town preferred by high ranking German army officers during the Second World War. German army officers and SS officials and officers of the dreaded Einsatzgruppen. I imagine Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt sitting in a resort in Interlaken, sitting by the window in his second- or third-floor room, a glass of cognac in one hand and a thick cigar in the other.
My vision of him dissolves in the smoke that he exhales, or probably in the exhaust of the autorickshaw in front of me. For folks like me, closet leftists who nevertheless spend five or six days a week serving liberal capitalism, lunch time conversations with colleagues are unbearably painful. To deflect all the showy, strong-economy talk, I sometimes take to invoking conversations about personal matters, for people are more genuine when they talk about their lives. With colleagues who are somewhat closer to me (not including M), I talk of her. I tell them tales from our time together. Of our many vacations in the Himalayas. I tell them of the beauty of trudging a rhododendron forest, of finding a way through the knotty stems of those trees, till all of a sudden the edge of the forest is reached and a majestic meadow or a majestic mountain or a majestic valley unveils itself before your eyes. None of my colleagues have travelled as much and as adventurously as I used to do with her, which I find as something to be proud of; but as I tell them these stories I also realize that I am not that person anymore, that since the day she left me nine months ago I have no
t travelled anywhere. Some days back, I sent her a message. It was in reply to this message that she invited me to visit her in Interlaken, just like that. Then, three days back, on her birthday, I sent her another message. In her reply, she told me she was happy to have a job in Interlaken because it meant that she got to ski every other day. She also told me that she was currently reading Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. In my reply, I congratulated her on getting the job but abstained from answering if I would visit her in Interlaken. I also thought of asking her if Grossman, in his epic book that was, as far as I knew, about the persecution of Jews in Ukraine and Russia after the initial victories of the Germans—I thought of asking her if Grossman had made any mention of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. If we were still together I would have asked this question without giving it a thought, and then we would have taken on independent studies about the lives of the key generals of the Third Reich, just for fun, and for a month or so we would have told each other stories of these generals before going to bed and making love. This would have continued till we took to some other historical fancy: about the gradual but necessary adoption of potatoes as a staple dietary item in pre-revolution France; or about how the losses in the Crusades might have eventually led Europe to the Renaissance; or about the horrors of trench warfare in World War I; or about the story of the integration of various princely states into India. Eventually I did not ask her about von Rundstedt in my reply, for I thought that it would have looked less like a question and more like a reference to old days. I instead asked her to treat herself to a glass of wine in my name, and promised that I would do the same. It has been three days since her birthday and I haven’t had that glass of wine yet. Maybe I will have it tonight.
I realize that I have walked quite far. There is thunder; it is going to rain again. No matter, I tell myself. I will keep on walking. I will keep on walking till my walking becomes a short story. There can be no rules in writing. A short story can be a sprawling mess too. I imagine making love to her on her cozy bed in Interlaken, a grey September light drifting in from the windows. We are making love after having seen a beautiful Chinese movie that I downloaded in India and took to her in Switzerland. Will it be raining like it is now? I am distracted by a street dog following me, who moans miserably and makes me want to kick it in the ribs. I turn to deliver the kick, but just then the dog gives up and goes away. I find myself on a road that I can’t quite remember turning to. Perhaps I am looking for a reason to not go to Interlaken. Perhaps I am looking for a reason to go to Interlaken. Then I remember Pattaya, and what a colleague of mine had once told me about the place. About its possibilities for bodily pleasure, and how that bodily pleasure may ease any spiritual conundrums. Maybe I will go to Pattaya instead of Interlaken. Maybe I will write down my experiences in that place, a novella or something. I am on a broad road which could be a highway. It is a highway. It is raining on the highway and an autorickshaw speeds past me. Shrouded in the rain, the auto is like an arrow of misery. I think of von Rundstedt again and I feel like crying. He did survive the war, and he did survive the initial burst of anger from the Allies. He was required to attend the Nuremberg trials only as a witness. But they got him eventually, for a crime against humanity that he overlooked if not abetted. Rundstedt had to serve prison for a few years, I don’t remember how many. After that he died of a congested heart caused by the edemas he had developed in his lungs from excessive smoking.
I leave the highway and walk into a smaller road. I am as wet as I can be and I am craving a cigarette. In the four–five days I spend in Pattaya I will write a masterpiece that will stand the test of time, a masterpiece about love, about the miseries of love in our century. It is for this that I will go to Pattaya. Or maybe I will go to Interlaken, revive a love that may still be revived. In Interlaken we will watch Chinese movies together, she and I, and then we will probably make love, not out of love but out of nostalgia, and after we have spent ourselves we will talk about generals and war criminals, of China and global warming, of the ethics of making foie gras, et cetera. If this happens I will end up with an Interlaken novella, which I would have written in the nights while she slept peacefully beside me. A Pattaya novella or an Interlaken novella, that’s a question. But will she retract her invitation just as casually as she made it? If I go to Pattaya, will she never talk to me again, even as sparingly as she does now, especially after she reads the Pattaya novella? Will she identify me with the protagonist and know the monsters that the two are (or will be)? As I walk on, pensive or maybe distraught, the rain lessens gradually and gradually comes to a stop. I am now scared, not only because the roads are empty … I regret having thought of Pattaya. I should probably go to Interlaken. I should find her there and plead my case. My case of what? My case of immortalizing her, maybe. ‘Don’t judge me, for it is me who is going to immortalize you,’ I should say. ‘Love me, because I can write about it,’ I should add. I force myself to think of von Rundstedt again. He died a few months after his beloved wife’s death, a wife to whom he wrote letters every day, whether from the battle in Donetsk or from the repose in Interlaken. My walk is a truly global short story, I think stupidly. The little lane that I find myself on now is the lane in which our house of togetherness used to be. I bring myself beneath the building on whose second floor is the apartment where I, and my love, don’t live anymore. Standing there on the road, I am thirteen kilometres away from where I live alone these days. I live thirteen kilometres away from where I used to live with her. I have walked thirteen kilometres and I am beginning to feel cold. Is this how cold Interlaken will be in September? Is it true that most novellas begin as short stories?
PART THREE
Neon Noon
(1)
My pain is a difficult landscape. Or maybe not a landscape but a map for a larger territory full of the trenches of memory and fantasy. In any case, there is no rest when trudging through it. She and I don’t bump into each other here, and for that I am strangely grateful. Perhaps I know that if we met we would disagree about the legends and the scales. It would make us angry.
I came to Pattaya instead of going to Interlaken.
While preparing my backpack for Pattaya—it is actually her backpack, which she left behind in some confusion—I intended to stuff in my copy of the fat 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. But then I discovered my Kindle, my long-lost Kindle, in a hidden pocket of one of my suitcases. Not the same thrill as finding a long-lost book, but there was some thrill. And I decided against the Bolaño. I did think of how being seen with a physical 2666 would make a person, me, seem more enigmatic than being seen with a Kindle. But I was going to be a tourist, and a tourist should not bother about enigmas rendered or received.
(2)
From the Pattaya bus station I went straight to the southern Jomtien Beach, riding pillion on a two-wheeler taxi. I checked into a decent hotel and went out for a walk. The thin beach was girded by a curving road that went on for a couple of kilometres. The sea was placid as a lake. There was nothing to note except the stale, picturesque hues of the sky and the sea. Some inordinately white cloud-flowers seemed to be forming at the horizon, but their formation was gripped by the same lassitude that infected everything else. The sun was harsh and the town was sleepy, and apart from old, bare-chested white men ambling about in an ennui as severe as mine, and some water-scooters roaring aimlessly on the sea, and some sunburnt couples heading toward their hotels, the touristy activity I had imagined was notable for its absence. On the other side of the beach road, the massage parlours and bars were attended to by fat soporific Thai ladies who, it was clear, had nothing to do with the business of pleasure. I walked on. The blank effort drenched me in sweat and forced upon me vague remembrances of experiencing similar boredom in past travels. But of course these evocations were phony. There had been no such solo travels in my life before this one, so there could have been no similar boredom. I had only ever travelled with her, my love.
But the exertion did something th
at was not entirely beside the point of coming to Pattaya: it made me want to fuck. I leered at the suddenly materializing sight of young white women walking beside their boyfriends or along with their families. I looked at their sun-red legs, their scorched shoulders, their sand-ridden shoes and slippers. Then I turned around and made for my hotel, wondering if it would be prudent to plainly ask the receptionist where to find women in Jomtien. Surely there were women to be had in Jomtien. I had been told that there were women to be had everywhere in Pattaya. One just had to ask.
But by the time I returned to the hotel, two hours had elapsed. The receptionist was not at the reception. I imagined her taking a nap in one of the many empty hotel rooms. My desire had been overtaken by fatigue and all I could do was go straight into my second-floor room. I crashed on the bed and closed my eyes and wondered why I had walked so much, what had driven me to walk so much. I considered the distinction between drive and will—one being force and the other, power—and began to feel some vain achievement at this thought, a feeling that scattered away immediately. I felt the heat settling beneath my scalp and feared that I would get a fever that would ruin my vacation. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, it was night outside, eleven according to my watch. The hours had fled by. I went downstairs to the restaurant and had my dinner, Thai curry and rice, which the sleepy cook heated with a dour expression, as if he were holding a grudge against me for being so late. I had a pint of beer after dinner. I walked a few paces in the direction opposite to that of my afternoon walk, found nothing, and turned to walk in the other direction. The road and the streets that branched off from it were largely dead, the shops were closed, the few tourists on the road were gathered only around the chemist shops, the streetlights were pale and sorry, and all this made me immensely sad. I could not help but think of her and I missed her acutely. I wished she were here, for if she were here she would know what the best thing to do was, and I missed her because, had she decided right now to go back to our room, there would still be something to do in the room. I felt a need for sex and knew that it was not just a need for sex but a need for making love with her. Then a dark SUV rolled past, and then another, and suddenly I grew scared. The few Thai shopkeepers and amblers began to look like murderers. My stomach grumbled because of the bad dinner; I was probably nauseated because of love and fear and indigestion. I stopped on the pavement and looked up to the cloudy sky, and then I turned around and took many deep breaths to gather some courage, and after that was done I told myself that I, I the owner of I, would go back to my hotel room and read. I would read as long as it took for reading to get me to sleep and tomorrow I would move out of Jomtien. I would go to the more happening parts of the town. I would go to Pattaya beach.
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