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.