How to live.
My room in Dhankar village, Spiti valley. Himachal Pradesh, India. September 2022.
21:15 at night, September 21. Dhankar village. That’s when I took this photograph, to accompany the following loaded thought that came before the thought of taking the photograph:
This is now my room, my home it is. There will be many who will stay after me, but it will always be mine.
For I am someone who leaves a mark — I cannot be forgotten.
The room will not forget me. The roads who have seen me pass will not too. All the places where I sat or stood on, where I peed, where my shadow fell, all coincidences and everything that happened with each one — none will forget me. The people I have met, people who have come to know me, even if in a glance, will remember me.
For I will also remember them, I cannot forget them. I cherish every meeting, every coincidence, every glance. I am grateful for it all.
Perhaps, to leave a mark,
is
living.
Firefly lost in the cold desert of Spiti.
21:01 at night, September 25, 2022. Dhankar village, Spiti Valley.
The whole village is dark (no power) except for four to five random lights running on diesel generators. From the top window of my room facing the whole village, I see someone, maybe a man, walking in the direction facing me, going back to his home in the village. He is carrying an old mobile phone — perhaps a Nokia from the last century — that does not have a flashlight. So the man has kept the phone screen on to light the way.
The tiny display of the little Nokia
gleaming a soft glow.
A white firefly.
Lost, without knowing,
in the desert mountains of Spiti.
One way or another, I end up bumping into fireflies wherever I go. My life’s path is scattered with coincidences that are sometimes a lovely person, sometimes fireflies.
Dead man sleeping.
On nights when I must find sleep by a certain very late hour but simply cannot sleep in spite of all efforts, I think of and try to dream about frightening stuff, like me falling off a cliff and falling and falling and falling. Instead of finding sleep, I wake up with a pumping heart.
Perhaps this is how I die.
Not in my sleep, not off a cliff, but while trying to find sleep, in the process of—
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
A man sleeping, a dead man sleeping. A man dead in his sleep is dead only to others; to him, he is peacefully sleeping after dreaming frightening dreams.
In praise of the random.
I love what is random and curious.
I prefer a chaiwalla in the middle of nowhere
in the Himalaya
over a chaiwalla in a village.
Do not question the views of an overthinking person such as myself. I know too much, I know too much about too many things, and I get it more right than not.
Broken glass signals.
22:23 at night, September 18 2022. Nako village.
A minute ago, I was having the last sip of the most delicious and pure juice of Kinnauri apples. A minute or two later, I was washing my face after washing the juice glass, and the glass is no more. The juice is also no more. I ended them both.
Here’s what happened. In the dark bathroom, with no power, I put soap all over my face and then I was guiding my hand — in the darkness of my covered eyes, in the darkness of the bathroom — to put the soap back.
I was trying to feel the darkness and the objects in it, like I was trying to feel the universe.
With his work, as with a glove, a man feels the universe.
— Tomas Transtromer, from the poem Open and Closed Space
My hand looking for the tap so that it can put the soap next to it — it gently nudged the glass lying near the edge of the sink. The glass sinks into the darkness of the bathroom, and shatters into pieces that I could see through the sounds it made.
Is it a sign for something?
The broken glass signals. It signals something ominous, as they say. And perhaps it signals it for me?
I am not superstitious and, even if I was, I prefer to remain clueless, not at all curious. Instead, my mind goes to these words:
Why grieve in advance?
Whatever turns up,
I hope it’s happy—
— Aeschylus, from the play Agamemnon; translated by Anne Carson
Cold clothes.
It’s almost midnight here in my village Nako.
At 12,000 feet, my clothes are hanging outside the room. In the cold winds of 3 degrees they are trying to dry themselves. When I touch them, they are as cold as they were on washing. Cold but not colder than their surrounding.
At 22,362 feet, Reo Purgyil is laughing into the night loudly, on seeing my clothes trying to dry. Lol.
Drilling over what I dreamed.
Someone is aggressively drilling in the neighbourhood,
drilling through my skull,
And over what I dreamed last night.
They started from the back of the skull,
while I was asleep,
and have reached the top,
a midday synchronisation at 12:03.
They are going around the house now,
around the skull,
and there is no music loud enough to drown me.
Drilling is moving away
from […] [•] [^^]
I, I, I.
Of this earth.
I’m made of this earth. Of her spring water from the Himalaya and, when that spring water is too cold, I mix metallic-tasting water from the bathroom water heater to it, so I’m made of that too. I have eaten snow, gulped water while taking dips into the hot springs of Vashisht and the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. I have eaten random grass and leaves across the country, because I’m half sheep half man, because I like the idea of being able to pluck and chew on all kinds of grass on any road, any mountain. Such freedom. And before all of this, I have eaten sand when I was too little to understand that this is actually a good thing.
I’m all minerals and metals and rocks of this earth. I’m her grass, I’m her dust.