Chapter 3

One could expect that R_ would have too low self-esteem to hate anyone else, but it was not so. He hated P_. He had no reason that he could cite for hating him but he did tell C_ that he despised P_ because his shoes were always polished. “What kind of a person depends on the shine of his shoes for his self-respect?” he asked. “Well, most of us poor folks do. With our little prides and our big stomachs, we all have to. Because we don’t have your luxury of self-pity”, she replied. A heavy silence followed and then C_ continued in an affectionate tone, “How long will you continue like this? Does it feel good to wake up on the bathroom floors?”
Once upon a time, R_ had been in love with C_. Long before he had become the parasite that he now was. When what she did for him was not that mattered; her just being with him did. But love, he thought, was like a beautiful song. It is ecstasy only the first time you come across it. After that you keep listening to it in hope of getting high on it once again but you don’t. Soon it becomes a tool to keep out the noise. Then, like any other human invention, its worth can be measured in how it helps you and how cheap and convenient it is.
For sake of that love that once existed and out of gratitude for everything she had done for him, ever since, he agreed to work at the bookshop where she had got him a job. But he was making sacrifice a bit too big and he began to realize that soon. He was absolutely incapable of work and he felt a kind of pride in this shortcoming of his. He had only one real interest. Day-dreaming. To sit alone somewhere and think. He never felt that these thoughts had any obligation to be of any use to the body they arise out of. These thoughts did not need to derive meaning out of being applicable in worldly affairs. They didn’t even need to be attempted to be expressed or to be replicated in one’s actions. He had always been disgusted by everything a human body did. Sweating, shitting and secreting fluids were all too gross to be done without a strong reason. And building roads could ease these processes but not justify them. Only the thoughts that one thinks justify everything else one goes through.
He always occupied himself with issues far beyond his reach or concern. But whenever he was working, he lost his train of thoughts. He had never been lonely before but now he was lost. To add to it, he could not bear the smugness with which people detested him: as if being a more organized slave made them somehow superior to him. “At least you don’t spend your nights contemplating suicide now.”, C_ tried to convince him. She thought that to be able to sleep tight at night was a virtue. R_ never understood how this life was better. He could never be a slave and still be free.
But sleep he did. Till one day when he could sleep no more and he, somehow, held P_ responsible for everything. It is fortunate for impotent and bored people to have gods and devils to revolt against. Everyone needs to revolt against someone and for R_ it was P_. His nights were now revolving around the plans to kill P_. He planned and re-planned his murder. How would he kill him was important and what would he say to him while killing him was important too. Everything had to be thought of, everything had to be planned.