Chapter 2

What surprised P_ was the ease with which R_ managed all this. He had been observing the guy next door for some days now. With a girlfriend as beautiful (and more) and all day to himself, what more can one wish for, he thought. It was a kind of life he imagined for himself sometimes, when he found himself alone, tired from work. He had used to masturbate off her fantasies until recently when she too, like every other female before her, had worn him out.

He was seen as a “decent” sort of boy. Everybody called him that and was good to him, though in a formal way. They also called him sincere at work though he knew he wasn’t, if ever there was someone. He often used to curse things around him noiselessly and stare at people with contempt like everybody else. His work required him at nights and that had somehow made him hate sleeping while it was dark. He now almost never used to sleep while it was still dark even when not at work. He sometimes used to sit and think about this propensity of his. It was probably because he preferred to remain actually awake rather than a moronic mechanical wakefulness that people forged during the day, he used to explain to himself. Night was like a wall that separated him from the rest of the world and his existence on that side. And he was in process of growing more and more fond of it. His moments of delusions and reveries. He hardly knew that he shared those nocturnal hours of wakefulness with his neighbour, which would, in days close ahead bring his life to a standstill.

Meanwhile, there was one thing about P_ that stood out. He had absolutely no doubt about the fact that he was ordinary. He was one of those extremely few people of this world who was rid of the illusion, hope, euphoria, whatever one might like to call it, that there was something different or extraordinary about him. He was at peace with the fact that he was here to tread the period of time between his birth and expiry like every other insect. A period of time no more meaningful than any other. He did not overemphasize his time or existence like the hyperbolic society. There was a time when he had come to hate it for all the unbridled chaos but eventually he grew over it and accepted that too as an indifferent occurrence on the other side of the wall. He had grown into peace with this fact and thus used to remain unruffled by most of the things happening around him. Also, he avoided women.

For reasons unclear to himself. He had never in his life been close to one since his mother in his premature childhood who had been dead long since. He had hardly talked to one in past few years and the more he stayed away, the more he tried to rationalize that it wasn’t necessary or of much consequence. He worked hard to believe it. After all the seeking and thinking he had done, all he desired was to die not thinking that there were things left undone but that their being done would have made no difference whatsoever and that the inconsequentiality of this world was the ultimate fact that superseded everything else.

That night just as he was about to leave for work, and had been outside to dispose of the trash he happened to cross C_ while she was returning like every other day. She was tired and his glimpse of her went unnoticed by either of them. Until some days later he recollected it.

Chapter 1

R_ was living the proverbial “heaven on earth”. He had no money, no friends, no work and no ambition to find any of these. He lived in his girl friend’s house and fucked her to make a living. Other than that he watched TV, drank and smoked with whatever frequency he could afford to. Every day he would wake up to feel a kind of burden on himself. A burden to live through the day, waiting for it to end. When he fell asleep at night he felt a kind of nervousness because he knew he would have to wake up the next day. Often, he would lie awake in his bed, C_ sleeping next to him, with the tick-tock of the wall clock in background, thinking of his life and what was he doing with it. He would think a thought once and then repeat it over and over again altering a part or two in it till it sounded perfect to him. He would promise himself that he would find a work and a life from the next day. He would make plans of working hard and giving C_ the life she deserved. He would spend hours thinking of how he got into this mess. He would catch hold of something that someone had said sometime and start building theories around it. He would end up either furious or crying. He would still not go to sleep.
Have you, in a really bad dream, realized that it was just a dream and obtained solace only from the fact that you would wake up. R_'s life was like that. Perpetual boredom. And it just would not end. His only solace was the suicide he kept planning. The occasional optimism and his aversion to complicated undertakings kept him from attempting it.
One day, just after dark, he was sitting alone in his room because C_ was running late. He hadn’t had much to drink or smoke. The train of thoughts, though hard to trace back, had somehow started from imagining C_’s infidelities. Not that he cared much. He loved feeling sorry for himself and this just gave him another reason to. Anyways, lying on the couch with cheap colours and sound from the television filling up the otherwise dark and quiet room R_ was fantasizing all the male colleagues of her trying to seduce C_ and C_ playing games with all of them only to see them fight each other over her. He imagined C_ fucking her boss in his cabin. He grew more and more furious at his thoughts. He cursed C_ for being a slut. He cursed himself for being so impotent as to be unable to prevent this. All this while, C_ was trying hard to meet her deadlines doing her tiresome job. When she reached home, fighting the traffic and eyes of ogling men who kept rubbing against her in the bus, R_ awaited her with his accusations ready (he had practiced them in his mind, over and over again). They quarreled sharply as she undressed. She was too tired to placate him and in no mood to fight. Still she fought back only because she did not want him to feel neglected. In the end he walked out and she cooked, ate and went off to sleep.
When he came back he was hungry and he could not eat till he was on talking terms with her. He had that much self-respect left for himself. So he went and lied down next to her. He put his arms around her, holding her left breast and he kissed her on her neck, below her hair. He rubbed his penis against her thighs, and said softly, “I am sorry”. Once they had had sex and she was asleep, he walked to the kitchen and ate the cold food.
That night R_ kept sitting in his bed, C_ sleeping next to him, the clock doing its tick-tock. He lived a life of impotence which had no meaning. He thought how easy it could be to end all of this then and there. He walked to the bathroom and undid his razor to take out the blade. He sat in one corner of the bathroom holding the blade close to his left wrist. He just could not put it to it. For some reason, after having tried for some time, he gave up and started crying. He muted his crying deliberately as to not wake C_ up. As to why he started crying, he did not know. All the reasons had long ago ceased to exist. They had all dissolved into a kind of discomfort which only remained. That night it had amplified making him cry mutely in that corner of the bathroom.