How to quickly kill boredom.
It’s 7 in the evening and I’m in the Losar village, at 13,420 feet on the banks of the Spiti river and at one end of the Spiti valley, surrounded by magnificent mountains, some of whom bear snow on the tops.
I’m working in my large room, but not alone. There is a family of rats making silly noises in their equally large room between sheets of wood in the ceiling.
Suddenly I get so bored that I don’t feel like doing anything. So I step out of the warm room into the cold outside. It’s -5 degrees with gusts of wind, stars, and the waxing crescent moon. I stand there for maybe 10 minutes and all boredom disappears — from my head, from my body.
Free will roaming.
I roam freely, wherever I wish,
Not even God to stop me.
We roam together in His beautiful world.
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.