‘We should call it… POCARI.’

‘Sounds great. What does it mean?’

‘Nothing. It’s a nonsense word. Foreigners love words that sound Japanese but don’t exist.’

‘Excellent. But just POCARI? Sounds a bit bare. We should add something in English for universal appeal.’

‘Hmm… What about SWEAT? POCARI SWEAT.’

‘Genius! What could be more alluring to a thirsty individual than a bottle of cloudy-white liquid emblazoned with the word SWEAT. Yoshaaa!’

But while finding Pocari Sweat was a moment of joy, there are other occasions when I am left perplexed by the things I see in the shop. A few weeks ago, I was rummaging in the aisles, trying to ignore the packet of soya sticks that was calling out to me, when I noticed a bottle of shower gel — for men. L’Oreal Men Expert, the label proclaimed, though what made the soap’s expertise exclusively masculine was not evident. Next to it was another bottle: Nivea Men Active Clean. I could understand why ‘Clean’ featured in the name; it is a choice that would seem reasonable to everyone except the folks at Pocari Sweat who would probably have used ‘Dirt’ or ‘Compost’ when naming a bath product. But what was ‘Active’ doing there? And what was the deal with this ‘Men’ business?

I’d seen items of this sort before, even bought them on occasions, but I’d never stopped to consider why shower gel had to be gendered. Once I noticed it though, a kind of Baader-Meinhof effect kicked in and more examples caught my eye. Further down the shelf from the shower gels, there were tubes of face wash that were also segregated by sex. The men’s products, all packaged in shades of black and grey, sat in a dour cluster next to the rainbow of options available to women. I scanned a few samples to note the key differences and while flowers, honey, milk and fruits were deemed essential for the ladies, all we seemed to need was charcoal.1

Do I have to rub fossil-rocks on my face to be manly? I wondered. Is it effete to want to nourish your skin with aloe vera and tree oil and all the other good stuff, stuff that actually sounds nice and looks delicious to boot?2

I am a coward and a conformist, so I end up buying what marketers have prescribed to my gender, but this dilemma is not unfamiliar to me. I grapple with it at other times too, like when I’m shopping for perfumes.

Brut is the first perfume I remember seeing, and surreptitiously using. The green bottle with a long, slender neck and metal dog tag is now available at every street corner, but when I was young it was a precious commodity. In the 1990s, imported items such as French perfumes were expensive and difficult to procure. Using Brut was a mark of sophistication, a much classier habit than the plebeian practice of caking your armpits with fragrant talcum powder. My father went to great lengths to get his fix, often buying bottles during our forays into Nepal and smuggling them back across the border.3

I was instructed not to touch the bottle of Brut, so naturally, I missed no opportunity to get my hands on it. Because my father made every effort to make the perfume last, and because too liberal a spray would’ve let my parents sniff out my crime, I had to be careful when I pressed the nozzle. But the scent was only part of the allure. I marvelled at the bottle’s heft, at the deep emerald glint of the glass, and the thrill of seeing foreign words printed on its front, words that every Indian has mispronounced at some point in their lives: Eᴀᴜ ᴅᴇ Cᴏʟᴏɢɴᴇ.

Perfumes have a hoary history, wafting back to ancient civilizations. The Mesopotamians began using incense around 4000 years ago, and when they were not too busy building pyramids the Egyptians also devised ways to capture and use fragrances in religious rituals. Later, the Greeks and Romans and Arabs all contributed to the distillation and manufacture of liquid perfumes, but it was in the 17th and 18th centuries that the industry exploded.

In 1709, Giovanni Maria Farina, an Italian man who lived in Cologne (in Germany), began selling a concoction whose fragrance he described as reminiscent of ‘…an Italian spring morning, of mountain daffodils and orange blossoms after the rain.’ He named it after his adopted hometown, and within decades Eau de Cologne had spread all over the continent. The invention was especially popular with European royalty and Napoleon was said to love it so much that he would ‘…go through dozens of bottles a month, splashing it on his neck, his temples, his correspondence.’

This degree of splashing can seem like an unhealthy obsession and one can only imagine how dizzy his generals must have felt during the strategy meetings at Waterloo. But remember that Napoleon was a haughty man. The popular belief that he was insecure about his height may have been debunked, but what if he suffered from a debilitating case of bad body odour? What if his exuberant use of cologne stemmed from the fear that should his underlings catch a whiff of his natural aroma, they would say he smelled like poultry — an allegation, and I speak from experience here, that can really fucking sting.

I was in the sixth standard when the epithet was coined by a friend. ‘What is that horrible smell?’ he said one afternoon during recess, as he looked around the classroom. He walked along the desks, sticking his nose out like a blasted bloodhound, and when he came up to me, he leaned in and immediately reeled back, grimacing. ‘It’s Rohan! My god, he smells like a chicken shop. Why do you smell like poultry, man?’

‘Poultry!’ another friend chimed in. ‘That’s exactly it. He does smell that way. What have you been doing, poultry?’

And then, the chants began: ‘Hahaha. Poultry! Poultry!’

I attempted a panicked defence. Being one of the scrawniest kids in my class, an unwilling member of the diminutive group that was shepherded into the front-row during yearbook photographs, was bad enough. I despised the fact that I was tinier and skinnier than all of my friends. And now, my battered self-esteem had to contend with being the stinky one, too? Ye gods, I thought, did your cruelty know no bounds!

First, I tried to persuade them that I was not the fetid source, that the stench must have travelled in through the open windows. When this tactic only led to louder chants, I switched tracks. It was my shirt, I conceded, in partial surrender. Maybe my shirt had not been washed properly. Perhaps it was old and musty. I will burn this uniform, I promised, by way of a peace offering, and we need never speak of this incident again. I thought this was a reasonable proposition but kids, as you know, are the bloody worst. They are as adamant as they are vicious. Once they sink their teeth into a victim they can hassle and harry, there is no turning back. I could have told them I was critically ill and would not live to see the end of the term, and it would have made no difference to that bunch of twelve-year-olds. They would have catcalled me till the end, making sure that ‘Poultry!’ was the last thing I heard as I drew my dying breath.

Since I was free of mortal sickness — and how unfortunate this seemed at the time — I was destined to endure the taunt for the rest of my school-going years. I grew taller, and more thick-skinned but the nickname still stuck, it still hurt. The people I’ve met after leaving school have never commented on my smelliness. Maybe the body odour issue was an adolescent quirk that has since disappeared; or maybe the friends I now have are too polite to mention it, and have grown adept at holding their breaths in my vicinity. Whatever the reason, I have taken pains, for most of my adult life, to avoid another Poultry-gate.

In my twenties, this was achieved by dousing myself with Axe deodorants. Women did not fall crashing through the ceiling, as the advertisements had led me to expect, but at least they did not pinch their noses when I was nearby. As I have grown older, though, I have started exploring perfumes. ‘An urbane man should have a signature scent,’ Simran would tell me when we first got married, and then roll her eyes when I pointed at the Axe Dark Temptation Smooth Chocolate Fragrance on my dressing table. It was at her behest that I started visiting the perfumery section of shopping malls, and I could see the appeal.

There is an elegance to a vial of eau de parfum that you cannot get with a can of body spray. Even the way you deploy their contents is different. Unless you are Napoleon, who presumably did not have credit card bills to worry about, you are meant to use judicious spurts. A sprinkle here, a dab there, the whole exercise of wearing perfume is very chic. And there is also the flicker of hope, fuelled by the posters decorating the aisles, that choosing the right cologne will make you as attractive as Brad Pitt or Jude Law or, if you’re really into bracelets and tattoos, Johnny Depp.

The first thing I noticed, during a recent trip to a perfume store, was a wall-length picture of Johnny Depp’s face in profile — the wispy moustache, the chiselled jaw, and the narrowed eyes looking into the distance — with the word ‘SAVAGE’ plastered across his chest. He did look like he’d turned up for the photoshoot after missing a few showers, but this still felt a little rude. And even if he had crapped on his marital bed (or was that Amber Heard?) it did not mean he ought to be publicly shamed in this manner. I was about to nudge Simran and point to the picture, when she addressed the shop attendant.

‘Hi, can we try the Dior Sauvage please? It’s for my husband.’

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ the man replied, thrusting a jar of stale coffee beans under my nose.

Glad to have not vocalised my Savage-related thoughts, I took a deep breath as the attendant sprayed some scent onto a strip of paper and waved it around, as if performing a complicated magic spell.

‘Very nice,’ I said, and then asked if I could sample something else, perhaps that bottle with the pink-tinted base?

‘But sir,’ he said, with a frown, ‘that is a floral scent. It is for women.’

In Giovanni Maria Farina’s day, this would not have been a problem. When Gio created the Eau de Cologne, the aroma that reminded him of daffodils and orange blossoms, he never specified the gender that was supposed to wear it. Josephine loved it as much as Napoleon, and nobody batted an eye. For centuries, all manner of scents — whether musky or aquatic or woody — were used by both men and women, depending on their preferences. The categorisation of certain smells as ‘feminine’ and others as ‘masculine’ began as a marketing ploy in the early 1900s, and this schism has now become ubiquitous. So ingrained is this perception in our consciousness that even the gendering of shower gels, or face wash, has begun to seem unremarkable.

A more tenacious man may have ignored the attendant’s look of grim disapproval and insisted on trying the floral scent. He would have recalled the origins of cologne and been more open-minded, sweeping aside the stereotypes foisted upon us by brand executives. But alas, I am a weakling and a slave to convention. My resolve crumbled and I returned the pink-tinted bottle to the shelf, eyes cast down in defeat.

‘I will take the Savag…er, the Sauvage,’ I mumbled, thinking to myself that the next time I buy a perfume, it will be goddamned floral.

‘What do you want to watch?’ she asks.

‘Oh man, not this again. We finished that last show already? Dammit.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Should we do a rerun of The Office?’ I suggest, trying to find a pristine patch on my plate to stow the rotis.

I hate it when different food items begin to mingle on a dish. Curries and dal go in separate bowls, obviously. But you’d expect a dry aloo gobi to maintain decorum and keep to its corner when sharing plate space with chicken kebabs. Far too often, however, a watery discharge seeps out of the sabzi, extending to the left and right like outstretched arms eager to embrace all comers. The roti becomes soggy and the kebabs turn damp. It’s disgusting.

‘Just take a side plate for the rotis,’ Simran says, rolling her eyes. ‘And no, not The Office. How about a movie?’

‘Now?! At eight-thirty? We will have to stay up way past our bedtime. Not a chance in hell.’

‘That’s true. But let’s watch a movie tomorrow. We can start early.’

‘Do you have one in mind?’

‘Yes. Annabelle.’

I purse my lips. Simran has a sly smile on her face but I am not so easily baited. I know I must pick my next words with care.

‘Is that the one with the haunted doll?’ I ask, nonchalance personified.

‘Correct.’

‘I thought you didn’t care for movies of that sort.’

‘Oh, I like horror films a lot,’ she says, with a wide grin. ‘You are the one who is scare…’

‘Listen, woman!’ I did not mean to squeak but a man can only take so much. ‘I have told you this a million times. I am NOT scared of horror films. I just don’t enjoy them. There is a massive difference.’

My baleful look is lost on her because Simran has her back to me, with elbows out and hands on her waist. She flaps her arms and embellishes the act with pitch-perfect vocals.

‘Cluck! Cluck! Chicken! Chicken!’

As the more mature person in the relationship, I choose not to dignify this performance with a response. But what annoys me all the more is knowing Simran would be petrified if she had to watch Annabelle alone. She would never do it. She does not actually like horror movies, not in the way my father does.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting on a small cot with my father, a green knitted quilt drawn all the way up to my eyes, as Evil Dead played on the TV. I must’ve been four, perhaps five, at the time. This was before the era of cable television, so my father would procure video cassettes and plan movie nights for one. I suppose others were welcome to join, but my mother couldn’t be bothered and I was deemed too young. I do not recall why an exception was made for Evil Dead. Maybe my parents had tired of locking me in the bathroom and were experimenting with newer forms of punishment.1

I have long forgotten the plot of the movie and have only a dim memory of some scenes. But I do remember the tightness in my chest as I sat through the full thing, every jump scare making me wonder: ‘This is what grown-ups watch for fun?’

Satellite channels brought a richer bouquet of creepy content to Indian homes a few years later, and my father devoured them all. The Zee Horror Show was a national treasure, as far as he was concerned, until it lost its place to Aahat. The latter show ran an episode, once, about a full-length mirror that was a portal to another dimension. If you made the mistake of looking into it, you were trapped in the mirror-prison while your reflection stepped out and took your place in the real world. After that episode aired, I went days without so much as glancing at any mirror in my vicinity, not even to check on the pimples that would forever be mushrooming on my face.

When it came to chilling title tracks, though, the Zee Horror Show was unmatched. Every time it came on, I would scurry back to my room. ‘Can you please turn that down?’ I’d shout as I opened a comic book. ‘I’m trying to study!’

My father would take this as his cue to increase the volume. Sometimes he would add his own baritone to the eerie choral, managing to sound both spooky and overjoyed. ‘Come, the show is starting,’ he would beckon from the living room, oblivious to my desire to be in a corner of the house that was furthest from the TV.

The diseased minds behind the Zee Horror Show, the Ramsay Brothers, also made a slew of horror movies that ended up on TV channels. The Ramsays were great believers in optimization and making the most of a single script. Why write five screenplays if one could do the job?

And so, every film would feature a tantrik, an abandoned haveli in the wilderness, a group of young people with terrible haircuts, and a watchman who was always one body part short of being fully abled — missing any eye in one instance, or a limb in another. There would be frequent power failures (which, to be fair, was true to life) and thunderstorms. An amawas ki raat would occur at some point in the story. And like clockwork, the monster would appear at the precise moment a woman entered the shower. For heroines in a Ramsay movie, bathing was akin to inviting death.

These films were a bit too campy for my taste but my father lapped them up. His love for the genre was so pure as to make quality irrelevant. It didn’t matter to him whether a movie had been critically acclaimed and won honours, or been cobbled together after a weekend’s shooting in Lonavala. If it claimed to be macabre and terrifying, he would watch it without question. (It is this same logic that now keeps him glued to Aaj Tak, but let us not digress.)

I suspect his love for the supernatural was seeded at an early age when his mother rocked him to sleep with a bedtime yarn, because few people narrated a ghost story with as much relish as my thamma.

My paternal grandfather worked in government, and spent his career travelling to remote corners of Madhya Pradesh. His family would tag along for his long-term postings, but during his shorter field visits he would often be alone. In the twenty-odd years that I knew him, my grandfather couldn’t have spoken more than two dozen words to me. He was a reserved man and, I realise now, I made little effort to know him. But I suppose he was more communicative with his wife because thamma was never short of stories of his adventures.

Thamma was garrulous till the end, capable of long monologues about Western literature, Hindu mythology, and the spiritual traditions. When she hit her groove you couldn’t get a word in and had to inch towards the door before claiming you’d heard someone calling for you. But when she recounted stories of my grandfather’s travels, I was riveted.

She always began these accounts with the declaration that everything she was about to relate was true, that the events had actually occurred; the conviction of this statement always made my spine tingle.

‘This happened in the 1960s,’ she’d begin, ‘when your grandfather went on a tour of the villages in his district. These tours would last for weeks and back then there was no way for us to stay in touch. Many of the places he visited didn’t have electricity or even proper roads. I only learnt about this incident when he returned and told me.

‘One evening, he got delayed at a programme and realised he would not be able to get to the village where he was supposed to spend the night. Your grandfather avoided travelling after sunset, even when he had a driver with him. There was the risk of dacoits on some roads, and his government-issued Ambassador was trusty but old. A puncture in the middle of nowhere could be catastrophic. He’d travelled in the area before and knew there was a dak bungalow a few kilometres away. He decided to make an unscheduled stop there, and leave the next morning.

‘When they drove into the compound, it looked like the bungalow was empty. They called out for a watchman or a caretaker but nobody responded. There were no other houses nearby, not a soul around for miles. It was dark already and they had to choose between forcing the doors of the bungalow open or spending the night in the car. You know your grandfather would never dream of damaging government property, so a sleepless night in the Ambassador seemed inevitable. He was about to suggest this to his driver, when he saw a man hobbling towards them. The man had a stick in his right hand, and held out a kerosene lamp with his left. The brown shawl wrapped around him made him blend into the inky blackness. Only his arm was visible in the feeble glow of the lamp, the flame swinging gently as he came closer. “Hello, sir,” he said, in a soft voice. “I was not told to expect anyone tonight.”

‘The man was standing at a respectful distance and his face was covered by his shawl. He sounded old, though, and the skin on his arm was like the bark of an ancient tree. Your grandfather explained the situation and asked if the man was the caretaker. “I am,” he confirmed in that soft voice, “I have held that post for many years.” Over the next couple of hours, rooms were readied and food was prepared. There was no power. Candles and oil lamps formed little pools of light while the rest of the house was cast in shadow. After dinner, the driver retired to his quarters and the caretaker led your grandfather to the guestroom. “You’ve come here before, haven’t you?” the old man whispered, when they were alone. “I remember you.”

‘“Yes, that’s true….but… I’m sorry, I don’t recognise you.”

‘The old man nodded, as if he expected this answer. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” he said, “please call me if you need anything.”

‘“That’s fine, I won’t trouble you any more. Thank you…. And don’t you live in the outhouse? I doubt my voice would reach you all the way there, so I won’t bother.”

‘“Don’t worry. I’ll hear you. Just shout ‘Caretaker’ and I’ll come. Sleep well, sir.”

‘After a fitful night — your grandfather never managed to sleep well in unfamiliar places — he was woken by a knock on the door. It was early but bright already. The sunlight streaming in from the windows made the dust motes dance in the air. When he unlatched the door, the driver rushed in, pale and panting: “Sir! Please come outside. You have to meet someone.” He wouldn’t even let your grandfather change and so, dressed in his nightsuit, he followed the driver out of the bungalow. In the compound, a man stood with his head bowed. “Tell him,” the driver ordered. “Tell sahib everything you told me.”

‘The man, wringing his hands and keeping his eyes on the ground, said, “Sir, I am the caretaker of this dak bungalow. My name is…”

‘“You? But last night, there was someone else here. An old man..”

‘“Yes sir, please let me finish. I am the new caretaker. I was appointed a couple of years ago because the previous caretaker died. He had spent most of his life looking after this bungalow and the guests who would visit. But he got smallpox and did not recover. When I first started, I knew there was something wrong with this place. On many nights, I would hear someone walking around the compound or see a lamp in the distance. When I’d go to investigate, there would be no one there. I was convinced he never left, that old caretaker. His aatma returned here every night. I cannot quit this job but I decided I would not spend any more nights in this haunted place. Hardly anyone comes to this bungalow anyway, and I am usually informed when guests are expected. So, I return to my village every evening and come back in the daytime. I am sorry, sir. But from what your driver said it seems both of you met the old caretaker so you know I am not lying. His aatma will never leave this dak bungalow.”’

The first time masimuni heard this story, she refused to believe it. ‘You’re making this up,’ she said to thamma when the story was over, her eyes very wide. ‘There couldn’t have really been a ghost, no way!’

When I was a child, I had trouble imagining masimuni as my mother’s younger sibling. She was more of an elder sister to me than an aunt — not so much an adult as a playmate. It helped, also, that she shared my distaste for the paranormal.

‘Of course it’s true.’ Thamma was indignant; she never lost a debate in her life. ‘There are things in this world that are beyond our understanding. Let me tell you about this other time…’

Masimuni soon learnt not to question the veracity of these tales, but midway through a story she would turn to me with a morose expression and say, ‘Ajke raat e ar ghum hobe na.’2

Psychologists point to a number of reasons to explain the appeal of horror stories. Part of it is thrill-seeking behaviour and the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming a fear. Curiosity about a world beyond our own plays a role, too. And some academics even believe that scary movies can help reduce anxiety. This theory claims that when you watch an unsettling film, your attention is focussed on the dangers playing out on screen. As a result, when the film ends your pent-up stress is released, and you feel like you’ve just stepped out of the spa.

Complete garbage, of course.

There is an obvious and gaping hole in this logic which must be evident to anybody who has watched a horror film: What about the rocketing of stress when you switch off the lights at bedtime?

In the mid-1990s, soon after we moved to Kolkata, masimuni lived with us for a time. I did not mind sharing my room with her; in fact, I was glad for the company. As an eight-year-old, I had a reasonable fear of the black hole under my bed and I figured having another person in the room would reduce the chances of demonic incursions. But masimuni alerted me to other risks I had failed to consider.

The room had a large steel trunk, set against the wall across from the bed. It was a battered old thing. Every square inch of the trunk sported a dent and a corner of the lid had caved in. I don’t think it housed anything useful because we rarely opened it. It was covered with a blanket and had become one of those vestigial pieces of furniture we neither use nor throw away. It just lay there, squatting, blocking the entrance to the toilet.

Masimuni was convinced that every night, while we slept, a skeleton came and sat on that steel trunk.

We discussed this problem at great length. Was she sure it was a skeleton, and not a wraith or ghoul of some other sort? She was insistent. ‘I know it in my bones,’ she said. (I didn’t dare ask why she was so certain, and whether she’d caught a glimpse of the creature.) Would keeping the doors and windows locked serve to bar him — or her, far be it from me to misgender anyone — from our room? Unlikely, we concluded. Locked doors meant nothing to apparitions. What if we told my parents and asked them to come up with a solution?

‘They won’t believe us,’ said masimuni with a sad shake of her head, and she was right. My mother laughed away the idea, but also refused to swap rooms with us. Since we were left to deal with this situation, we came up with a protocol: Always sleep facing away from the trunk. Never leave the bed at night. Never open eyes till dawn. This strategy worked and I never saw the skeleton; but it wasn’t easy. There were times when I’d wake up, my bladder fit to burst, and realise it was still dark. I’d snap my eyes shut and lie there, holding it in until the first rays of the sun allowed passage to the loo. Shaolin monks are also known to possess such mastery over their bodies, though perhaps their training impulse is different.

Masimuni moved out a couple of years later and the trunk soon followed. I stopped thinking about the skeleton then because why would it return to my room if it had no place to sit?

The trouble with being a teenager is you don’t realise how bravado leads to self-sabotage. Say, for instance, you’re at a sleepover with your friends and one of them suggests putting on The Exorcist. Perhaps the fellow meant it as a joke, but once the idea is floated you are all locked in a game theory hellscape. Each of you is perturbed by the prospect of watching that ghastly movie in the middle of the night. But nobody wants to veto this proposal and be forever labelled a coward. ‘Sure, I have no problem,’ you say, in turns. ‘Do you have a problem?’

That, more or less, is how we ended up, all six of us huddled on a bed, watching The Exorcist at 2AM.

I had strategically procured a pillow before the movie started, and was thus able to duck behind it when necessary while also using it to muffle my screams. There were a few gasps and cries along the way, but when the film ended we all agreed it is was not all that scary.

‘They say it’s the best horror movie of all time.’

‘Yeah. Apparently, the theatres had ambulances on standby. Because so many people had heart attacks during the shows.’

‘Pfft. I mean, sure, some bits were good. But I think it’s overrated.’

‘Yeah, I don’t know why people are frightened by it.’

‘Listen, will you go the kitchen and get some water?’

‘Me? Why me? Why don’t you go?’

‘Haha.. you’re scared to leave the room or what?’

‘No, I just don’t feel like it. You go if you want water.’

‘Where is the light switch for the corridor and kitchen?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to go and find out.’

‘Fine, forget it. I am not that thirsty anyway.’

Two decades on from that screening of The Exorcist, I no longer let my ego lead me astray. I have grown more self-aware, more in touch with who I am. This knowledge allows me to be secure in my skin and not be swayed by how others may perceive me.

It is very freeing, I must tell you. Because now, when people ask if I want to watch a horror movie I do not hesitate to say no. ‘It’s not that I am scared of horror films,’ I clarify. ‘It’s just that I have never enjoyed them.’

But, of course, you don’t. Writing anything is much too inconvenient at the time. You are holding an umbrella and your bus is approaching. You will do it later, you think. And then, three days have passed and you are at the airport, sipping bad coffee and flipping through blanks pages and feeling terrible about it all. Next time, you swear to yourself, next time I will journal constantly.

It is a great habit, carrying a travel diary. It is the bit about never using it that leaves you feeling miserable.

Last week, I wrote about the dozen days we spent in Norway and Denmark. It was the ninth time I carried a pocket diary with me, and the ninth time I failed to record most of everything I saw. A few of the notes I did make coalesced into the essay you must’ve read. (What do you mean you haven’t read it? For shame! Go read it now.) Some of the other things I scribbled are documented below.

There is a woman in the check-in queue who is wearing a laundry basket. Upon closer inspection, the basket reveals itself to be a mesh-walled cat carrier. A cat sits inside. Every few minutes the woman leans forward and whispers to it, but the cat’s attitude is one of utter disdain. It is not even looking at her, as if it is sick of her face. (I am told this is standard feline behaviour.) The woman is accompanied by a younger man. A cat hangs off him too, though he does not speak to it with that wild-eyed look. Give him a few years, I guess.

The cats board the flight with us. I am worried they will prove to be nervous flyers and mewl through the night. They prove me wrong and behave admirably. Not a peep escapes them. That human baby though…

Our flight from Mumbai is delayed. It lands in Munich over an hour later than it was supposed to. This leaves us with little time to catch the connecting flight to Oslo. A Lufthansa employee speeds us through immigration. I have no doubt she represented Germany in the Olympic race walking event. She is ambling along, far ahead of us; we are sprinting behind, unable to keep up.

The Munich terminal is a bloody township. We arrived at Gate L. Gate K seems to be in a different pincode. We reach a security checkpoint and the guy manning it is having a bad day. Perhaps a bad year. His face is set into a scowl and he is snapping at everyone within a two-metre radius. I think I see him punch a few backpacks on the X-ray conveyor belt. I step into the full-body scanner, gingerly, avoiding eye contact. I am waved through with a grunt. Simran is not as fortunate. She gets a walloping for not standing at the designated spot. Can’t you see the signs, the man barks. I would have performed my husbandly duty and come to Simran’s defence, but he is quite a burly fellow.

Who made him a security officer, Simran grumbles after she’s escaped, with an attitude like that he should be a butcher.

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Twenty minutes later, we reach Gate K4 just in time to see our flight backing away from the boarding dock. The ex-Olympian apologises, not a bead of sweat on her perfect brow. We stand hunched over, catching our breath.

At the Lufthansa Munich helpdesk they tell us we should fly to Frankfurt, and then catch a connection to Oslo. Our reward for this airport hopscotch will be the opportunity to sample an original frankfurter. (The frankfurter turns out to be average. I wouldn’t recommend you missing a flight to eat it.)

What the fuck is up with seagulls? Why are they such dickheads?

You cannot eat anything at the harbour without risking an attack from these goons. Their strategy, I soon realise, is to swoop low and intimidate you into dropping your food by flapping their massive wings near your face. Bastards.

At Oslo, we see one of the seagull mafia dons. This specimen has a rubber bracelet on one foot, probably because he served jail time and is out on parole. He has pilfered a slice of white bread and is pecking at it, strewing bits of food on the ground. He focuses on the centre and ignores the crust, spoilt brat that he is. Whenever another bird comes close, hoping to steal a bite, Don Gull launches a vicious attack. It is no contest, he outsizes all his rivals. A few minutes on, with less than a quarter of the slice left, Don Gull leaves. I suppose he’s had his fill. A few sparrows appear to peck at the crumbs. But the moment another seagull lands next to the tattered remains, Don Gull comes flying in, a comet hurtling towards land. His shrieking makes my skin crawl. And after he’s scared everyone off, he doesn’t even eat the bread. He returned solely to traumatise the other birds (and me). What a fucking bully.

I am all for transparency and openness, I am, but let us be reasonable: Is it necessary that while ordering a cheeseburger I should have to look at gigantic hunks of raw beef?

I cannot avoid seeing them, the carcasses occupy an entire wall. They hang from metal hooks larger than my fist, like meaty exclamation marks. Their size is startling — they seem as big as full-grown cows, which, of course, checks out. You have a nice place here, I want to tell the waiter, but have you given some thought to changing the decor? How about some curtains or something? It’s just that I prefer seeing my food in the cooked form.

Fortunately, we are able to find a table with a view of the street outside. It is an enjoyable meal — the ginger ale chilled, the burger excellent — as long as I remember to look straight ahead and forget what lies behind my back.

The hotdog stand we visit later has no food (grilled or l’original) on display, bless them. This allows me to eat a reindeer hotdog while having only a vague sense of what a reindeer looks like. (I know Santa employs them and that Rudolph has a red nose, but that is the limit of my knowledge.) It tastes like pork, in case you are wondering.

In 2007, a Danish crew sailed 1,000 nautical miles from Roskilde to Dublin on a scientific mission. The voyage was meant to replicate a similar journey the Vikings undertook a millennia ago. The expedition ship was a faithful recreation of a Viking vessel, and the crew used the same tools their forefathers would have relied on to survive the frigid North Sea.

Madcap adventures of this sort are a field of study known as ‘experimental archaeology’. Theory can only get us so far, the logic goes. It is only when we wade into the ocean with medieval equipment that we get a real taste of history. Experimental archaeology has its critics, but I am all for it. In fact, I am ready to offer myself up for experiments.

Didn’t a bunch of kings spend their days sleeping, being fed, and having their feet massaged? What was that experience truly like? Shouldn’t we pay someone to live in similar circumstances and compile empirical reports? I’d be happy to volunteer. Anything for science.

Videshi ice cream. Oh my god. Every scoop is a work of art.

What an honor, and a privilege, to be able to stuff our faces with it.

We are sitting outside a cafe in Copenhagen when a woman wheels a pram up to us. Excuse me, she says with a smile, would you mind keeping an eye on my baby while I go inside. I’ll be right back.

Lady, I want to respond, you want to leave your baby, your baby, in the care of two brown strangers, people you have never met and will likely never see after this brief interaction? Do you know, I consider adding, that folks who do know us, our friend and such, would never leave their kids alone with us? We could be maniacs, or serial killers! Who’s to know? You certainly don’t.

I don’t get to say any of this because she is already gone. Simran and I stare at the pram, not daring to blink. She returns in a couple of minutes, thanks us and walks away before we can warn her to never, ever, visit India with her child.

I am craning my neck, in ways I will later regret, to memorise this panorama when I hear a woman tut. She looks South Asian and my hunch is confirmed when she speaks to her companion in Hindi.

‘Yahaan kya special hai?’ she says with a grimace. ‘Kyun aaye hum yahaan? Aise hi faltu ka hype banaya rakha hai.’1

The man she is addressing, perhaps her husband who is guilty of booking this trip, avoids her eyes and bears her complaints with stoic silence. Since I am not bound by the vows of matrimony that stay his tongue, I can express my outrage. I turn to Simran, who is trying to hide a smile.

‘Is she blind?’ I exclaim, in a voice that I hope will carry. ‘Does she genuinely believe all this’ — I wave my agitated arms — ‘this incredible setting is “faltu ka hype”? What was she expecting to see during a cruise in the UNESCO World Heritage fjords? Shopping malls!?’

The woman doesn’t seem to hear me and I am, of course, too much of a coward to confront her. Instead, I mutter curses as we step onto the gangplank and glare at the back of her head until a crowd of tourists swallows her and carries her out of sight.

Later, when my rage subsides, I wonder why the woman was left so cold by a place so scenic. She is unlikely to have encountered more picturesque landscape, atleast not without the aid of mind-expanding substances, so it couldn’t have been a case of her being underwhelmed by the fjords. I suspect her disappointment resulted from a more fundamental failure: an omission to examine her desire to travel.

Travel can offer varying types of experiences, and what impresses one person may cause another to only shrug. I am a reasonable man, and so I understand that the spectacular vistas I find breathtaking may hold no appeal for dimwits who listen to Yo Yo Honey Singh. It is all a matter of individual taste and preference. This is why it is important to think about one’s own expectations from a trip, and to ascertain what one wants from a vacation. If you aren’t clear-eyed about the things that motivate you to travel, you cannot design an itinerary that is best suited to you.

Realising this has made me more intentional when planning trips. I have also become more wary of ‘must-see attractions’ all tourists are urged to visit since my ambiguous experiences in Japan. (You can read about it here and here.) Eavesdropping on that lady may not have been great for my blood pressure, but it did surface a query I spend a lot of time turning over in my head: Why do I like to travel?

At the same time that we are anxious to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable.

— Henry David Thoreau

My love for travel is grounded in a longing to see more of the world, especially the natural wonders of our planet. A trip to Norway in July ruled out the possibility of seeing the aurora borealis, the mesmeric northern lights that appear in the Arctic sky during winter. But I was keen to sample the other geographical quirk that dominated fridge magnets in this country: the fjords. I had read about fjords being ‘long, narrow inlets [of water] with steep sides… formed through glaciers deepening existing valleys’. This description, however, had not prepared me for my first sighting of them, from the window of an airplane.

The flight from Oslo to Bergen takes less than an hour, which is probably why the aircraft skims close to the ground. Other than some scattered clouds, the land below remains in view as you coast over it; and my god what a view it is. The fjords become visible soon after you leave the runway in Oslo. Initially, they appear as pockmarks on the earth, little pools glittering in the sun like coins that have spilled out of an overfull purse. As the plane heads west, they widen into thick fingers cleaving the terrain, almost riverine. Low hills begin to appear. In places, the rockfaces are streaked with snow, long slashes of white on a canvas of green and grey in the manner of a Jackson Pollock painting. By the time you descend towards Bergen, the sea and land have swapped places. Small islands now lie as smudgy dots in a wide expanse of blue.

(Just to be clear, the plane does not keep descending to plunge into the ocean, and I am not writing to you from beyond the grave. It does land on solid ground in Bergen.)

Views of snowcapped mountains feature high on my list of ideal travel experiences, but I am not wedded to the wilderness. I enjoy exploring cities too, particularly when they look as if they’ve been 3D-printed out of a picture book. In Oslo and Bergen, there were entire neighbourhoods that seemed too pristine to contain people. For one thing, there was no sound. There never is any sound in European cities. Over twelve days in Norway and Denmark, I noted two instances of honking. Two short, seemingly apologetic, notes of protest. Earlier today, I nearly ran into a van that jumped a red light at Khar, and then the two of us composed a passionate duet of screamed obscenities and long-pressed horns, until the honking of the vehicles behind us drowned out our music. And this was within fifteen minutes of leaving my home.

The silence was not the only bit that was striking. The streets were clean. The public parks were immaculate. There were quaint cobbled paths everywhere (which are, admittedly, a bloody pain when you’re dragging your suitcase to a hotel). And most houses looked like confectionery items you could stick a fork in to gouge out a frosting-filled bite. I have rarely felt the urge to sink my teeth into a building as much as in the past week.

The architectural aesthetic of a city can also reveal aspects of its history and character. The old quarters of Oslo bear testament to the centuries Norway spent under Danish rule. The famous steeple-roofed facade of the wharf in Bergen (Bryggen) was built by German traders and stands as a symbol of the city’s multiculturalism. And the cycling paths of Copenhagen exist to remind us of the Dark Ages, when life was precarious and you could be ambushed any moment by speeding bikes.

Cyclists infest every corner of Copenhagen, hurtling about its thoroughfares like angels of Death. I suppose they were humans once, but chronic pedalling has hollowed them, leaving empty husks wearing those ridiculous helmets. They wait for no one and are forever in a rush. As in most first-world cities, in Copenhagen, too, pedestrians have right of way.2 This means you can step onto the road (at designated spots) and oncoming cars will stop to let you cross. But if you try this in the cycling lane, you will be lying on the ground with tread marks on your face.

My theory is that modern-day Scandinavians tend to be courteous and peaceable, until they mount a bike. Once they start pedalling, the old Viking instincts emerge.

I am a bit of a history buff, so I had set aside an afternoon to visit the National Museum in Oslo (Nasjonalmuseet). I had expected Viking artefacts and Edvard Munch paintings — but what I got, instead, was exhibit after exhibit of chairs. No, no, that was not a typo. You read it right the first time. Chairs. Sometimes with four legs, often three, occassionally two. Dozens and dozens of chairs with varied morphology. I walked from one room to the next, marvelling at the ingenuity, and doggedness, of the Norwegians. Here was a race that had dedicated itself to crafting the perfect piece of furniture, and proudly demonstrating it to the world. So immersed were they in this pursuit that at some point they stopped caring whether the über-chair they were designing even looked like a chair any more. I mean, what else could explain them coming up with the Ekstrem Chair:

With so many chairs to display, the Nasjonalmuseet had little space left for Viking history. I thought I’d have better luck at Copenhagen, but I was wrong. Apart from one, somewhat creepy, exhibition about a Viking-age sorceress, the National Museum at Copenhagen was also quite light on Viking memorabilia. It was on the last day of our trip, when we visited Roskilde, that we unearthed the reason for this mysterious paucity.

Roskilde is a quiet, suburban district, a thirty-minute train ride from Copenhagen. A museum on its seafront houses the remains of five Viking ships that are a thousand years old. Archeologists worked for decades to excavate the wrecks from the seabed and reconstruct them for public display. It is a remarkable initiative, and standing at an arm’s length from millennia-old vessels offers a rare perspective of history. It was at this museum that we learnt how few Viking artefacts have survived, and how the term ‘Viking’ itself is debated by historians. Even the totems of viking-hood you find in popular media — like the horned helmets — have no basis in archeological fact. I think that’s a shame. Adding horns to the helmets of modern-day cyclists would certainly suit those devils.3

Jizō, he explained, was the patron saint of children and travellers (very apt, I thought, since every child is a born adventurer and every traveller a born-again child).

— Peter Matthiessen

Countrysides and cities exert a pull on me, no doubt, but I also value travel as an opportunity to encounter new cultures and people. You can, of course, meet interesting folk in the place where you live. But travelling expands the set of characters you meet, it widens the surface area of serendipity.

If I had not travelled to Norway, for instance, I would never have seen Oslo turn red as football fans flooded its streets and city plazas became party hubs. I would not have learnt the Haaland, Haaland song. (To be fair, Simran would also not have discovered the ‘Alt for Norge!’ playlist on Spotify, which, in retrospect, would have been a blessing.) I would not have stood in the rain with thousands of Norwegians to enter a fan park, would’ve never lent my voice to the roar when their team scored or feel the anguish when a goal was disallowed. And I would certainly not have heard boisterous Argentinian chants in a train on the outskirts of Bergen.

It was the day of the World Cup semifinal. Argentina were due to play England at 9PM local time, and our train was running late. A few minutes before kickoff, the family of nine — most of them clad in white-and-blue jerseys — started singing and waving plastic flags, much to the bemusement of the other passengers. I saw them whip out an iPad and search for a livestream.

Regular readers will know I am incapable of talking to strangers.4 On a normal evening, I would have noted the antics of this exuberant group from a distance and never dreamed of approaching them. But this was a momentous occasion. If they had access to the telecast, I had to step out of my comfort zone. I walked up to them and asked if I could watch the match with them. The matriarch, who was the only one with a bit of English, asked me which team I was rooting for. In that company, there was only one answer to this. ‘Messi!’ I responded, adding with a touch of panic, ‘I love Messi!’ This satisfied her, though the rest of them paid me no heed. They were too busy trying to find the right streaming channel.

The match began, but we could barely follow the action. The train kept diving into tunnels, and the consequent loss of network would trigger a flurry of Spanish expletives. During the brief moments when the screen lit up, all of us would lean in. It took very little to charge this gang. A simple horizontal pass was cheered, and a tackle induced a war cry. Once, the camera panned to the stands and the young girl next to me shrieked: ‘Fuck you, Louis Tomlinson! FUCK YOU!’ It was the only time I heard her speaking in English.

By the time our train rolled into the station, the stream had shut down. Not that this diminished their enthusiasm. They had started chanting again, at an even louder volume. I mumbled my thanks and wished them luck before returning to my seat. Part of the lure of travelling is visiting places that you know will leave you awestruck. But the other attraction of travel, perhaps one that is even sweeter, is stumbling into experiences you could never have anticipated and which you will never forget.

Growing accustomed to getting whatever you want is a dangerous thing. An adolescent needs to face rejection. He ought to have some dreams nipped in the bud, a few desires crushed beneath a cruel boot. Fail to instill such early lessons and the boy grows up to be an adult who is ill-equipped to deal with a snub.

I suppose things may have gone differently if I’d made an earlier foray into romance. School-era crushes, with all the attendant pining and spurning, are great at steeling one’s heart; especially when they are one-sided. I have friends who had their declarations of love rebuffed when they were in Class 4, and as a result, by teenage they were hardened souls. Unfortunately, I squandered most of my youth at an all-boys’ institution. The opportunity for my first crush arose only when I started higher secondary school.

She and I were classmates, and I was smitten from the start of the term. Over the course of two years, through Classes 11 and 12, I remained steadfast in my devotion even as I had less than a dozen conversations with her. I compensated for this lack of communication by stealing glances in the Chemistry lab and casting shy smiles in her direction during English period. I did what any reasonable hero in a Bollywood movie would do to attract the heroine’s attention (though I did draw the line at catcalling). To my shock and dismay, these non-verbal cues did not cause her to run into my arms. I never did muster up the courage to ask her out, and so my ardour remained suspended in limbo: unexpressed, unrequited, unfulfilled.

Ultimately, the whole affair was not much of a lesson in rejection because I did not give her the chance to reject me. In fact, I suspect if I had confessed my feelings to her, she would not have turned me down. I suspect she, too, liked me, because of the French character incident.

The French character appeared in a play, adapted from a P. G. Wodehouse short story, that my friend and I performed at school. The play was meant to be our tribute to the master. It was also meant to impress the two girls we were mooning over at the time.

My friend played the part of a young English nobleman; I was his French valet. Now, it is easy to specify the nationality of a person on the page, but such things are far harder on stage. A lesser actor would have relied only on an accent to lend a Parisian touch to the role, but my ambitions soared higher. I wanted the performance to have panache, a certain savoir-faire that would wow the audience and, in particular, a young woman in Class 12A. For this, I realised, I needed not just an accent but a repertoire of French phrases. After weeks of rehearsals, however, it was clear I could only remember a solitary line in French. I decided to make the most of it. And so it transpired that when we finally staged the play, I punctuated nearly all of my dialogues with the exclamation: ‘Ooh là là, Monsieur! Ooh là là!’

‘Did you like the performance?’ I later asked my beloved, my clammy hands twisting the beret I’d worn as part of the act.

‘Oh yes. It was great,’ she said with a smile that outshone the sun.

‘Did you notice my character was French? Took a lot of practice.’

‘It was amazing. You were the best!’

‘Mercy, mademoiselle!’ I responded with a bow. ‘Mercy boku!’

She would have made a dreadful theatre critic, bless her, but I think she would have been a supportive girlfriend — if only a debilitating shyness, and a fear of rejection and the embarassment that’d follow, hadn’t stopped me from taking a chance.

My first real brush with rejection was during a job interview at university. A top-tier law firm I had interned with in the summer was the first to visit campus when recruitment season kicked-off. The internship had gone well, so naturally, I thought I stood a good chance.2

I cleared the written test with ease. About a dozen of us were selected for the interview, and when it was my turn I strode into the room. For ten minutes or so, we discussed academic matters and when the interviewers asked me which legal subjects I liked the most, I suppressed the urge to snort. I concocted some answers I thought they’d find acceptable, being careful not to name anything as far-fetched as indirect taxation or property law. I also reminded them I had spent six weeks at their Mumbai office (which was true) and had enjoyed every minute of it (which they had no way of proving to be false). When one of the interviewers mentioned that he remembered me and had received a favourable report about my time with them, I did a fist pump under the table. The deal, I thought to myself, was sealed.

And then, they asked me the question that proved to be my undoing: ‘So what other interests do you have, outside of law?’

I think if I had been nervous, and unsure about my prospects, my response would have been more measured. But confidence made me relax into a long monologue. I spoke about books and sports. I started with football and took the scenic route to arrive at tennis. Wimbledon was underway, so it seemed fitting to talk about the previous year’s final, the one Rafael Nadal won in five sets after a four-hour-and-forty-eight-minute battle with Roger Federer. It was the greatest tennis match I’d ever seen, so taking ten minutes to sketch the highlights felt appropriate. When I finally paused, to catch my breath, the interviewers looked bemused.

‘You must like tennis a lot,’ one of them remarked, with that dead-eye stare that all lawyers must master.

‘Not as much as football,’ I said, with a grin. ‘But yes. Yes, I do.’

‘It seems so,’ he continued, ‘because you spoke about that tennis match with more passion than at any other point during this interview.’

I felt the air whooshing out of me, like a balloon being deflated. I registered a weak protest and assured him that my passion for the law ran deep. Nothing pleases me more than reviewing repayment clauses of loan agreements, I wanted to say. Just hand me a couple of hundred contracts to summarise and see how my face lights up.

But I knew it was too late to salvage the situation.

Later that evening, the firm released a list of the people they’d chosen to hire. My name was not on it.

Ever since I started writing, I have become more familiar with rejection. A bit too familiar, to be honest. I wish there was at least one literary magazine that did not deem my stories unworthy of being included in their roster. And it’d be nice if every submission to a fellowship or a contest did not end in dismissal. But they say frequent crying leads to ‘unusually clear and radiant skin’ so I shouldn’t complain. Besides, after a few dozen attempts, you grow to expect that an editor will ignore your cold email. You cease to feel upset or frustrated by this eventuality. When you accept the inevitability of failure, you become invulnerable. It is the hope that kills you.

Which is why rejections that are unforeseen, that deny you something that you thought was your due — like, say, a tourist visa to Sweden — can leave you stunned, as if someone from the Swedish Embassy — a tall, blonde gentleman, perhaps, with a mohawk and an axehead tattoo on his neck — had kicked you in the gut and then sounded a Viking war horn as you lay whimpering on the ground.

The visa application process, for Indians travelling overseas, has always been tedious. For all the soft power our country has accumulated, and all the packets of Melody chocolate the Great Leader distributes, the Indian passport remains weaker than the Indian Rupee. Vacations to Europe, especially, require weeks of planning just to get an appointment at the visa centre. I used to be annoyed by the paperwork, but at least I could rely on the outcome. On every past occasion, my passport returned with a new stamp. The whole experience was akin to sitting though a tiresome lecture. My privilege ensured that I never thought of it as an exam I could fail.

This year, too, when applying to Sweden for a Schengen visa, I felt much the same way. I assembled my bank statements, my tax filings, my salary slips, and a bunch of other documents I grumble about disclosing to the Indian government, and I handed them over to the Swedish authorities. I confirmed to them that I was, to the best of my knowledge, not a terrorist and did not, at present, intend to pursue a career in crime. I let them take my fingerprints and some unflattering mugshots. And I even gave them my phone number, knowing well it’d lead to a spike in spam calls.

A couple of weeks later, an envelope arrived on a Saturday morning. It contained twelve unstapled pages of which the most crucial ones contained the line: ‘Your visa application is therefore refused’. This grim declaration was preceded by a paragraph explaining the ‘assessment’. One reason cited was a failure to provide, and this is a direct quote, ‘a satisfactory explanation to why you chose to travel to Sweden specifically for tourism’. The appropriate response to this should have been: ‘Wait, are you implying Sweden is a terrible tourist destination? How does someone with such a low opinion of their country get a job in government?’ But etiquette stayed my hand. Instead, I sent them an impassioned plea, urging them to reconsider. My wife and I hold your nation in high esteem, I wrote, and have long wished to travel there. We are fascinated by your landscape, history, culture — but not so fascinated, of course, that we’ll begin living there illegally. We definitely plan to return, fear not.

I was hopeful my clarifications would quell their doubts. Not so, as it turned out. Ten days later, they wrote back saying they saw no reason to change their decision. Stockholm, it seemed, would remain out of reach.

I try to not be petty, like those people who nurse a grudge for a lifetime. And so, I do not want Sweden to be knocked out of the FIFA World Cup at the group stage. I did not take any pleasure from the hammering the Dutch football team administered them. I did not clap my hands, as the camera panned to grim-faced Swedes in the crowd, and shout: ‘You deserve this, you snivelling, snooty Scandinavian scum!’ I may have been hurt by their rejection, but I do not wish them ill. I will admit, though, that I no longer have any interest in visiting Sweden. If they refused to have me, then I, too, refuse to grace their shores. The only scenario where I foresee changing my mind about this will be if I receive an invitation from the Nobel Committee. In that case, I will consider the request, and assess if I should accept or reject it.

I had stayed up late to watch the final with my father. I knew all the boys in school would be talking about the match. Football had dominated classroom chatter all month. I cared little about the sport and knew less about the rules. I had caught snatches of the tournament, when my father put on a game at dinnertime. Sometimes, he would tell me stories about the countries duelling on the pitch. About the glorious history of Brazil, or the famed steel of (West) Germany. I’d nod along with mild interest. Football, to me, was like bhindi. I did not mind an occasional serving, but there was no way I could stomach it every day. I just didn’t see the appeal.

And yet, even as I stayed at the periphery of the buzz, I tried to buy into the excitement. The adolescent need to fit in, to participate in popular discussions, was overwhelming. The final match of the World Cup promised to be the climatic moment of the frenzy that had gripped my friends. I had to watch the match to be part of the gang. I couldn’t risk becoming an outcast.

The following morning all conversation centred around Ronaldo. How dazed he’d looked and how listless he’d been. Before that final, I had never seen Ronaldo play — this, however, did not stop me from holding forth on the topic. ‘That was not the real Ronaldo out there. Ronaldo is renowned for his “Banana Kick”. He can strike the ball in a way where it curves past the goalkeeper every time.’ I drew an arc with my palm to illustrate this, as if I had watched hundreds of hours of footage to gain this insight. ‘He did not do the Banana Kick even once last night. France was lucky the real Ronaldo didn’t turn up.’

My analysis focussed on Ronaldo because: (a) rumours of his ill health had started spreading soon after the final, and (b) of the twenty-two players who started the game that night, his was the only name I knew. Some of my friends were singing praises of the Zidane guy, the one who scored two goals. I did not share their enthusiasm. How good a footballer could a bald fellow really be? Besides, these debates didn’t matter anymore. The tournament was over. World Cup fever in school would soon fade, I thought, and I could return to being blissfully unaware of football.

Last week, Paul Howard opened a lovely, sepia-toned essay with this paragraph:

Someone told me once that the best World Cup you ever saw was the one you watched when you were 11 years old. Give or take a year or two either side, of course. The appreciation sweet spot is right at the beginning of adolescence, when you’re old enough to appreciate the magic of it, but young enough not to understand cynicism.

He is four years off the mark — in my case, at least — but he may be on to something.

The two most recent editions of the World Cup struggled to escape the long shadow cast by the host countries. Russia’s poor human rights record was a regular refrain in the reporting of the 2018 World Cup. When the trophy travelled to Qatar in 2022, the spotlight turned to the inhuman working conditions and migrant labourer deaths that underpinned the event. This year, the World Cup is being co-hosted by a country that is waging war on a participating nation; a country whose leader has often derided one of the co-hosts and considered annexing the other. For such sterling conduct, this leader has received the “FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World” shortly after moaning about being overlooked by the Nobel Committee — thus making him the patron saint of tantrum-throwing toddlers worldwide.

It has rarely been harder to keep the cynicism at bay.

Sport cannot be divorced from politics, and international competitions goad us into patriotic chest-thumping. George Orwell called this the “…lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units…”, which tells you how much he enjoyed his visits to Wembley. He also wrote that competitive sport was “…bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence…”. Not a person brimming with the sporting spirit, our Mr. Orwell, but you see his point.

None of this is to say I’ll be boycotting this World Cup. I watched in disbelief when Mbappe lit a fuse in Russia, his limbs whirling in the way that used to make Wile E. Coyote’s eyeballs pop out. When Messi lifted the tropy at Qatar, wearing a negligee, half a dozen of us hopped infront of a television screen as if the room had become a bouncy castle.

This year, too, when I miss a few matches it will not be on account of a moral stand — it will be because of something far more crucial, something I can never compromise on: my bedtime. But when the knockout stages roll around, I will sacrifice sleep. World Cup football is still irresistible. The millions of fans who travel halfway across the world, or pay for a bloody Zee5 subscription they will never use again, are not ignorant. They have simply made peace with the dissonant idea of a corrupt organization running the beautiful sport. They have grown accustomed to grimacing about the unsavoury operating details — the extractive ticket pricing policy, say, or the travel bans and visa rejections —even as they scan the schedule for must-watch games.

But as Paul Howard notes, it was not always like this. There was a time when you sat inside the “appreciation sweet spot”. When you could immerse yourself in the magic of the World Cup without being troubled by the off-pitch skulduggery. And odds are that even decades later, your memories of that tournament — your best World Cup — still shine as bright.

In the hours leading up to the opening game in 2002, when defending champions France would take on their erstwhile colony Senegal, I was distraught. It was the middle of the summer vacations, and like every year we were spending it with my grandparents. I loved their house and the mofussil town in Bihar where they lived, but I did not love the frequent power cuts and patchy cable TV.

If I was agnostic in 1998, by 2002 I was a zealot. A computer game had flipped the switch and years before Dani Rojas stole my line, I swore that football was life. I was ready, desperate even, for my first proper World Cup. But watching the curtain raiser was no simple matter. First, I had to pray the electricity department wouldn’t drop the ball. Second, the limited satellite channels meant Doordarshan was my only hope. The national broadcaster had wrangled the rights for a delayed telecast, close to midnight. This was the hour when the household slept and cockroaches reigned supreme. Not the normal floor-bound ones, mind you — I am talking about the fuckers that could fly. Heathen creatures that would swoop out of the dark to make your heart stop.

But the prize was worth the risk. And so, late at night, I tiptoed to the TV room — a slipper clutched tight to ward off aerial assaults — and watched Papa Bouba Diop kick the ball into an empty net, as he lay sprawled on the floor, to score the most iconic goal in Senegal’s history.

Friends, it is time I made a shameful admission. Let me just come out and say it: In 2002, I supported England.

Yes, yes, I know. I am sorry. I was young and foolish. I realize now that my lack of footballing heritage was to blame for this misadventure. When I was a child, all respectable Bengalis, who had been brought up the right way, had a binary choice in the matter of World Cup fandom. The moment little Bubai or Bubun kicked a ball for the first time, they were expected to pledge their souls to either Brazil or Argentina. The decision was not voluntary. It was an inheritance, handed down over generations and shaped by their surroundings. The allegiances of their families and the elders in their para determined their colours. And when they helped hang the white-and-blue or green-and-yellow flag above the local clubhouse, they became part of a dynasty.

It was the disreputable folk like me, the ones who took to football later in life, that strayed from this duopoly. My father had a passing interest in the sport but never felt any passion for it. I developed my mania all by myself, feeding on the TV coverage of the Premier League at the turn of the century. So, while my friends relied on their lineage and declared for one of the Latin American behemoths, I, the nouveau riche fan, picked England. Two seasons of following the English league made them the natural candidate — though even at the time, I had some misgivings.

Was supporting the England football team an act of treason? Was I betraying my country and our history? Feeling a twinge of guilt, I asked myself the question that helps guide every honourable Bengali on the horns of a dilemma: What would Netaji do? And I had to admit it was difficult to imagine Commander Bose cooing over the prospect of Paul Scholes threading a pass to Michael Owen. Perhaps it was unseemly for an Indian to root for the British? But then, I would watch David Beckham whip a free kick into the top corner and my loyalties would waver. That right boot, that face, that hair — how could I resist their charm?

As it turned out, my moral angst was laid to rest in the quarter-finals. Ronaldinho floated the ball over the six-foot-four-inch frame of David Seaman from over thirty-five yards, and I was liberated. I could enjoy the rest of the World Cup, free from favouritism and ethical quandaries. I could watch a raucous home crowd, and a fair bit of luck, carry South Korea into the semi-finals. I got to admire the speed and outrageous abilities of of Hasan Şaş and El Hadji Diouf. I could feel sorry for the cherubic Joaquín, who played out of his skin only to miss a penalty in the shootout. And I could marvel at the confidence of the elite athlete — for only the very best possess the self-assurance to play (and score) in a World Cup final while sporting a haircut that can only be described as Pubes on a Forehead™.

There will be moments during the current edition that fans will remember for years. Perhaps Cape Verde will stage an upset. Perhaps Mexico will let the brass bands and heaving Estadio Azteca stands carry them deep into the tournament. There will be magic, as there always is during a World Cup. But now, over two decades since that time in the sweet spot, we have learnt to see that magic is not the only thing on display.

The auto rickshaw rolls to a stop. I rummage in my duffle bag looking for some loose change. The rickshaw driver doesn’t accept payments via UPI. There is no smartphone perched on the handlebar of his auto. Perhaps he has not yet mastered the art of driving while looking at reels. Perhaps, he doesn’t even like reels.

‘Thank you,’ I tell him as I hand over some coins — and I mean it. There is much to admire about a man who does not like reels. Besides, when it comes to auto drivers, my bar is quite low. If they don’t zip past me, ignoring my plaintive wave, they instantly earn my approval. Unfortunately, very few auto drivers seem to care about my approval.

But this man — grey-haired and bespectacled — slows down when he sees me outside my gym. He nods when I name my destination. We share a short ride in companionable silence. Conversation is not necessary for me to gauge his character. His aura points, as the kids say, are off the charts. There hangs around him an air of decency and integrity. I have no doubt he is a solid fellow, a man of high moral standing who is guided by virtue. And so, when I express my gratitude I do so with feeling, throwing in a warm smile. I am still smiling when I cross the street. It is only when I enter my apartment building that the smile sputters because I realise I’m missing my phone.

I check my bag. I pat my pockets. I check my bag again. Shoes, yes; bottle, yes; damp towel beginning to smell foul, yes. Phone, no. Did I leave it at the gym? I keep forgetting to collect my things after a workout. Once home, I ask Simran to call my phone. It rings on and on and on, interminably. She calls my trainer. He can’t see it but he promises to check. A minute later, he calls her back. It’s not there. He tried calling my phone too, and it kept ringing. Simran turns to me as I pace the floor.

‘Did you leave it in the auto?’

‘Yeah, I guess. Call again. Maybe the auto driver hasn’t noticed it yet. I’m sure he’ll return it. He was a good guy.’

I was twelve when my electric-blue Hercules bicycle was stolen. The cycle had been a birthday gift. It was a (faux) mountain bike, with those chunky tires that I thought were the pinnacle of coolness. Precisely why a boy in a suburban Kolkata neighbourhood desired a mountain bike was not a question I could answer. It was not as if I intended to go barreling down trails on the thing. I was too scared to even venture onto busy roads. My bike would stick to the lanes and alleys around my house, but for the purposes of panache it was essential that its wheels were thick and gnarly.

It was a Sunday. Like every other Sunday, I had spent the morning cleaning the cycle, caressing its frame, its wires, its seat with a love-soaked rag. The cycle was parked at the bottom of the staircase, next to the water pump. In the first few weeks, I carried it to the landing of our third-floor flat because I could not bear to be too far from it. But my affection could not sustain the effort required in heaving it up and down the stairs. And so, in the weeks that followed, I started leaving it downstairs. It was inside the building premises and should remain safe, I reasoned. And I would keep it locked at all times, of course, making sure to double-check the clasp after every use.

Later that Sunday afternoon, when I was stepping out, I saw that the spot next to the water pump, the spot where my cycle should have been standing, was empty. Once the world stopped spinning, I ran back home, my voice choking as I raised the alarm. My mother and I rushed back down and looked around the building compound. We went out to the street. We queried the ground-floor residents. We hunted for clues. It was all to no avail. The criminals had fled. The bike was gone.

Did you forget to lock it this morning, my mother asked. Did I? I couldn’t have! But what if I did? I wailed at the ambivalence of my memory, at this soul-crushing tragedy. My loss and grief, I was certain, had no parallel in human history. No person could have ever suffered as devastating a blow. Terrible things will happen to the thief, I cried. My mother smiled. You know, a cycle getting stolen is not the end of the world, she said. I flinched at her callous words, but the woman was not done. Maybe the person who took it, she added, needed the cycle more than you. Infuriated at how clueless parents could sometimes be, I stomped off to my room where I could mourn in peace, untroubled by sanctimonious claptrap.

I was miserable for days, tormented by both guilt and anger. If I had been careless in taking care of my bike, then did I deserve this outcome? But how dare someone steal what was mine! Eventually, my parents got tired of my sulking. A few months later, they bought me a new bike, and an extra lock.

May 16, 2026. 7:15 PM

Phone calls to my number are now getting disconnected. Which means someone has my phone, and is disinclined to discuss its return. Things are beginning to look grim.

I continue pacing, wringing my hands. Simran takes charge. She logs into my laptop, fires up a device tracking app, and tries to locate my phone. A blue dot appears on the screen. Simran zooms in.

‘It’s nearby, a few buildings down the road.’

I need no further encouragement. I grab her work phone and run out. She sends me the location. It is just over a hundred metres away. I jog towards it — too self-conscious to run, too anxious to walk. I’m almost there. But the road ahead of me is empty. I cannot see any auto. Simran calls me.

‘Come back. It’s moving away now. The auto must have left from there.’

My heart cuts itself loose and free falls. It settles somewhere near my bladder. More as a reflex than in hope, I call my phone again. No response. There is nothing more we can do now. It’s over. But when I get back home, Simran doesn’t let me mope. She’s moving swiftly, gathering her things.

‘Let’s take the car and chase him down. He’s still in Bandra.’

‘Huh?’

‘C’mon, hurry! Get the car keys!’

Following orders is easier than thinking. I do what I’m told. A minute later, we are clicking our seatbelts into place. The watchman, who has been apprised of the situation, comes up to my window.

‘Sir, maine aapke number pe call kiya. Woh mera phone bhi nahi utha raha.’1

Well, at least the fellow who has his claws around my phone is equitable. I’d feel a whole lot worse if he were ghosting me but chatting with the watchman. Simran flips open the laptop. She surveys the map. Her finger charts a route to the blue dot.

‘Take a right from the exit.’

I switch on the ignition, exit our building and turn right.

My first phone was a Tata Indicom CDMA handset. My parents had bought it for me when I started University. It was a tiny thing with no SIM card, and when I received calls on it, it would occasionally allow me, when my luck was in and I stood in the right corner, to hear the caller’s voice over the static. But it had one admirable quality. Where almost every other mobile phone in the market glowed green, this phone’s backlight had the tangerine hue of sunset. This distinctive feature was enough to make me like it — and luckily, there wasn’t time for the novelty to wear off. It was stolen within six months.

I knew it was stolen, and not lost, because someone had picked my pocket. The bus route to my University was notorious for ferrying nimble-fingered crooks. I knew these sort of things happened on crowded buses, that wallets were pilfered and phones were nicked, but I never imagined it happening to me — until it did.

By the time I noted the absence and returned to the bus stop, the bus was long gone. To be honest, I was not all that upset. There was hardly anything noteworthy in the phone, except the numbers of my friends. And I remembered most of those anyway. More importantly, it was a cheap device. My parents — a judicious pair, as events had borne out — had chosen not to trust me with an expensive gadget. In fact, you could say they expected me to lose the phone, and I always strived to meet my parents’ expectations. So I was not too put out and felt entitled to demand a replacement.

It was when I lost that one as well, and then the one after that — my third phone, in case you weren’t counting — that I grew a little alarmed.

May 16, 2026. 7:30 PM

I realise, withing minutes, that I would make a fuckall spy. Every spy, Hollywood tells us, must be adept at high-speed car chases. Look at James Bond or Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne. Did they become such accomplished drivers by hesitating to overtake vehicles from the wrong side? Would you find them waiting at traffic signals, drumming restless fingers on the steering wheel? Never.

But I am crippled by caution. Even in this time of urgency, prudence refuses to let go of me. It is a Saturday evening, and the streets of Bandra are predictably packed. We inch forward. It is agonising, but our quarry is also mired in this congestion. The blue dot is less than a kilometre away. One free stretch of road is all we need.

Simran’s phone rings. It is my number, my phone calling her.

Surprise gives way to relief, and joy. I knew it! I knew the auto driver was a decent chap. Maybe he was disconnecting the earlier calls because he was ferrying passengers. Now that he’s free, he must be calling to know where he should bring the phone. I never err in judging human nature.

Simran answers the call.

‘Hello! Hello!’

‘….’

‘Hello!?’

‘….’

The line drops. She rings back. An automated voice informs us that the person we’re calling is not answering our call.

I utter an oath and turn onto Hill Road. We check the map. I have never doubted the universe’s love for cruel irony, and now it is in evidence once more. The blue dot is stationed next to Bandra Police Station. The good news is that we’re only three hundred metres away. The bad news is that I see a traffic light turning red.

The third time my phone was stolen, I flew off the rails.

I knew as soon as I’d stepped out of the bus that my Nokia 1100 was gone. I had squeezed through a crush of bodies to reach the exit. Someone must have slipped it out of my pocket in the crowd. When you lose multiple phones in quick succession, you begin to understand the workings of the criminal syndicate. I may not have known what they looked like, but I recognised the modus operandi of the gang that worked this bus route. What pissed me off was that even after pinching my two previous phones, these bastards had not been satisfied. Was there no honour among thieves?

Disregarding all thoughts of my University class, I started running. It was ludicrous to think I could chase a bus down on foot, but I wasn’t thinking. I was driven by rage. I would never have caught up if it were not for a traffic jam. By the time I reached it, the bus was beginning to move again, gathering speed. Picking up my own pace, I grasped a handle and jumped onboard.

I planned to glare at the passengers and roar in indignation. If I shouted with enough conviction, perhaps the robbers would panic. But I had not accounted for the shortness of breath that follows a sprint, and my emotional fragility. The accusations I had meant to thunder emerged as weepy squeaks, punctuated by a fair amount of huffing and puffing. This somewhat ruined the impact I was hoping to achieve. Who has my phone, I bleated. The adrenaline had receded and anguish had filled its space. I scanned the bus with watery eyes. Please return my phone. Please!

A few people stared. Some giggled. Nobody responded to my appeal. At the next stop, I got off the bus, defeated, and started walking back towards my University. Three phones, I thought to myself. Who the hell has three phone stolen from him. I’ll be damned if I ever let this happen to me again.

May 16, 2026. 7:45 PM

Rows of tail lights dot the road infront of us. A red net that has us trapped. In the distance, I can see the intersection. The blue dot is somewhere near that crossroad. There is an auto there, with my phone. A column of vehicles snakes down from it to us. We cannot move until the traffic clears. But when the traffic clears the auto will make for the highway, and soon be out of reach. This impasse has continued for many minutes.

I wonder if I am delaying the inevitable. A phone is not just a phone anymore. The repercussions of losing a Tata Indicom or Nokia 1100 did not run as far. What if they unlock my phone? What if they gain access to my mobile banking apps, my UPI? What if they log on to Instagram and post something scandalous? How will the 37 people who see my Instagram stories react?

Simran unbuckles her seatbelt.

‘It’s no use just sitting here. I’ll walk. I can reach him in two minutes.’

She gets out of the car and starts marching up the road. I lose sight of her in the crowd, and just then the cars around me start honking. The distant signal has finally turned green — and I fear it turned too soon. She will not make it in time. For the first time in my life, I want the signal to flip back to red. I want the traffic to slow down. I want the gridlock to continue.

I gain a few metres before the traffic halts again. I spot Simran on the sidewalk and call out to her. She climbs back into the car, still studying the map.

‘He got away. Another minute, and I would have reached him. He is nearing the highway now.’

‘Forget it. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here. There is no way we can catch him. Might as well wipe the phone.’

‘Are you sure? If we wipe it, we will not be able to track the phone anymore.’

‘Yes. Do it. Before he gets into my accounts.’

‘Okay… I’m sorry this happened to you.’

‘C’est la vie.’

‘Terrible things will happen to that auto rickshaw driver. Thief!’

‘You know, I still don’t believe it was him. He seemed like such a nice man. Maybe it was another passenger who found my phone — someone who needed it more than me.’

In the stores that sold kids’ clothing, my mother called the shots. Trouble started brewing when I was old enough to have opinions. I must have been thirteen or fourteen at the time of the orange t-shirt incident.

It was a half-sleeved tee with a Henley collar, and when viewed from a distance it did not, I admit, cause you to gag. Perhaps that was why my mother asked the shopkeeper to pull it out of the shelf and unfold it for inspection. Why don’t you try it on, she urged me. I was ambivalent about the tee, but what harm could come from a trial? It was only when I had wriggled into it, infront of a full-length mirror, that I was hit by its profound hideousness.

Do you remember the top Hrithik Roshan wore in Ek Pal Ka Jeena? The black stocking that clung to his torso and made no effort to cloak his nipples or his glorious abs? The orange t-shirt belonged to the same family of garments, a family that believed there should not be an atom’s breadth of space between skin and cloth. This is not objectionable per se. Some people benefit from wearing cling wrap film masquerading as clothes. I have no doubt Hrithik would’ve looked great in that t-shirt, like David spray-painted by an RSS enthusiast. Unfortunately, I — with my slender arms and narrow chest — looked like a test tube of orange squash.

I walked out of the changing room, dazed, expecting my audience to recoil. Imagine my surprise when my mother, and the shopkeeper, cried out in delight and insisted I buy the rag. The latter’s motivations were clear to me. Every sale counts and business is paramount. So I did not begrudge his insincere cooing. But how could my own flesh and blood want me to wear that thing in public? I aired my concerns but my mother stood firm. Such a lovely colour, she said. As so often happened in such situations, I soon gave in because any prolonged disagreement made me uncomfortable. If my aversion to conflict meant we ended up taking the t-shirt home, I didn’t mind. I knew my stubbornness would ensure I’d never wear it again.

By the time I started University, I had greater authority to decide the contents of my closet. Parental feedback was permitted, a concession one cannot avoid granting to folks who foot the bill, but the final decision lay with me. This autocracy, I realise now, did not always produce the best results.

In the first half-hour of The Devil Wears Prada, there’s a scene where Andy (Anne Hathaway) snorts in amusement when a couple of near-identical belts are compared to choose the best fit. In response, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) launches into her Cerulean Sweater monologue. Through a series of corkscrew jabs, delivered in that terrifying murmur, she charts the route haute couture takes in travelling from designer studios to shopping mall clearance sales.

The journey made sense, in theory. I could, if I squinted, spy a similar connection between high-street boutiques and the racks I browsed at Shopper’s Stop. But, much like Andy, I was not interested in the provenance of the clothes I picked. The glamorous world of men’s fashion, with its leather shoes and sharp suits, had little to do with me. I looked, instead, for t-shirts that sported sassy messages. (‘Do I look like I care?’ and ‘I’m with stupid 👉🏼’ are two examples.) These t-shirts would often be two sizes too large for me — a deliberate ploy to hide my gangly physique, but one that only made me more closely resemble a scarecrow. I also had a weakness for baggy cargo trousers and, I shudder at the memory, calf-length capri pants. You may recall they were all the rage in the 2000s, which begs the question: What the fuck was wrong with us?

I do not own any capris now, thank god, but my love for sweaters has survived. Ever since I was a child, I’ve rejoiced in buying all manner of winter wear: sweaters, sweatshirts, jackets, hoodies. Living in Mumbai for sixteen years has not diminished this passion. Every December, I pull out my collection and run my hand over the woollen sleeves and the knitted collars. I imagine slipping into a cardigan and wrapping a scarf around my neck; perhaps even wearing a pair of gloves and donning a monkey cap. Then, I remember where I am, so I wipe my brow, turn up the air conditioning and pack my darlings away with a wistful sigh. Unless there is a wedding to attend.

Friends, it is time I posed to you a question that has threatened the very roots of my marriage. Be judicious in your response.

If I’m invited to a reception dinner, any time between the months of November to March, I immediately reach for a sweater. Simran detests this habit. To her, this is not a personal failing but a civilizational crime. ‘I do not understand this,’ she rails. ‘What is wrong with you Bengali men?! The women spend hours getting ready to attend a function — sitting through make-up sessions, doing their hair, draping a saree. They take such pains to look good, to honour the occasion by making an effort. And you fellows just amble in there in your sneakers and your sweaters, looking ridiculous. It’s unacceptable!’

I resent this charge, of course. It is not indolence that guides my sartorial choices, but a keen sense of style. And my sweaters are nothing like the stuff Bengali uncles wear. My sweaters are gorgeous. I try explaining these nuances to Simran but she refuses to see the light. ‘Wear something proper, like a suit or a kurta. If you’re wearing a sweater, I’m not coming with you,’ she threatens. And so I end up going to these events alone.2

A few weeks ago, the Mint Lounge cover story wondered: Are Indian Men Dressing Sexier?. The answer was a cautious yes. There was no sea change yet, the article conceded, but it noted ‘…the beginning of Indian men’s quiet desire to elevate their style game.’ A designer quoted in the piece observed: ‘The average guy never really thought of style 20-30 years ago. Now, he is. Have you seen the guys (male shoppers) coming out of Zara? Many of them are so chicly dressed.’

My heart sank as I read this. It’s been years since I stepped inside (or out of) Zara. What about Uniqlo? I wanted to ask the designer. Does Uniqlo count? Am I cool and stylish if half my wardrobe is monochrome crew necks and t-shirts with Japanese motifs?

Not that it matters. I know I am not one of those Indian men who quietly desires to elevate his style game. I am the Indian man who dresses like an overgrown toddler.3 For any casual outing, instead of trousers I wear joggers, with an absurd number of pockets. The few t-shirts I have not sourced from Uniqlo feature cartoon characters. I own no linen blazers or crochet shirts, no long-sleeved polos or multicoloured shackets. And my sneakers would fit right into a teenager’s shoe rack.

My father never dressed like a grad student in his late thirties, but times have changed. Now, this youthful sensibility, borne out of a desire to deny the onset of middle age, is the hallmark of my generation.

Look around and you’ll spot men in comic book tees that’d look more appropriate on the children they are wheeling around in prams. You are likely to see more shorts at a brunch party than you did back in primary school. And two decades on from when they first made us smirk, t-shirts with sassy captions still appeal to us. And that’s fine, I suppose. To be fashionable you have to make choices that stand out, and standing out requires courage. In The Devil Wears Prada 2, there’s a scene where Miranda wears a tassel jacket, adorned with tufts of coloured thread. It makes her look a little bit like a Golden Retriever. But this is Meryl Streep we’re talking about, so obviously she pulls it off — but can you imagine a civilian in that jacket?

It is easier, therefore, to be content with the clothes we find familiar. Even if they appear age-inappropriate or fail to make a statement. For me, at least, I know this to be true. I am loath to experiment, to try outfits that do not fall within my narrow zone of comfort. But sometimes, we’ll go shopping and Simran will insist I try on something that makes me squirm. Are you sure about this, I ask her, as I tug at the sleeves and run my finger around the collar. Definitely, she replies, such a lovely colour. I fidget outside the changing room for a while, but eventually, I give in and buy the item. Why go through the unpleasantness of a quarrel, I later tell myself, when I can stuff the thing at the back of my wardrobe?

At 9:25 AM, when we reached the cafe, the floor manager told us it’d be a ten-minute wait. A family had finished their meal and were halfway through dessert — as soon as they cleared the bill their table would be ours. Ten minutes didn’t sound too bad. We stood in the narrow vestibule, taking care not to elbow the other people crammed into that space. After fifteen minutes, we made polite enquiries of the manager. More dessert had been ordered, we were told. Diabetes was clearly not a concern with this lot, though you did worry about their coronary health.

When half an hour had passed, one of our party went inside to do a recce. With every table occupied, and over half a dozen hungry folks fidgeting in the foyer, you’d expect the patrons wouldn’t linger. But the family of six seated at our table — for in the name of justice and fairness, that table now belonged to us — seemed oblivious to their surroundings. They sat chatting and gave no indication that they ever intended to leave, as if they were cockroaches and even the nuclear winter after the apocalypse would find them still sitting there, glued to their chairs.

To his credit, the manager walked over to them and dropped a few polite hints. Not a single one worked. So, we took matters into our hands and decided to stare them into eviction. One after another, we walked in and locked eyes with the occupiers and tried to convey our annoyance through our glares. When it was my turn, a balding, middle-aged man met my gaze. I narrowed my eyes and let my lips form a grim line. With a dramatic flourish, I raised my wrist up to my face and glanced at my watch. Then, I looked at the man again. I was certain this mime act would leave him devastated and he would scurry away mumbling apologies. Instead, he regarded me without a flicker of emotion, staying true to the years of desensitization training he had received as a terrorist. I decided to try my luck with the elderly woman sitting next to him. She had a beverage in front of her, and given the family’s depravity I half expected it to be matcha. But I was wrong. It looked like a chocolate milkshake. (I imagine their cardiologist has a thriving business.) She was too busy sipping her drink to notice me, so I abandoned my vigil. Defeated, we could do little but wait.

It was nearing 10:30 AM, when that swarm of locusts finally left. As we settled around our table, and ordered everything on the menu, I wondered what proportion of our lives we spend in limbo, and how many hours are devoted to doing nothing except waiting to be somewhere or to do something.

In the 1990s, the French anthropologist Marc Augé coined the term ‘non-places’ to describe functional spaces we inhabit for a brief while, as we pass through them to go elsewhere. These are places we encounter as anonymous individuals and with which we do not share any intimate relationship. We enter these ‘non-places’, Augé wrote, ‘when we are driving down the motorway, wandering through the supermarket or sitting in an airport lounge’. In this framing, a non-place is defined by the attributes it does not possess: a historical connection to the identity of individuals, and communities, residing in one location.

This notion of the non-place made me wonder if there existed any sociological discourse around the time that we spend just, you know, waiting. Waiting at the Passport Seva Kendra. Waiting at a traffic junction for the light to turn green, unless you drive a Toyota Fortuner and are thus incapable of following rules. Or waiting in queue on a sweltering afternoon — perhaps because you were dropped on your head as a child — to eat benne dosa. Was there a theory accounting for all these lost hours?

I began rummaging around the internet to see what brighter minds than mine had to say on the subject. My research led me to Mark Fisher, the concept of ‘thick time’, and this nugget of sparkling prose in a journal article:

Through an appreciation of the dynamic nature of temporality, this essay charts a journey through the relative in/activities embodied through waiting and concludes that waiting as an event should be conceptualised not solely as an active achievement or passive acquiescence but as a variegated affective complex where experience folds through and emerges from a multitude of different planes.1

This single sentence was enough to make me abandon my inquiry, and I decided to use the term ‘non-time’ to describe those in-between periods we spend in suspension. I’m sure Monsieur Augé wouldn’t mind.

Non-time is nothing new, of course. It was a feature of my childhood too. There were the spells in clinic waiting-rooms, for instance, spent dreading the moment I’d be stabbed with a vaccine injection. I cannot remember what was worse: The finale when the doctor would daub the inside of my elbow with isopropyl alcohol, and aim a needle at veins that were throbbing in panic; or the anxious prelude in the anteroom, where I’d twitch in my seat and hear muffled cries from the doctor’s chamber. I often wondered during those visits if hepatitis was really all that terrible.

But not all waiting was harrowing. The hours devoted to queuing up outside Durga Pujo pandals never felt like a waste. In fact, they were part of the experience, something that added to the festive spirit. Every organiser knew that miles of bamboo barricades, radiating out from the pandal like a tangle of cobwebs, were de rigueur for a pujo that took itself seriously. Visitors had to be herded into these narrow lanes to lend gravitas to the enterprise. Why permit people to walk in comfort when you can make them jostle in a mosh pit? The Awards Committee that ranked the pujos in town took careful note of these things. You got extra points if your crowd management techniques made people faint.

And so, we would shuffle along as part of a heaving column, sweating through our new clothes and stepping on someone’s new shoes. Along the way, volunteers would stem our tide with ropes, and our cattle-like progress would pause for a while. To adolescents like us these pauses were a gift — they allowed us to scan our surroundings for cute girls we would never have the nerve to approach. Eventually, after an hour or so, we would enter the pandal, give the interiors a quick scan, do the pronaam, and exit — all in less than two minutes. This system meant we would visit five, maybe six, pandals before exhaustion forced us to tap out. The following night, though, we’d be back, ready to do it all over again. The idea of non-time never crossed my mind then, perhaps because I perceived time differently.

When I was a child, time never seemed to be in short supply. I was conscious of its passing, sure, but I didn’t think of it as an exhaustible resource. The future appeared to contain endless spools of time, so its use in the present did not merit prudent rationing. I could spend it any damn way I pleased, and that included daydreaming elaborate scenarios in which I had the ability to fly or turn invisible. (It’s the same with money, you’ll note. Once you have too much of it, you have to come up with novel ways to spend it — and the world ends up having to see Lionel Messi doing aarti.)

But as I got older, I discovered that time is frighteningly finite. It also seems to be passing at a faster rate, a feeling that studies have confirmed as a common experience among many people. According to one theory, this ‘misalignment’ between clock-time and our perception of it is owed to our brain’s declining ability to process images. Younger minds are able to create more mental images per unit of time, making memories of our childhood feel dense and expansive. As we age, however, our speed of processing visual information slows down, generating fewer ‘frames-per-second’ and creating the impression that time is moving more swiftly.

Whatever be the explanation, this perception is a lived reality. Our days have become a blur, one Zoom meeting bleeding into another. Weekends disappear in the blink of an eye and the months continue their relentless march like a column of pig-headed ants. Before you know it, you’re deep inside 2026 wondering what the fuck just happened.

We recognise this as a problem and are desperate to slow…. things…. down. We know we need to salvage the situation. So we sign up for meditation workshops and spend an hour stealing peeks to see if anyone else feels as restless. We resolve to be mindful, right after we’ve watched just one more reel. And after a tiring day, when sleep is all we crave, we force ourselves to stay awake to reclaim some me-time, so we can start the next morning not only with fatigue but also self-loathing.2

And yet, even as we tackle this crisis and strive to make better use of our days, non-time continues to occupy large chunks of our lives. With so little free time to spare, we keep frittering it away. Sometimes — say, with traffic jams — the loss of hours is not in our control. But when we line up in front of restaurants and cafes, the ones that have been blowing up on Instagram, we choose non-time. Perhaps we make this choice because we value the meal (and the pictures) more than the time we squander in a queue. Perhaps we figure that a ten-minute wait is tolerable. And perhaps we expect that the people seated inside will not take an hour to drink their bloody milkshake and leave the bloody table.

Not so, anymore.

Earlier this month, I was exchanging messages with someone to schedule the free maintenance check the dealership had promised me — and I couldn’t shake off the suspicion that this fellow was planning to steal my new(ish) car. He claimed to be a representative of the authorised workshop though I had no way of verifying this. For all I knew, he could have sourced my number from the folks at Bajaj Finance. They seem to have everyone on speed dial. What if this was all part of an elaborate heist? Why else would he want to know my car’s registration number? Surely that information should’ve been available in their system. When he asked me for a copy of the car’s Registration Certificate (RC), I narrowed my eyes at the phone. I’d seen enough advertisements by the RBI, cautioning people not to share their card details with strangers. I saw no reason why the same principle should not apply to the RC. I made an excuse and did not message the guy for an entire week.

Eventually, though, I had to relent. During my week of silence, the man never bothered to check in, which told me that while he was a pretty disinterested employee, he was probably not out to bait me. I sent him pictures of the RC and requested him to send somone to collect the car. Now, you may be wondering why, if I had doubts about his bona fides, I did not choose to visit the service centre myself. This is a reasonable question, and an opportune moment for us to discuss the ‘certainty effect’. Developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, this theory of behavioural economics explains how individuals have a skewed perception of potential gains and losses. As they described it:

In the positive domain, the certainty effect contributes to a risk averse preference for a sure gain over a larger gain that is merely probable. In the negative domain, the same effect leads to a risk seeking preference for a loss that is merely probable over a smaller loss that is certain. The same psychological principle — the overweighting of certainty — favors risk aversion in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses.

In other words, when given a choice between suffering: (a) a minor inconvenience that is bound to happen, or (b) a major tragedy that may or may not occur, human beings tend to take a punt on option (b). It sounds bonkers when spelt out in this fashion, but Messrs. Kahneman and Tversky knew their stuff. Faced with the tedious chore of driving to the workshop on a hot and dusty afternoon, I discovered I did not mind the alternative — even if it came with the faint possibility of my car getting pilfered. And so, as I handed the keys to a man I’d never met before, I took solace from the fact that if things did go south, I would at least have gotten my daily nap in before it was time to call the police.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. The car returned the next day, shinier than before, and my fears that the receipts had been the work of a master forger were laid to rest. I was relieved, but also distressed. This was not how I used to be. The paranoia I experienced during this epsiode was a new aspect of my personality and I couldn’t say I cared much for it.

I’ve been known to be something of a soft touch. I was never naive enough to fall for those emails from Nigerian princes, the ones where they issued a cry for help with a promise of generous rewards. But if I were to run into a Nigerian prince, and he pleaded his case in person, I would almost certainly have reached for my wallet.

Nowadays, of course, Nigerian princes face stiff competition in trying to separate you from your money. Everyday you are in the crosshairs of fraudsters who bombard you with nefarious schemes. You are added to WhatsApp groups that offer dubious investment advice and attempt to lure you with guarantees of fantastical returns. You receive umpteen calls from people trying to rob you or offer you personal loans, which are kind of the same thing. You even receive messages from your boss — with his LinkedIn profile picture as the display image and everything — asking you to urgently send him a voucher, so he can treat an important client to some champagne.

In 2025, the number of financial fraud complaints registered with the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal exceeded 24 lakhs. The amount involved in those cases was well over ₹22,000 crores, a nearly 4000% increase since 2021. That is an incredible growth curve. There must be some private equity guys out there dying to get in on the action — yes, it’d involve the little snag of investing in a criminal enterprise but, fucking hell, can you imagine the upside? It’d be enough to buy another sea-facing penthouse, who could argue against that!

In a world where scams have been regularised as spam, Simran keeps reminding me that Mad-Eye Moody’s exhortation of ‘Constant vigilance!’ is a mantra we must all adopt. ‘You’ll get badly fleeced one day,’ she says, only half-jokingly, when I show her the insurance I am about to purchase online. (The website url, she points out, does not match the official hyperlink of the insurer — it’s a fake webpage.) She seems to have a sixth sense for these things, an uncanny ability to spot the glitch. This skill allows her to banter with aspiring swindlers, playing along with their ploys for a bit of fun — a fact you may remember from an earlier newsletter issue.

I possess none of her bravado, and so I adopt a policy of zero interaction. I reject calls from unknown numbers, exit groups I’ve been added to without my consent, and ignore unsolicited emails and messages. Ghosting is not rude when you don’t know the other person, right? It keeps my bank account secure but I hate how this virtual-world cold-heartedness has bled into my real-life interactions with strangers. I hate how easily my caution has morphed into cynicism.

A few weeks ago, I was on my way back from the gym when the auto rickshaw driver asked me where we were. This was a troubling query for a variety of reasons, not least being that if he’d suffered a sudden attack of amnesia, should he — and I — be motoring along in a vehicle under his charge? Did he remember, for instance, how to work the brakes?

Bandra, I replied with a frown.

He must have sensed my alarm because he clarified that he rarely travelled to this part of the city. Earlier that afternoon, he had picked up a fare at Kandivali. This customer had embarked on a Mumbai darshan sojourn, heading southwards following a circuitous route. There had been many stops along the way, too. By the time they’d reached Bandra, the sun had set and the meter had clocked up close to a thousand rupees. His patron had asked him to wait and scooted inside a nearby building, vowing to return within a few minutes. ‘She said she wanted to go back to Kandivali,’ he said, his faced crumpled with anguish. ‘I waited thinking it will be a big fare.’ After a while, when she did not turn up, he tried looking for her. The watchman at the building was no help. Perhaps she had slipped out from the back gate? Eventually, he had to accept there was nothing he could do. When I flagged him down, he was still in a daze. ‘Who will pay for the fuel?’ he groaned, cursing his luck, his villainous passenger, his life.

I listened to his tale of woe with guarded silence. Apart from a few ‘hmm’s and ‘acha’s, that I hoped conveyed my sympathy, I did not offer much of a reaction. The man had made no mention of it, but I was already planning what I’d do if he asked me for some money. Did he truly get cheated out of a day’s wages? Or was this a well-crafted ruse, designed to prey on the gullible?

Soon, the man struck up another mournful tune. His daughter was unwell, he said. He had wanted to spend the day with her, by her side. But he did not have the luxury of taking a day off. Plying the auto was his livelihood. It was the only way he could earn money to pay for his little girl’s treatment. And now, he was worse off than when his shift began. We were nearing my home, and still, he made no request for cash.

Perhaps that was the gambit, I told myself. He wanted me to buckle under the weight of moral obligation and volunteer to help him. He would be grateful and I would feel virtuous — my good deed for the week ticked off. But surely his story was not credible? A free-riding cheat and an ailing child — it was all a touch too melodramatic, wasn’t it? Life was no movie script, and I was no sucker. When we reached my drop, I asked him to stop, paid the fare and walked away. If I avoided his eyes, it was only to ensure my resolve wouldn’t crumble.

In the days that followed, I wondered if I’d made the right decision. Was being remorseless the price you paid to avoid being deceived? And was it a price I considered worth paying? I suppose so. Over the years, I have grown accustomed to ignoring the kids who shuffle up to me at a specific street corner in Bandra and ask me to buy them a carton of milk. I’ve heard the milk thing is a racket. I barely glance at them, refusing to acknowledge their presence, and wave them away if they persist. If I have learnt not to care about them, why should I care for the travails of an auto rickshaw driver I’ll never meet again?

Some days later, on another auto rickshaw journey, another driver drew me into conversation. He arrived in Mumbai eighteen months ago, he said, and couldn’t wait to go back home. And where was home, I asked.

‘Bhagalpur. It’s a small town in Bihar.’

‘I know. I was born in Bihar, not too far from Bhagalpur,’ I told him.

Enthused by this revelation, he continued etching his biography. He’d wasted both time and money when he was young. The move to Mumbai was part of his plan to raise capital. He wanted to start a business in Bhagalpur, and become a medical representative. He had friends who’d chosen that career and they were doing well. Most importantly, it would let him be close to his family. Mumbai was a good place to make quick money but it was no place to live, not when you were alone. Unprompted, he shared details of how much money he earned every day, his weekly expenses, and the number of months he needed to wait before he could board a train to leave this city and begin his new life.

I nodded along, the same questions swirling inside my head. Was any of it true? Was this account building up to an appeal for a contribution? Constant vigilance demanded that I remained unmoved.

We reached home and I paid him the fare, thinking about men with distant families and unwell daughters. Wait, I called out, as the soon-to-be medical representative started pulling away. And, knowing full well that if I found myself in a similar situation in the future I would likely take refuge in prudent apathy, I reached for my wallet.

My mother and I responded with sheepish smiles for we could hardly refute this allegation. We knew our compatriots had a habit of ratcheting up the volume, and, to be honest, it was something we were often guilty of ourselves. The size of our group had a direct bearing on our decibels. If the travelling party exceeded eight members, earplugs became a necessity for anyone in our vicinity. Conversations were conducted at a level that has now been normalised by TV news anchors, and the laughter triggered by a joke — at the expense of the non-Bengalis in the adjoining seats — would reverberate inside the AC Three Tier coach. But we expressed our true range at mealtimes. We communicated with our companions as if instead of being at the other end of the table they were, in fact, still in Kolkata.

‘CHICKEN KHABI? NA MUTTON?…. DUTOI? BESH…. Ay, waiter, suno, chicken aur mutton mein tum kya khabar banata hai?…. Kya? Sudhu veg?…. SORBONASH KORECHE! ARRE SHON, EKHANE TOH SUDHU VEG PAWA JAY. CHOL, BERO JOLDI. PASER RESTAURANT TA DEKH. KI JALATON!’1

If I met the icecream vendor now, however, I would indulge in a spot of whataboutery. I would point out that the failure to be considerate in public spaces was not a flaw exclusive to my brethren. Last year, when I was in Nara, the screeching of a Gujarati tour guide who was herding a group of daytrippers was as annoying as the gluttonous deer that swarmed the town. (There was no shortage of grass in the parks, so I failed to see why scores of deer kept walking up to me expecting to be fed crackers. Greedy fucks.) The tour guide in question was wielding a megaphone, which meant the grounds of an 8th-century Buddhist temple echoed with high-pitched invocations insisting that members of her group should keep an eye on her flag, and refrain from offering thepla to the deer.2

Before the icecream guy could accuse me of parochialism, I would clarify that the Nara episode was merely an illustration. Some tourists, no matter what their linguistic or regional identity, are prone to being boisterous. While others, belying their national reputation of fastidiousness, can turn out to be slobs — I have it on good authority, for example, that a bunch of Japanese spectators at a FIFA World Cup game in Qatar did not clean up after themselves. They left their empty popcorn buckets and cola cups littered in the aisles, just like we do in movie theatres.

The more I’ve travelled, the more I’ve realised that while it is easy to reach for stereotypes, they rarely hold true for an entire community. Generalisations do us all a disservice, my friend, I would’ve told the chap while he handed me a Cornetto. We should not let hackneyed perceptions colour our interactions with our fellow humans. Sadly, I have been deprived of the opportunity to lecture the man because I’ve never bumped into him again, even though I’ve travelled to Goa close to a dozen times since that first visit in 2005.

Goa is, in some ways, the Puri of the West. Much like a Goa trip is the default option Mumbaikars resort to when a long weekend looms in the calendar, Puri was, during my childhood, a staple of summer holidays.

To those unfamiliar, Puri is a coastal town in Odisha, famous for its beaches and the Jagannath Temple. When I was in school, it was an overnight train ride away from Kolkata, and this proximity no doubt helped establish the law that every respectable Bengali family must plan at least one pilgrimage there every year. There were competing seaside getaways in Bengal — Digha, for example — but the cognoscenti preferred Puri. It held an enduring appeal for middle-class Bengalis, who never seemed to tire of it. A friend of mine must’ve notched up twenty-three family trips before he turned eighteen. Sometimes, their suitcases would have remained unpacked since the last visit, and their slippers would still be trailing sand around the house, when they planned a return.

This obsession was a little perplexing because Puri did not boast of a wealth of distractions. It had a gorgeous beach, yes, that stretched on as far as the eye could see, like an interminable golden avenue. There was the temple, crowded with priests whose faith demanded they lighten the purses of the pious. And there were the Dada Boudi Restaurants, no-frills canteens that served homely food. But that was it. The itinerary, on all our travels, split our time among these three attractions. ‘Surprise me’ was not an expectation we harboured when we travelled to Puri.

In this respect, at least, my experiences in Goa have been different.

During that first family trip, sightseeing was the priority. We drove from the Basilica of Bom Jesus to the ruins of Fort Agoda. We posed for pictures on the white steps of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church. We took a cruise on the river and bought packets of cashew at Panjim. We even visited the Archaeological Museum, perhaps believing the Goa government would award us a certificate for completing the tourist handbook. (They did not.)

But later, in my 20s, the holidays acquired a different hue. Excursions to Goa became a means of escaping the city. My friends and I would seek refuge in the semi-permanent shacks that lined Goan beaches, desperate to forget the work deadlines and domestic chores that awaited us in Mumbai. There was no plan, no to-do list. We would meander from Baga to Anjuna, from Calungate to Candolim — our only objective being to while away the hours. Lounging on deck chairs, we would watch the sun inch closer to the crimson sea, like a piece of golden-friend prawn being dipped into a vast bowl of red chilli sauce. We did not mind when the servers took forty minutes to hand us our beers. It was not like we had anywhere else to go, except, perhaps, the beach in the next village. Susegad rocks, we would say with a smile, toying with the idea of socialising this philosophy with our bosses upon our return. (We never did, of course. What reasonable person would risk being unemployed?)

This bohemian spirit found expression in our attire, too. Trousers were rarely packed for these weekenders, and I wore sleeveless vests in public far too many times than I’d care to admit. There was also one memorable instance when we tried entering a casino in flip-flops and found our way barred. Shoes only, read a sign at the entrance. We were, obviously, outraged. This was Goa! If there was one place in this country where our toes had the right to be free, to wriggle without restriction, it was here! We couldn’t let some despots rob us of our liberty! Fuelled by righteous rage, we were registering our protest when a couple of bouncers stepped forward and we decided that maybe nipping across the street to buy some shoes was not such a bother after all. As it turned out, the shoes were the best investment we made that night, and they cost us a great deal less than a few rounds at the Blackjack table.

In recent years, the tone of my Goa excursions has altered once more — inevitably so, I suppose, since Goa itself has undergone so much change. Parts of it are barely recognizable from a decade ago. Brand new airports sprawl over acres and six-lane highways cleave through the hills. In many places, the pristine roads are flanked by rockfaces that bear the tell-tale striations of an excavator’s claw, fingernail marks left by development’s hand. Marketplaces are bathed in a neon glow that makes you squint at night-time. And in the space between two breaths, as you drive along a road in Assagao, you cross a restaurant, a boutique resort, and an artisanal store. It is hard to imagine a more bourgeoisie enclave; and I say this as a resident of Bandra — a locality that, quite literally, has a café called ‘Boojee’.

Perhaps my own actions have contributed to this transformation. During my past few visits, I’ve rarely made my way to the seafront. (When I was in Goa last week, I did plan a run to Chapora beach, but a growling pack of stray dogs sent me scurrying in a different direction. This happens every time I go running in Goa. I keep a sharp eye out for canines as I jog through quaint hamlets, but the buggers still manage to ambush me. They storm out of a thicket or a courtyard, and the ferocity of their barking is matched by the pitch of my yelping. Nowhere else have I been chased by dogs exhibiting such deep indignation. Goan mutts really hate runners. I guess they take the susegad culture very seriously.)

Instead of shack visits and beach jaunts, a trip to Goa now features an endless array of fine-dining restaurants. Sampling Goan, and global, cuisine is top of the agenda, punctuated by coffee breaks at chic cafés that serve manual brews. Over breakfast, we scan the list of restaurants recommended by Condé Nast Traveller to make a reservation for lunch. In the afternoon, we look up the best sundowner spots within driving distance. And when we feel weary, we spend the evening in our Airbnb villa and summon the familiar food delivery and q-commerce apps to bring what we need to our doorstep.

In the book Sun After Dark, one of my favourite writers, Pico Iyer, noted:

This is, I think, part of the impulse that moves many a traveler - the chance to confront the questions and challenges that he would never see at home…

…We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary, and into the presence of whatever lies just outside our apprehension.

But when I travel to Goa now, I see what I have grown accustomed to at home. I remain, quite firmly, on the same side of the curtain of the ordinary, visiting the same spaces, with the same aesthetic, that I frequent when I’m in Mumbai. Even the people in these cafés and restaurants look like folks I’d encounter in any urban milieu: wearing clothes that hang in my wardrobe and speaking in an idiom I recognize as my own. In Goa, they drive rented cars and get lost when Google Maps glitches — like I do — and refuse to remove their sunglasses even when indoors — a crime that I, too, commit.

When I imagined that conversation with the icecream vendor, I was not being disingenuous. I do believe that travel can make you unlearn stereotypes and reshape the image you hold in your head of all that is foreign. It can also, as Pico Iyer suggests, help you discover new facets of yourself, to understand who you are once you’ve slipped through the curtain of the ordinary. But not always. As my recent trips to Goa have revealed, travel can, on occasions, just leave you feeling like a cliché.

In my defence, I had been trying to hold it together. The room, where I was seated when she crippled me, was oozing tranquility. It was dimly lit, the votive candles and filigreed lamps casting more shadows than light. Recliners were lined along the walls and most of them were occupied. There were small tables next to each, carrying an assortment of oils, creams and tissue boxes. At the far end, there was a large mural of Buddha’s face, his eyelids drooping, earlobes distended. Buddha iconography dominated the premises. His per square foot presence was off the charts. Generic East Asian music, all bamboo flutes and strings, floated through the speakers. There was no other sound — clearing your throat would’ve rung out like the crash of a cymbal — and the little conversation that took place was conducted in whispers.

‘wou……...like…...ket?’

‘What?’

‘can……..blank…?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear anything.’

‘Blanket. You want?’

‘Oh, no, thanks.’

Like me, the other patrons were laid out on plush loungers at a twenty degree angle to the floor. Some had towels on their faces. Others were dozing or staring at their phones. Masseurs sat on footstools tending to their bare feet or stood over them kneading their arms and shoulders. They all looked at peace, the therapeutic pressure on their bodies allowing them to access a state of bliss. Seeing this tableau, much less experiencing it, should have been sufficient to make anybody feel relaxed. Anybody normal, that is — which, of course, ruled me out instantly.

For most of the one-hour reflexology session, I was fidgety. I did want to relax. I concentrated on unwinding and focussed my mind to feel free. I clenched my jaw and willed my body to loosen. I am enjoying this, I muttered, balling my fists as the masseur dug her thumbs into my calves. This is so soothing.

No share of the blame lay with the masseur. She was doing a great job. Every time she stopped, on account of my wailing, and looked at me, distressed, I wiped the tears from my eyes and gestured that she should continue. The torment her ministrations caused was precisely what my body needed — at least that’s what my physiotherapist had told me. My muscles, as per his diagnosis, were stiffer than Nita Ambani’s face. They were too tight, too immobile. Massages were essential to unfasten the knots and improve flexibility. He’d warned it would hurt, but the pain was worth bearing to avoid snapped tendons.

And so, last month, I’d rebelled against my instincts and booked an appointment. The prospect of physical discomfort was not the only thing that had made me reluctant to visit the spa; I squirmed at the very idea of getting a massage. For as long as I can remember, this business of paying a stranger to rub my body has made my skin crawl.

Perhaps this aversion was seeded by my grandfather. Any pursuit that he deemed indulgent or foppish he would decry as being a ‘futani’. This Bengali word is a difficult slur to translate — ‘vain habit’ comes close, though it lacks the original’s vicious edge. Getting a fancy haircut was a futani, as was buying expensive watches or branded shoes. Spa treatments were the epitome of this crime. To be clear, my grandfather did not object to the concept of getting a massage. He was more than happy assigning his grandsons the task of pressing his legs, and made sure they spent many afternoons of their summer vacations engaged in this activity. No, it was the commercialization of this affair that irked him. Paying somebody you’d never met to thump your back while you lay on a bench was, to him, evidence of a moral failing, a grievous character flaw. He scoffed even at those who paid barbers for head massages.1

I grew up listening to his anti-massage rhetoric, and in the decades since, I have struggled to shake off this prejudice.

It is not that I’m a haphephobe, who dislikes physical contact. I am not a big hugger, sure, and I respect personal boundaries. But those who are close to me are always welcome to dispense a foot rub or some sursuri. (The latter is another one of those Bengali words with no equivalent in English. Sursuri refers to the act of someone running their fingertips lightly over your skin, leaving a trail of gooseflesh. I know it sounds sensual, but it need not be foreplay. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is a proven soporific, and puts me right to sleep every time. I’m feeling drowsy just writing about it.)

My demands, in these matters, are usually directed at Simran. I am convinced regular sursuri sessions were part of our wedding vows, but she refuses to acknowledge this fact. This is why prenups are so important. But I am not one to give up my rights. Most evenings, when she and I are sitting on the couch, I broach the topic.

‘How was your day?’ I ask, making it sound like a casual, agenda-less query. To lure someone into doing your bidding, you must hide your true intentions.

‘It was fine. Yours?’

‘A little tiring, to be honest. But you look fresh and well-rested!’

‘Really? Thank you. It must be the new skincar…’

Having laid the trap, I now spring into action and plant my feet on her lap. ‘Since you’re full of energy and I am so weary, why don’t you give me a foot rub? No? A little sursuri, at least? C’mon! Remember the vows!’

It works around twenty percent of the time.

At an intellectual level, I know my attitude towards professional massages is irrational. Everyone around me avails of this service, and swears by its salubrious effects. I understand, too, that being a good masseur requires years of training, and is a vocation that needs skill and dedication. And yet, the distaste lingers. Paying someone to press my limbs just feels unseemly for reasons I cannot fully articulate. It has led to me resisting spa visits and avoiding acupressure therapies. The rare occasions when I’ve found myself on a massage table have been due to medical prescription. And even those experiences have left me scarred.

Eight years ago, I consulted an orthopedic for chronic strains and niggles. He told me the aches that kept mushrooming all over my body, like podcasts on YouTube, could only be cured by regular massages. At the time, I had trouble reaching my knees, so I put aside my reservations and signed up for a ‘deep-tissue rejuvenation’. On a Saturday afternoon, I walked into the clinic and was ushered into a small, whitewashed room. A young man, who introduced himself as my therapist, asked about my ailments. After nodding along as I listed my complaints, he told me to get ready.

First, I needed to undress and wear the garment they provided. At this point, he handed me what could only be described as a thong made of tissue paper. You want me to wear this, I asked, holding it gingerly between my thumb and index finger. Yes, he confirmed. It was the prescribed attire for a full body massage. Only this, I asked again, because the thing was a bloody napkin. He frowned and left the room, saying he would return in a few minutes and that I should lie, face down, on the table once I’d changed. I considered making a getaway, but I’d already paid for the session. I took off my clothes and climbed into the papier-mâché underwear, fearing all the while that it would tear if I tugged too hard. For the next hour, he pummelled me as if I was a pillow that had gone limp and needed to be fluffed up. Somehow, by the grace of a god I did not believe in, the fig leaf remained intact and my modesty — what little remained of it, at least — was preserved.

Later, as I limped home, I swore I would never subject myself again to the horror of getting a massage. Which is why, half a decade later, when Shouvik pointed to a random massage parlour in an alley in Dehradun and suggested we visit it, I surprised myself by agreeing.

There were extenuating circumstances, I suppose. The four of us — Appu, Licks, Shouvik, and I — had just returned to Dehradun after a trek in the Garhwal Himalayas.2 The time we’d spent camping in the mountains, tackling snowstorms, sleepless nights, and steep inclines, had left us exhausted. Back in the city, we were in the mood to celebrate. After a breakfast of chole bhature and jalebi, we were ambling back to our hotel when Shouvik spotted the parlour.

It was in a shabby building, a few metres down a lane that branched off the main road. Electrical wires hung in bundles around the house, like braids of matted hair. The signage that jutted out of a first-floor balcony looked cheap and promised a variety of services. Foot massages were on offer, as were head-and-shoulder rubs. Interested parties were urged to climb up a rickety flight of stairs, near the back of the building, to avail the benefits.

To this day, I cannot explain to you what came over us. Perhaps it was the fatigue, or a food-induced brain fog. We did not pause to consider the implications of visiting an unfamiliar massage parlour in a rundown pocket of an unknown city. Instead, we commended Shouvik on his keen eyesight, and made our way up the steps. The office was a cramped space, a curtained corridor lay to the left and an open door led to the balcony on the right. Appu and I wanted our feet attended to; Licks and Shouvik opted for the head-and-neck package. When we asked if we could get our massages together, the receptionist looked alarmed and shook her head. (I realised much later how depraved the request must have seemed to her.) She told us we would have to go to separate rooms and we agreed. Money exchanged hands and I was led past the curtain, down a passageway and into a windowless room. When I sat there, alone, and looked around, the penny finally dropped.

My first clue was the blue bulb. I had never been in a room with blue lighting. But I’d seen such rooms in movies and TV shows, and they were never depicted as places that gentlemen of good repute would frequent. The paint was peeling off the walls. A filthy basin was set into one corner. Across from it, there was a narrow cot with a thin mattress. Everything about the room screamed seedy. I pulled out of my phone and saw that our group chat was blowing up.

Appu: Guys!

Licks: I know!

Rohan: What the fuck!

Shouvik: What is it? I’m still waiting at the reception.

Rohan: This is not a massage parlour.

Licks: Well….. not ONLY a massage parlour….

Shouvik: Oh no, they are calling me inside now. What do I do? Help!

A lady wearing a salwar kameez entered the room and I put my phone away. You wanted a foot massage, she whispered. I nodded, eyeing the door. Please change, she breathed, holding out a towel. I had taken a series of stupid decisions to lead me to that moment, but wild horses couldn’t have made me touch that towel. Why should I change for a foot massage? I responded, my voice squeaky with panic. She put the towel away with a shrug and pointed towards the cot.

Once more, I am unable to tell you why I didn’t leave. I could have mumbled an excuse and just walked out. Instead, I lay on the cot and tried to ensure no part of my exposed skin touched that mattress.

For the next few minutes, she poked at my feet while I scanned the room for cameras. What if they recorded me and doctored the video? What if the proprietor threatened me with black mail? What if there was a police raid? The more calamitous my imagined scenarios grew, the more trapped I began to feel. I became a hostage to my fear, incapable of taking charge and ending this sordid episode. After a while, perhaps bored of doing something she clearly had no interest in, she asked me if I wanted anything besides a foot massage. Oh, no, no, no, no, I assured her. Definitely not, no, thank you. She seemed a bit bemused, which was understandable. Given the circumstances, she would have been justified in accusing me of sending mixed signals. When you walk into a shady massage parlour and ask for a foot massage, you indicate that you’re interested in things that involve more than just your foot. To subsequently insist that anything north of your ankle is off-limits comes across as poor etiquette.

The vehemence of my refusal made the lady lose interest. She jabbed my heel a couple of times with an indifferent finger, and with fifteen minutes still left on the clock she declared that our time was up. I leapt out of the cot with a speed and agility that would’ve made an Olympian gymnast whistle in admiration. Within nanoseconds, I was in the reception area, where Licks and Appu soon joined me. We wanted nothing more than to put miles between us and the parlour, but Shouvik was still being held captive and needed to be rescued. We trooped to his cell and banged on the door. Shouvik, we shouted, let’s go, we have to leave right now. The lady who opened the door looked perplexed. We’ve just started the massage, she began to explain — but Shouvik had already sailed past her. It’s okay, you can keep the money, we called out as we made our escape.

A short walk later, we reached our hotel. We took a moment to catch our breath in the lobby. A sign near the entrance advertised various amenities available at the hotel, one of which was a spa and massage clinic. Not that it mattered. By then, I had sworn to never subject myself again to the horror of getting a massage.

For the past few winters, we’ve had a bit of an air quality issue in this city of dreams. Once the monsoon recedes, a grey mantle shrouds our streets. The skyline is obscured and skyscrapers are hidden from view. The horizon becomes a blur, the colour of an ancient, once-white washcloth, and a haze, ever present, makes the world look smudged and grainy. Apartment blocks, even a few hundred metres away, become inchoate shapes, like shadows within a shadow. It is all quite dreary.

Blame for the burgeoning AQI is attributed to multiple factors: public and private construction, urban emissions, wind patterns, and suchlike. But personally, I think it’s a manifestation of the city’s competitive spirit. As those who have lived nowhere other than Mumbai never tire of repeating, it is the best city in the country. And being the best means we must breast the tape in all matters. When it comes to ‘Spirit’, we are golden. Every time a road floods or a bridge collapses, the ‘Spirit of Mumbai’ unfurls its cape and sweeps over the city, making every Mumbaikar feel proud and invincible. Nothing can stop us from going about our business as usual, we cheer, commending this place for the ample opportunities it provides us to demonstrate our indomitability. On the traffic front, however, some work remains to be done. We have been known to lag behind Gurgaon and Bangalore, but our civic authorities are determined to remedy this situation. While you’re reading this, there is a JCB excavator busy digging up a corner of the city, at a spot chosen with forensic precision to cause maximum disruption. A walk around Bandra now feels like visiting an archaeological site, while also offering the thrill of dodging Yulu bikes on Blinkit missions. Which other metropolis can boast of such varied entertainment?

I am convinced the zeal with which we are adding particulate matter to our atmosphere stems from our desire to outdo Delhi. For too long has the capital staked claim to three-digit AQI figures. We want in on the action, too. Since the pandemic, we’ve made good progress towards this goal. During the first six weeks of this year, our air was ‘unhealthy’ on most days, a fact you could confirm by simply looking out the window. Which is why the sudden cleansing last week triggered such jubilation among the city’s residents. It seemed as if a muslin veil had been lifted, allowing us to see our surroundings in ultra-high definition.1

‘Simran! Come here, hurry,’ I cried, last Thursday. ‘You have to see this!’

She sighed and walked over to where I stood, with the what-is-he-upto-now expression she wears whenever I get too excited.

‘Look how clear it is! Were these trees always so green? Even the sea is visible. Isn’t it amazing?’

‘Hmm. Can’t see any clouds, though.’

‘Arre forget the clouds, the sky is blue. Blue! When was the last time it was any colour other than grey? What a fabulous day!’

‘You realise this is supposed to be normal, right? This is how the air ought to be all the time. A clear day is not supposed to be a rare novelty.’

‘Stop being a killjoy, man. Wait…. is that birdsong?’

While Simran did not share my enthusiasm about Mumbai’s AQI falling to double digits, the denizens of social media were reliably exultant. My Instagram feed was filled with reels showcasing this smog-free, near-forgotten facet of the city. Videos presented views of the same location, recorded a few days apart: in one, a film of grime appeared to cover the screen, leeching the colour from the scene; in the other, Mumbai looked pristine, its contours etched in sharp detail.2

I noticed, also, that the most impressive shots of the city were the ones taken from a height. Ground-level pictures of the Indo-Saracenic buildings in South Bombay are quaint, sure, but it is the the elevated perspective that really steals your breath. Cameras mounted on drones, or panoramas captured from high-rise balconies, endow a grandeur to the sprawl and vertical ambition of this urban behemoth. Gaining altitude seems to improve the view — and that set me wondering, because my brain works in inexplicable ways, whether tall people enjoy a more pleasant view of the world than the vertically challenged.

I was a puny kid. In the annual class photo, I always stood in the front row, and even then the straight line of oiled, neatly combed heads would dip on my account. I suppose it was a hereditary shortcoming. My maternal grandfather was a tall man, but he was the exception. On my father’s side of the family, nobody could lay claim to much perpendicular achievement. And this despite attempts to invoke divine intervention.

When my father and uncle were in school, my thamma made a pilgrimage to a Shiv temple in Chhindwara, a small town near the nation’s belly button. She walked up a hill, climbing over five kilometres to propitiate the gods and request only one boon: that her younger son, my uncle, be granted the gift of height. The gods’ appetite must’ve been only partly satiated, because my uncle grew to a middling stature. (Was he upset, I asked my father recently, that no deity was petitioned on his behalf? Did he mourn never receiving the blessing of a few extra inches? No, he said, dismissing my query with a laugh and claiming he had always been happy with his height. Given that he is shorter than even me, I don’t see that there’s much to be happy about.)

This desire that the children should grow tall was a cross-generational — and, in view of the evidence, somewhat delusional — aspiration in my family. My mother, too, harboured similar hopes, and she never let reality stand in the way of her optimism. You just have to hang in there, she would tell me. This was not intended to be metaphorical advice counselling patience till a growth spurt kicked in — it was meant to be quite literal.

In the corner of our local football field, there was a monkey bar. It was the only piece of equipment in the ground apart from the two goalposts. (Maybe the skill of the ironsmith did not run beyond making U-shaped objects.) The ladders on both ends of the monkey bar were separated by half a dozen or so rungs. You climbed up one side, swung yourself across the horizontal traverse one bar and one arm at a time, and then descended at the far end. This routine, my mother believed, was my ticket to long-limbed glory.

I hated the whole thing.

The top of the monkey bar was about eight feet off the ground, but at eleven, it was enough to induce vertigo. Also, this trapezing back and forth on it like a circus performer held no charm for me. Since childhood, I have been partial to lethargy, and an evening spent watching cartoons was far more preferable than risking death. I thought this was a reasonable choice, but my mother would have none of it. Every few days, the monkey bar triggered a conflict between us. Our quarrels would end with me grudgingly doing a few laps and then refusing to co-operate the following week. One evening, things got a little too heated and when I huffed off to the ground I was intent on revenge. I’ll show her, I muttered as I climbed the ladder. She will live to regret making me do this.

And so, I spent over an hour swinging to and fro, until dusk gave way to night and the playground emptied of all occupants except a diminutive figure suspended mid-air, hanging on to a rung with calloused palms that hurt like hell. By some perverse logic, injuring myself seemed to be the most fitting rebuke I could deliver to my mother. When she winced at the sight of my blistered hands, I felt the smug satisfaction of a martyr. Back then, I wanted to remain short, just to spite her. But later, when I grew a little older and yearned for some more centimetres, I cursed my juvenile tantrums.

Teenage onwards it was clear to me that tall people are the bee’s knees of human society. Attractiveness, charisma, athleticism — height is a proxy for possessing many coveted traits. When we were in school our archetypes all seemed to be towering figures. The school captain, for instance, was invariably a tall boy, a giant who would bestride the narrow world like a Colossus while we petty boys walked under his huge legs navigating our awkward, stunted adolescence.

Among adults too, tallness manifests as a virtue. Confidence comes easily to the lengthy, which, I guess, is to be expected if you’re always looking down your nose at everyone else. Their size lends them an aura of superiority, making them the sort of people who are immediately ushered to a private booth in a posh restaurant while the shorter folk wait for hours to get a table next to the loo. They are a species accustomed to getting what they want. Can you imagine saying no to Amitabh Bachchan if he asks you for a kidney? That height, and that voice! I’d give him both.

Perhaps my mother was right all along. Perhaps seeing the world from a vantage of six-plus feet does make it appear more pleasant, more pliable to do your bidding. And perhaps that also explains why gaining height improves the view. Potholes start to vanish. Garbage dumps become imperceptible dots. The queue of cars in a traffic deadlock resembles a pretty string of fairy lights. Tower cranes add character to the skyline. And if you squint really hard, after throttling your common sense and rationality, Mumbai does begin to look like a hill station.

‘Yes, I work there. What about you?’

‘I’m just heading there for a friend’s wedding. I missed the sangeet, it happened yesterday. But I’ll attend the rest of the events over the weekend. Where do you work?’

It is difficult, at 3 AM, to participate in lucid dialogue, much less focus on a conversation between strangers. But if you enjoy eavesdropping as much as I do, you make the effort to stay locked in. I dragged my suitcase forward a couple of steps and leaned in to hear the woman describe her profession. She had her back to me and perhaps it was the lack of sleep but her oversized black sweatshirt, and my bleary vision, made her look like a pint-sized dementor. The man she was talking to, however, seemed to have a more favourable opinion of her. He, too, was dressed in black — black tee, black jeans, black baseball cap worn backwards — and stood facing the woman, his feet slightly apart and his face displaying that classic expression of male flirting: I am interested in you but I’m gonna play this cool.

I am known not to possess any game — when it comes to wooing, a strip of sandpaper would be smoother than me — but I have a good eye for spotting it. This guy had it in spades. I was in the presence of a master. At an hour when most people wanted nothing more than to be horizontal, when it was too late to be night and too early to be morning, this fellow was able to fire questions with the dogged determination of a machine gunner. ‘When did you move to Dubai?’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Do you like it there?’ ‘Do you think you’ll ever come back?’ EMTs could have taken notes from him on how to keep a chat alive.

To be fair, the woman appeared to be enjoying the attention. On more than one occasion, she threw her head back in laughter. (This offered me a glimpse of her profile and I was able to confirm that she was not, in fact, a dementor.) She responded with questions of her own that the man was only too happy to answer. The slow crawl of the check-in queue allowed the two to cover a good deal of ground, exchanging background information and areas of interest. At some point, the conversation turned to music.

‘Do you like Linkin Park?’ he asked. ‘They performed here in Mumbai a few weeks ago.’

‘I listened to them when I was in school. Not a lot now. How was the concert?’

‘Yaar, they have this woman who is the new lead singer. They had to do something hatke na, after their previous frontman died. But this woman couldn’t match up.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Ya. Look, they have two songs that everyone knows, right? In The End and Numb. They are my favourites also. And she couldn’t even sing those properly.’

I was rooting for the chap but this made me draw in a sharp breath. Firstly, I did not approve of the way he’d dismissed Emily.1 I was at the concert and I could understand his grouse. When you’ve spent years listening to songs that were made famous by Chester Bennington’s inimitable vocal signature, that ability to alternate between high-pitched screams and whispered melodies in the same refrain, it becomes impossible to reimagine those songs. The dissonance, when a new singer takes the microphone, is hard to ignore. I felt it too, when the band performed songs I’d memorised when I was fifteen. The nostalgia surrounding those tracks was too dense, too overpowering, for me to listen to Emily. I only yearned for Chester. Nevertheless, when she belted out numbers from the new album, music that truly belonged to her, I had no trouble seeing her as the powerhouse rockstar that she is. That she ‘couldn’t match up’ to an iconic predecessor felt to me like a poor appraisal.

But more importantly, I pursed my lips because no conscientious Linkin Park devotee would ever name In The End and Numb as their favourite tracks. These are hackneyed choices, preferred by the casual listener.2 This guy was clearly one of those people who sauntered into concerts but did not have the band’s Wikipedia page saved in their bookmarks. I was certain he had not spent his youth downloading pirated copies of Linkin Park albums, or scouring local markets for a poorly printed t-shirt bearing the band’s motif. He was bound to be a dilettante, I reasoned, a fickle butterfly that revelled in shallow dalliances but never committed to a deep relationship.

Having gleaned this knowledge, I was anxious to warn the woman about his true nature, but this Romeo never left her side. At the boarding gate, in the bus ferrying us to the aircraft, at the baggage carousel after we landed in Dubai — he stuck to her like a persistent bout of herpes. I failed to notice if they left the airport together, but they must have exchanged phone numbers. There was nothing I could have done, I later told myself, I never saw her alone. But I knew this to be a lie. Even if she were freed of his presence, and I had the opportunity to caution her, I wouldn’t have done it.

You see, the problem is that my love for snooping on strangers is matched by my inability to talk to them.

A few weeks ago, I lent a book to a friend who was heading out of town on a business trip. He wanted something he could read on a flight and I was happy to supply the material. When he returned the book — The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitava Ghosh, if you must know — I asked him what he thought of it.

‘Oh, I didn’t end up reading it,’ he said.

‘Not even a little bit?’

‘No. I spent the entire journey talking to the guy next to me. We had a great time!’

This scenario is so far beyond my ken that I did not know how to react. Two hours spent talking to an unknown co-passenger? Impossible! It’s the stuff of nightmares. Forget initiating chit-chat, I baulk at even making eye contact with those in my vicinity. It is a crippling affliction, and I often wish I wasn’t so ferociously reticent. If I possessed my friend’s bonhomie, not only could I have saved the Dubai-bound lady from a (potential) heartbreak, I could also ask people at airports why they hate sitting.

You must have noticed it yourself. The second a boarding announcement is made, folks leap out of their seats as if they’ve won an award and must rush to collect it before the authorities change their mind. Zone 1 only, a harried official announces, only passengers in rows one to ten prepare to board please. And yet, dozens approach the gate, form a queue, and remain standing for minutes, believing, perhaps, that should they not position themselves within six inches of the person infront of them, they will be denied entry into the aircraft.

If there’s a bus enroute to the plane, everyone chooses to stand near the exits. To these travellers, the seats in the back of the bus are about as inviting as electric chairs. Sitting? Instead of rocking back and forth while trying to grab a handhold? Oh no, no, we can’t possibly do that. Sitting is evil. Benches are the Devil’s handiwork. Suitcases tread on toes, noses are pressed into armpits, but nobody yields. The heatmap inside the bus resembles the silhouette of a middle-aged man: narrow at the ends and bulging in the middle. The gold medallists in this field are, of course, the ones who stand up as soon as the flight lands. (I despise this habit enough to have written about it before. I’ll save you from a rerun of that rant, you can read it here.)

As someone who never stands when he can sit — and never sits when he can recline — I have always been perplexed by this compulsion to be upright. I suppose the reason will remain a mystery to me, because I will never muster the will to talk to those who are plagued by it.

My reluctance to engage with strangers does not mean I’m a dour traveller. If a fellow passenger makes the first move and draws me into a conversation, I curb my natural instinct to whimper while covering my face, and do my best approximation of a well-adjusted adult. It is often awkward but I keep the rally going with appropriate responses to the queries lobbed in my direction. Even so, there are times when choosing the right reaction can be a challenge. Take, for instance, the time we were flying to Almaty.

The plane was taxiing towards the docking gate, and we were unbuckling our seat belts, when the woman seated next to me asked how long we’d be staying in the city. A week, I replied.

‘Have you guys been here before?’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘This is our first time in Kazakhstan.’

She switched her gaze from me to Simran. ‘Well, you should not have any trouble as a married couple. But when you’re alone in your hotel room,’ she added, her eyes snapping back in my direction, ‘be very careful.’

The vagueness of this warning made it all the more ominous. ‘What do you mean?’ I whispered. ‘Are there robberies inside hotels? Muggings?’

‘Oh no. Much worse. I heard about it from my fiancé. I will be joining him now, but he got here a few days earlier. He came with some of his friends — a boys’ trip, you know. Anyway, so last night, they were chilling in the hotel room when the doorbell rang. It was quite late so they were a little surprised. They opened the door and there was a Russian woman standing there. Dressed very provocatively, lot of make up, high heels. She walked into the room and casually asked if they wanted to have some fun! Can you imagine?’

‘Err… really?’

‘Yes! My fiancé later told me that he was very alarmed. Who sent you here, he asked her. And she said she’d received information about some tourists staying in the hotel, so she’d wanted to come by and check if they were up for a good time. Obviously, my fiancé told her to leave. She was starting to create a scene so they had to pay her something. But thankfully, she went quietly after that. It was a very upsetting experience for them.’

I imagined this scene: A group of Indian men minding their business in a hotel room, until an escort bizarrely appears at their doorstep in the middle of the night, whom they then usher out at their celibate best. After paying her, let’s not forget. I am not a suspicious man by nature, but there are limits to my credulity. Simran and I looked at each other. Should we tell her, we silently wondered.

Fortunately, the woman did not wait for us to respond to her riveting tale of temptation and marital fidelity.

‘Make sure you lock your door,’ she counselled, ‘and don’t let someone into your room at night.’

‘Umm.. yes, of course. Thank you!’ I replied, thinking how talking to strangers can sometimes be quite rewarding after all.

The first room is crowded. On the left, a wooden countertop separates five officials from the hoi polloi standing in queues before them. Signs hang from the ceiling, swaying a few feet above each of the seated satraps. Three of the signs read: Tokens. The right side of the room has two banks of steel tandem chairs, the kind that have been optimised for discomfort. They have no arm rests, they tilt back at an odd angle, and they are too close to the floor. Chairs like these exist solely in places that you visit against your will. You must have seen them in hospitals, or government offices.

I clench my jaw and join the shortest queue. Undergoing surgery tops my list of Things I Never Want To Endure Again, but only by the barest of margins. Dealing with the administration, in my experience, comes in close at the heels of being sliced open. It’s neck and neck till the finish line.1 Nevertheless, I try to be positive as I await my turn. I recently learnt, as many of you know, that my passport is expiring in less than six months. So, this trip to the nearest Passport Seva Kendra was unavoidable. There was a similar inevitability about the ringbearer’s journey to Mordor — though Frodo, of course, did not have to carry copies of his Aadhaar card, PAN card, voter ID, and marriage certificate.

The queue inches forward. Behind me, set in the corner, there is a doorway that leads to the next room. Perhaps the process will be simple: Collect token, wait for your alloted number to be summoned, enter the adjoining chamber, submit all documents, exit stage right and receive your new passport within the week. Buoyed by this thought, I flash a smile when I reach the counter and hand over my file. The man does not take his eyes off his desk.

He asks if I’ve completed the online application for a new passport. I confirm that I have. He demands a bunch of documents. I supply them, the originals and the photocopies. He studies the former and scribbles on the latter. Then, he asks if my Aadhaar is linked to my DigiLocker.

My heart thumps.

Now I don’t know about you, but everytime someone asks me about a chore I ought to have completed but forgot to even begin, it is my instinct to say yes. I do not like to disappoint my audience. I have maintained this positive approach throughout my life when responding to queries about varied tasks:

‘Did you finish your homework?’ (My mother.)

‘Did you send that invoice memo to the client?’ (My boss.)

‘Did you call Ganesh and order vegetables?’ (My wife.)

‘Did you file your taxes?’ (My accountant.)

During each of these inquests, I have been known to react with swift and unflappable assurance:

‘Uhh, yes… But I left the notebook at a friend’s place. No matter, I’ll do it again. You know what they say, do it twice to learn it right, haha.’

‘Uhh, yes… But it was stuck in my outbox. No matter, I’ll send it again. Technology, I tell you. It’ll be the death of us, haha.’

‘Uhh, yes… But it must have slipped his mind. No matter, I’ll call him again. Such a forgetful fellow this Ganesh, he’ll forget his own name someday, haha.’

‘Oh fuck.’

I tell the guy that, yes, obviously my Aadhaar is linked to DigiLocker. Whose isn’t? He scribbles a number on a sheet — this, I realise, is the token — and asks me to wait. I sit on one of the chairs, my knees far too close to my chest, and try to access DigiLocker on my phone. Minutes tick by but the webpage refuses to load. I am not one to point fingers but I blame Simran for this predicament. She has an aversion to state-sponsored technology meant to identify and catalogue citizens. It is this reluctance that has kept us from registering on Digi Yatra and reducing the time we waste at airport security kiosks by at least four minutes. I do not understand her paranoia. Can you think of any novel, movie or TV show, where the regime’s ability to surveil people does not lead to a happy outcome? Sometimes my wife mystifies me.

A uniformed attendant calls out my name. I assume I will now be ushered into the next room. Not so. He points me in the direction of another queue, one which snakes below the sign: ‘Senior Citizen’. A little affronted, I turn to the attendant but he has already walked off. I shuffle along with the others. At the business end of the queue, a lady demands a bunch of documents. I supply them, the originals and the photocopies. She studies the former and scribbles on the latter. I am told to proceed to the next room, and wait for my token’s turn. The DigiLocker website still refuses to co-operate.

I step into a larger space, with more tandem chairs. It is a bureaucratic bardo, an ante-chamber that opens into the main department. A flat-screen TV on the wall displays a list of token numbers. Next to it, sits a woman on a swivel chair. Her position of authority is made evident by the marked superiority of her seating facilities. Every time a new number appears on the screen, like a winning lottery ticket, the woman spins around and shouts out the digits as her eyes scan the assembled folk. The longer it takes from someone to gather their files and walk out, the louder she screams. Long minutes may pass before your token pops up, but once it’s on the screen she will holler you into haste. The wheels of the state turn by dint of such diligent work.

I am keen to avoid her verbal volleys and keep my eyes locked on the TV screen. The second I spot my token, I leap out of my seat and make for the inner sanctum. But my amateurish efforts are no match for her seasoned expertise. As I walk past her, she looks straight at me and yells my token number into my face. I stagger backwards, mumble an apology and quicken my pace. The hall I enter is buzzing with activity, plywood partitions carving the floor into a maze of cubicles. At the far end, I can spot another waiting area. But before I rush to wait there, I must find cubicle B12.

A courteous lady greets me when I reach the cubicle. She gestures towards a chair and my posterior meets a cushioned surface for the first time in over thirty minutes. We go through the formalities. She asks me to verify the details in the application; then takes my picture with a digital camera that’s bolted to her desk. She requests a bunch of documents. I furnish them, the originals and the photocopies. She studies the former and scribbles on the latter. Is your Aadhaar linked to DigiLocker, she asks. I clear my throat and wipe a perspiring brow with a perspiring palm.

‘Actually, ma’am… I’m not sure. And the DigiLocker website doesn’t seem to be working so I cannot check.’

‘Do you have the DigiLocker mobile app?’

‘No.’

She nods ruefully and turns her attention back to the computer monitor. Moments pass in silence. I sense the conversation is at a precarious juncture and one of us must take the initiative if we are to resolve this impasse. Since it is my passport on the line, I figure it ought to be me.

‘Do you want me to download the DigiLocker app? Should I do it right now?’

‘Oh yes, please do,’ she responds with a grave expression. ‘Your Aadhaar must be linked to your DigiLocker. Please go there. They’ll call your token number. Thank you.’

I wander over to yet-another set of steel benches facing yet-another television. The DigiLocker mobile app is more pliable than the website. I dutifully deposit my Aadhaar to its virtual safekeeping. In front of me, a child — no older than four or five, I imagine — is attempting to somersault over the back of her chair. She catches my eye and ducks out of view. I do what any adult is prone to do after establishing eye contact with an infant. I pull funny faces, contorting my lips and scrunching my nose to entertain her. She steals peeks, looking more alarmed than amused. I redouble my efforts, crossing my eyes till my head throbs. She remains unimpressed. Since I am not wholly bereft of self-respect I do not resort to baby talk.

Unfortunately, the child’s mother has no recourse to such delightful diversions. She is pacing the floor, fuming. I gather she has been here for a while. She complains about later token numbers getting precedence over hers. I am 190, she remonstrates, how can you call 207 before me? An official explains to her that the passport office does not believe in the concept of chronology. Linearity is mundane, and in fact, unjust. Here, all numbers are equal. Any token can emerge on the screen at any time. But I have been waiting for over an hour, she snaps, my daughter will need to eat soon.

Her daughter, meanwhile, is trying to wedge her fingers inside the narrow gap between the wall and a glass door. A few other kids stand around, observing this daredevil experiment. When nobody shuts the door and her fingers remain unjammed, they lose interest and scamper away, bellowing at the top of their lungs. A sign on a wall reads: ‘Please Keep Your Mobile Phone On Silent Mode’. No guidance is offered vis-à-vis rowdy children.

More minutes pass before I find myself in front of another desk. The man on the other side demands a bunch of documents. I supply them, the originals and the photocopies. He studies the former and scribbles on the latter. Then, he asks if my Aadhaar is linked to my DigiLocker. I suppress the feeling of déjà vu, and brandish my phone in triumph. There it is! My Aadhaar in my DigiLocker! He glances at it and returns my file.

Is it over?

Can I leave?

No. I must — do you want to hazard a guess? Is your answer: Head to another waiting area before meeting another officer? Very good. Ten points to Hufflepuff.

It is past my lunchtime and I am beginning to feel a bit testy. The little girl — she is still here, along with her raging mother — seems to be holding up remarkably well. I suppose if she can keep her hunger in check, I must make an effort too. Duty before food. Sadly, the employees of the passport office do not subscribe to this philosophy. Like lights going off in an apartment block, active counters start disappearing from the TV screen until only one remains in a large, desolate screen. A solitary candle of hope. More than a dozen pair of eyes stare at it, willing it to summon them. My neighbour grumbles. My stomach rumbles. We exchange stricken smiles.

I am roused out of a stupor by the sound of my name. My token is on the screen, and the official is calling out for me. I trudge to this public servant who eschewed her lunch to deal with cranky applicants. She is either a noble soul, I think, or has lauki in her dabba today. She demands a bunch of documents. I supply them, the originals and the photocopies. She studies the former and scribbles on the latter.

Okay, done, she pronounces.

I feel dazed. This is all too anti-climatic. Can I at least show her my DigiLocker? It has my Aadhaar. A sight to behold, I promise.

She evinces no interest. The police will contact me soon, she says, pulling another file from a pile next to her, and they’ll need to verify the address. Behind me, a couple have already appeared, restless and keen that I fuck out of their way. I collect my file and depart. Lesser men may have fallen prey to bitterness but I take pride in being an optimist. No matter how harrowing the experience, how ghastly the circumstance, I never fail to spot the silver lining.

Even the passport office has a redeeming quality, I tell myself, as I leave this modern-day Tartarus. It will be ten years before I need to visit again.

When I was a teenager, all gangly appendages and pimple-faced, I would tease my grandmother about the hours she wasted on those oil massages. She would laugh and tell me her diligence served a purpose, and I would understand when I grew older.

It has been years since we spoke about it, but I remember these exchanges as I watch an attendant massage my grandmother’s arm. The eight-decade old skin is wrinkled and delicate, so thin so as to be translucent. It hangs in folds off her spare bones. There is a grimace on her face but she lies still and endures the bruising efforts to improve her circulation. She looks unbearably frail, like a papier-mâché model that will crumple if you aren’t careful, but when I hold her upright to better let my aunt feed her I sag beneath her weight. Her body is losing the battle against gravity.

This state of hers is no surprise. Over the past couple of months, phone conversations with my mother have charted my grandmother’s deteriorating health. During my three-day visit, I did not expect to find her bustling about the apartment the way she did six months ago. And yet, it is unnerving to see a person whom you have always associated with action, with energy, transform into a listless shrivelled figure on the bed.

Sometimes, foreknowledge is scant preparation.

Anima Ghosal was born in the midst of the Second World War, beating her four siblings and the Indian republic by a few years. She grew up in Bardhaman, a small city in Bengal, and before she turned twenty, she was married to the sixth son of the Choudhury family settled in a mofussil town in Bihar. The house she moved into after her wedding would become the place she’d inhabit for half a century, the place where my mother grew up and where I spent my school vacations.

My earliest memories of my grandmother locate her in the cooking quarters of that sprawling house. This sobriquet — ‘cooking quarters’ — sounds grandiose, I know, but I think it’s justified because the two rooms in question were each bigger than my current bedroom. One was the kitchen, with a granite counter running the length of one wall and a four-top stove-and-oven set into it like a chunky piece of lego. The adjoining room was the pantry that housed sacks of potatoes, entire colonies of cockroaches, and, for some reason I was never able to fathom, a massive wooden bed (with no mattress). The doorway to the pantry had a single piece of decor: the mounted head of a snarling leopard. In my grandfather’s room there were a couple of air rifles too. That house was a schoolboy’s dream.

But I digress.

My grandmother was the matriarch of the household, a role that seemed ill-suited to a woman who stood less than five feet tall and looked like she’d topple if she ventured too close to a pedestal fan. Life, however, forces us to play the hand we are dealt. During my mother’s childhood, my grandmother was the filling in a generational sandwich, hemmed in and spread thin by her duties as a daughter-in-law serving the needs of a joint family. She used to have a temper back then, my mother assures me, but the decades must have had a mellowing effect because I do not recall seeing my grandmother angry. I remember her as a person of authority, a thick bunch of keys jangling at her waist where she’d tucked them into her sari, who controlled domestic affairs with a brisk but benevolent hand. Most of all, though, I remember her cooking.

Her pantuas were peerless, no store-bought sweet could match their magnificence. She would make them from scratch: preparing the sugar syrup, setting the chhana, then rolling chunks of it between her palms into little spheres she’d deep-fry to dark-brown perfection. My disdain for rosogolla — that overrated Scotch-Brite Ball© — could well trace its roots to how poorly it matched up against my grandmother’s pantua. I would implore her to rustle up a new batch as soon as I’d chomped through the previous lot, except in the summers. In the summers, I wanted her to focus on making aam sotto. For those unfamiliar with it, aam sotto is the Bengali cousin of aam papad. It lacks the hit of spice, but more than makes up for it with a subtle tartness that somehow makes the dried mango pulp taste sweeter. My grandmother excelled at making chutney with aam sotto, but as someone who has always valued simplicity over ostentation, I preferred consuming (fistfuls of) it au naturel. You must try it some time — but, and I speak from experience here, you should avoid eating half a kilogram in a single sitting. The colonic consequences are far from being enjoyable.

In the interests of transparency, I should mention that not every food item proffered by my grandmother was a hit. There was a phase, when I was in middle school, when she was determined to add raw chicken to my diet. She was convinced — don’t ask me why — that chewing a slice of thigh was the most efficient way to ingest protein. I keep an open mind but this was not a grandma’s remedy I was keen to embrace. Two bites, that’s all, she’d cajole, it will help you put on weight, you’re so thin. When I’d point out she was thinner and therefore should be the first to poke her fork into the pink-white meat, she’d give me a stern look. Don’t talk back to your elders, she’d chide, you’re becoming too big for your boots. Ah, I’d respond in triumph, then I don’t need raw meat to grow big, after all! These arguments ended with me being admonished for my insolence but that never bothered me. I knew I had secured the moral victory, and, more importantly, kept my palate raw chicken-free.

Dementia makes people do absurd things. It would be comical if it weren’t happening to someone you know. The incidents my mother describes to me during our phone calls sound like setpieces from some movie, a dramedy about the shenanigans of ageing folk. She shouted at the nurse. She tried taking a bath in the middle of the night. She (almost) walked out of the house unsupervised. If I squint, I can imagine my strong-willed grandmother doing these things. This disease that is laying waste to her brain cells has released the handbrake of propriety. She is acting without fear or inhibition. Has she ever known such freedom?

But this liberty takes a toll on her caregivers. My mother swings between exasperation and tenderness. Watchers are deputed to stay by my grandmother’s side, day and night, to keep vigil. As it turns out, this rash of rebellion is short-lived. By the time I visit, she is a pale shadow of the figure who, mere weeks ago, was scurrying around the house causing mayhem.

When I stand next to her bed and ask if she recognises me, her responses are evasive. How can I not, she mumbles. But when pressed to say my name, she is silent. Her eyes search my face for the answer before losing focus. She drifts in and out of conversations, like a gentle breeze. The few occasions she seems engaged are when she asks: Have you eaten? Yes, I reply. Who is cooking for you? My mother, your daughter. She nods and looks away. Perhaps this answer satisfies her. Or perhaps the moment of lucidity passes and the fog returns, settling into the crevices of her memory.

Later in the day when I talk to her again, she will replay these questions. She may have trouble remembering my name, or who I am, but her enquiry is genuine. Have you eaten? Who is cooking for you? A lifetime spent feeding a family has hard coded these concerns into her consciousness. Even dementia cannot erase some habits.

In her collection of essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron recalls how her mother would say to her ‘… at least five hundred times in the course of my growing up: “Everything is copy.”’ She goes on to write:

When she was in the hospital, dying, she said to me, “You’re a reporter, Nora. Take notes.”

…

My mother died of cirrhosis, but the immediate cause of her death was an overdose of sleeping pills administered by my father. At the time this didn’t seem to me to fall under the rubric of “Everything is copy.” Although it did to my sister Amy, and she put it into a novel. Who can blame her?

When I read this passage last year, I underlined the page many times to mark my alarm. I am no reporter but I understood this predicament. In recent years, I have started perceiving my life through the viewfinder of this newsletter. Anything that happens to or around me is fair game. It will almost certainly be turned into content by me for your consumption. My friends have made grudging peace with this situation. Be careful what you say around him, they warn others only half-jokingly. You may end up in his essays.

This predilection of mine, I have started to realise, is both good and bad. The good: I have become more observant. I am attentive to any incident that can be teased into an anecdote. This conscious act of noticing can sometimes make the mundane seem delightful, which is its own reward. This newsletter also helps me introspect. Joan Didon once said: ‘I write entirely to find out I’m thinking.’ As anyone who has read my writing can confirm, I cannot be accused of much thinking, but even my stray thoughts benefit from being written down. Writing forces me to examine my behaviour and my actions — the problems begin when I start doing this real-time.

Occasionally, in the thick of a crisis or a comical situation, I catch myself wondering how I’ll shape the narrative when I later recount the tale. Do I manipulate my responses during these instances knowing I’ll be documenting what I said or did? I prefer not to go down that rabbit hole. And then there is the matter of publishing. Writing as a private pursuit can serve as a tool of self-discovery, sure, but can writing for an audience ever be free of artifice? Public writing is a performative act. There is a temptation to smoothen the prose, and therefore, the experience. A tendency to craft sentences with a polish and precision that is at odds with the chaos of lived reality. Maybe the emotional resonance of some events cannot, should not, be reduced to a literary flourish?

All of this is to say that when I visited my grandmother last week, I was determined not to turn the meeting into a writing prompt. Everything is not copy, I told myself. Be wholly present when you’re with her, don’t spend the time taking notes.

Well, we can all see how that turned out.

It is our last conversation of the trip that is to blame. Before leaving for the airport, I sit beside my grandmother and say goodbye. When she smiles at me her eyes have a rare clarity.

I will be leaving soon, she declares, unprompted.

Leaving? I ask, confused. Where are you planning to go?

Wherever one has to.

I don’t understand. What do you mean?

She only smiles, the words once more eluding her grasp.

Almost immediately, I jot this exchange down. I want to preserve this moment, and typing it out, word for word, is the only way I know how.

And so, I begin writing.

About that particular conversation.

About my memories of massages and pantuas.

About my grandmother.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, too stunned to respond. But Simran was a step ahead of me. She glanced at the name tag on the man’s uniform and attempted a winsome smile.

‘Bablu… Your name is Bablu, right?… Look, Bablu, there must be some other solution? Our flights are paid for, our hotels are booked. We will lose all that money if we can’t travel now. It’s Christmas time! You have to help us.’

‘I understand, ma’am, and I am really sorry. But we cannot change the rules. Your husband can’t travel with this passport.’

And to be fair, Bablu did look apologetic as he returned our papers. He was just doing his job and right then his job was to torpedo our trip. I opened my passport and looked at the overleaf, but the offending digits refused to change. The field titled ‘Date of Expiry’ still read: 03/06/2026. All around us the airport buzzed with the excitement of people about to embark on a vacation. Fifteen minutes ago, I had been one of their ilk. Now, I was on the verge of being sent home from the airport, because I did not know how to count.

During my middle school years, a friend and I took private tuitions for maths. Our tutor was a young man, in his late twenties, who worked at the Indian Statistical Institute. He would come home every week, and for an hour or so we would struggle with algebra while he sipped tea. At some point during these classes, our tutor began telling us how we would soon be joining the Indian spy agency, RAW.1

In the months that followed, we were treated to accounts of his meetings with intelligence agents, his future assignments, and the minutiae of the life of a (prospective) spy — all under the oath of secrecy. To a couple of gullible teenagers, it was thrilling stuff. We knew his stories were implausible, but listening to them and believing them to be true was preferable to studying trigonometry.

I have often wondered why the tutor spun those tales. Was it simply out of boredom? Or was his purpose more insidious? Did he hope his stories would ignite a passion for mathematics in us, that in our eyes maths would transform from a gnarly, geeky subject to something more glamorous? I guess we will never know. But if it was the latter, then it shames me to admit how spectacularly he failed. Not only did a love for arithmetic never take root in my heart, recent evidence suggests I am bereft of even the ability to add and subtract.

The fact that Indian citizens do not need a visa to visit Kazakhstan was one of the reasons we decided to travel to Almaty. Over the past few years, Simran and I have developed a tradition of spending the holiday season in chilly locations. In 2024, it was Georgia; and the year before that, Kasauli and Shimla. With its promise of sub-zero temperatures and proximity to a ski resort, Almaty seemed like the ideal destination for our 2025 year-end holiday. There was no hassle of visa appointments and cumbersome applications. The only thing required was a passport, one that would remain valid for at least six months after the travel dates.

When the guy at the check-in counter mentioned this detail, Simran and I were not perturbed. We had done the calculation many times in the preceding weeks. With an assured air, and a touch of irritation, I tried to reason with the fellow.

‘I know about the six-month validity rule. But my passport is expiring in early June. I will be returning on January 1. So, I’m well within the period. It’s not an issue, trust me.’

‘No, sir. Your passport is expiring in less than six months.’

‘Come on, yaar. I’ll explain again so you understand. June is the sixth month of the year. I’ll be back in January. See? January to June. Six months. You’re not counting properly.’

By this time, Bablu had entered the chat. He ushered us away from the counter, punched in some numbers into his mobile phone and turned the screen towards us.

‘Sir, we aren’t counting. It’s all system-generated. Look here. Your passport is expiring in five months and eights days.’

‘What? Impossible! There’s something wrong with your system. Check again.’ I bunched my fist and ticked off the months, one finger at a time. ‘January to February… to March… to April…’

It was to Bablu’s credit that he waited for me to reach June and discover that only five of my fingers were unfurled. I turned to Simran and she had a horrified expression on her face. Being abysmal at maths, it turns out, can be contagious. Every time we had calculated my passport’s validity — when booking the flight to Almaty, when reserving hotels, when planning our return — Simran and I had miscounted the months with admirable consistency.

‘So what happens now?’ I croaked.

‘Sir, there is nothing we can do. You cannot board the flight.’

While my spirit deflated faster than a punctured balloon, Simran continued to put up a fight. She pleaded with Bablu until he stepped away to make some calls; she researched Kazakhstan entry restrictions; she phoned people to unearth any contact who could offer advice. Shouvik and Tania, who were meant to travel with us, waited in silence, looking suitably distraught. In the meantime, I stood next to our suitcases, drooping like an unwatered plant. The fleece jacket I was carrying, one I would have needed in Almaty, felt heavier on my arm. I patted it a few times. Back to the cupboard, my friend, no winter holiday for you, I whispered.

Simran was still busy making calls when Bablu returned from his consultations.

‘Why are you going to Almaty?’ he asked me. ‘Tourism?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how long will you be there?’

‘One week.’

‘Hmm. Okay, go. Enjoy.’

‘What?!’

‘It’s okay. You can board the flight. Enjoy your holiday. But renew your passport when you’re back.’

‘Oh. Wow. Thank you! Thank you so much! …But there won’t be any trouble at immigration, right?’

Bablu — that noble soul, that prince among men, that svelte Santa Claus — waved away my concerns. He responded with the confidence of a man who was born to rule empires, but was currently biding his time at the departure terminal of Mumbai airport.

‘Don’t worry. I am giving you the green signal na. Go. Now nobody will stop you. Have fun.’

And that was how, later that night, I found myself before an immigration officer in Almaty, whose gaze switched between my face and my passport as I tried to appear nonchalant. In truth, of course, I had never been more chalant in my life. Bablu was thousands of kilometres away. What power did his promise hold in this alien land?

I was convinced the Kazakh official would sniff out the stench of my expired passport and threaten to deport me. Would he allow me to enter the country if I agreed to pay a bribe fine? Perhaps I could convince him to let me spend the week at Almaty airport, à la Tom Hanks? I was running through these options in my head, my panic growing with every passing minute, when he eventually stamped my passport and handed it back to me. The gate next to the immigration kiosk swung open and, just like Bablu had foretold, I walked into Kazakhstan and nobody stopped me.

In the prologue of his book In Search of Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared, Christopher Robbins recounts how his interest in the Central Asian country was sparked by a chance encounter on a flight to Moscow. An American seated next to Robbins was on his way to Almaty, to meet a Russian widow he had met online and decided to marry. This stranger, on this strange mission of love, shared all he knew about Kazakhstan with Robbins. When they arrived at Moscow and prepared to part, the man dropped one final piece of trivia:

As my friend from Arkansas pulled down a bulging new scarlet rucksack from the overhead compartment, he turned and made a throwaway remark that seemed insignificant at the time. The last words he addressed to me were, ‘Apples are from Kazakhstan.’

The bizarre meeting, and suspicious claim, tugged at Robbins’ curiosity until he finally ‘became determined to visit the birthplace of the apple’.2 So naturally, when he travelled to Almaty a couple of years later, seeing orchards topped his list of priorities.

I harboured no such horticultural interests, though I did expect Almaty to be overflowing with apples. I could not have been more wrong. We kept our eyes peeled during our weeklong stay but there was not a single apple to be seen. When we brought this up during a walking tour, our guide, Tonya, explained that we’d missed the harvest season. ‘It’s too far into winter for you to get fresh apples’, she told us; and then added, perhaps as consolation: ‘But you can eat a lot of horse.’

Kazakh people are crazy about horses. Don’t show a Kazakh a horse, a local joke goes, he will domesticate it and then he will eat it. The latter bit is something I can confirm. Restaurant menus had umpteen dishes that contained horse meat. Sausages, kebabs, mince, smoked cuts — every equestrian preference was indulged by the local cuisine. We discovered that even Kazakh potatoes were occasionally boiled in horse broth. Tonya highlighted how this dietary habit was linked to the region’s nomadic culture, and how wandering over the country’s vast grasslands (the ‘Great Steppe’) made horses more valuable than cattle. At an intellectual level, we understood this. But when she became effusive about a Kazakh delicacy, Beshbarmak, and insisted that it tastes better with the meat of a young horse, we baulked.

‘Eating a baby horse?’

‘Yes, it’s very nice.’

‘Isn’t that quite… umm… cruel?’

‘Why?’ Tonya asked, with a grim smile. ‘Don’t you eat baby cows and baby goats?’

We did not broach the topic of horse meat for the rest of the tour.3

Almaty is often promoted as a ‘Garden City’ but when we visited, its famous foliage was absent.

Winter leaches Almaty of its colours, and in late December the city wore a grey mantle of fog, frost, and fumes. The coal burnt to keep us warm in hotels and cafés made the air grimy. The abundance of trees lining its avenues were dark and bare, the branches reaching up to the sky like bony fingers. The parks, with their dusting of snow, looked spartan. And yet, there was a beauty to the place. In many areas, promenades meant for pedestrians were wider than the roads. There were a few streets, festooned with Christmas decorations, where no vehicles were admitted. And walking around the city centre offered a sense of serenity — a rare feeling in the footpaths of our metropolises.

Sometimes, though, the place felt a little too quiet. The Green Bazar, I’d read, was the local market, so we headed there one morning to see how their bustle compared to ours.

The market was housed in a large warehouse, and the passageway leading to the entrance was covered with socks and hats on sale. In the main floor, rows of stalls were arranged according to their wares. One section hawked fruits and spices, while another displayed vegetables. At the far end, large hunks of meat dangled on butcher’s hooks.

The place had a Soviet-era feel and reminded me of the old-school bazars of India. This homely feeling was accentuated when a vendor spotted me and exclaimed: ‘Hey! India! Bollywood!’ When I did not respond, he decided to up the ante and turned political. ‘Narendra Modi!’ he cried out, certain that I would not ignore this invocation. I smiled a little but continued walking away. He obviously viewed this as blasphemy. ‘Narendra Modi,’ he yelled again, and when I did not turn, he delivered his verdict: ‘Pakistani? Yeah! Pakistani!’

I wondered if I should tell the man that if he ever tired of selling dry fruits in Almaty, he had an IT cell job waiting for him in India. I did no such thing, of course. My ears turning red, I quickened my pace as his shouts continued ringing in my ear.

In Georgia, the hatred for Russia was palpable. The seven-decade long Soviet occupation of their country had embittered many Georgians, and their spite found expression in the graffitis and protest marches we witnessed during our visit. Kazakhstan, too, has a complicated relationship with its imperialist neighbour — though it is not quite as belligerent.

Much of what is Kazakhstan today was subsumed by the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century. Later, when the USSR came into existence, Kazakhstan became one of its constituents republics. This vast, oil-and-mineral-rich nation had a local administration, but for all practical purposes it was ruled by faraway Moscow. The Russian script, language, and culture were deemed superior to Kazakh customs. In government and in public life, too, the indigenous people were sidelined in favour of ‘true’ Russians. It was only when the Soviet Union collapsed, in the 1990s, that Kazakhstan established itself as an independent state.

Russian is still widely spoken in Kazakhstan, but as she led us on a walk around the heart of Almaty, Tonya took pains to explain how the Kazakh people have strived to reclaim their identity. Folk tales have been etched in mosaic on the facade of famous hotels. Icons that are emblematic of the land’s nomadic history — the yurt and the dombra, for instance — have become motifs in modern artworks. Fountains pay homage to the Kazakh zodiac calendar. And the name of the country itself has undergone a change.

‘The Russians struggled with the qh sound,’ she elaborated. ‘They could say kh, but not qh. And so, the name of our country became Kazakhstan. They found it easier to say it that way.’

‘Oh, interesting. So, how would you say it?’

‘It’s Qazaqstan. With two qh sounds — one at the start and one in the middle.’

‘Ah. Could you say it again?’

‘Qazaqstan. Do you hear the difference?’

We did not, though after a few minutes the only polite thing we could do was to nod and assure Tonya that we did.

During the week we spent there, I did see the name Qazaqstan pop up elsewhere: on fridge magnets, tote bags, and postcards. Every time I saw it, I would try saying it under my breath, the way Tonya had demonstrated, but I don’t think I ever got it right. Which is fine, I suppose. Not knowing how to pronounce a country’s name did not stop me from visiting it, and it should not stop you either — particularly if you enjoy digging into some horse. Just make sure you know how to count.

I had half a mind to (re)publish a silly little piece I wrote a few days ago, about the Season’s Greetings emails that are so in vogue this time of the year. The piece appeared in the Indian Express, along with a mugshot sketch that would convince you I suffer from mumps.1 I have rarely shared a self-portrait with such enthusiasm.

I decided against the copy-paste job because it felt like cheating. This newsletter exists to help me build a writing habit. Its raison d’être is to nag and bully me into stringing together sentences I can later inflict upon you. Unless I’m pressed for time, recycling pieces feels insincere. Besides, my in-house editor was left unimpressed by the Christmas email piece.

Since I started this newsletter, over four years ago, Simran has read and supplied editorial feedback on nearly every issue. Her marital vows did not include the covenant: ‘I will review everything my husband writes, and curb the desire to punch him as he hovers around me with a needy look’ — and yet she performs this task without complaint. I insist she share her honest opinion so this time, after she read the draft, she said it was ‘juvenile’ and ‘unoriginal’.

‘I didn’t like it,’ she declared. ‘It just didn’t work for me.’

I blinked a few times. ‘Hmm. Was there a specific part you disliked?’

‘No. I didn’t like any of it. It feels contrived. And this trope of making fun of business emails is such a cliche. Not your best work.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘Are you feeling bad? I’m sorry! You keep telling me I should be honest.’

I meant to tell Simran I was not feeling bad, and that, yes, she should always express her views in a frank and forthright manner. I value constructive criticism. I was lucky to receive her unvarnished inputs and knew it would improve my writing. I meant to tell her all this to set her mind at ease — but it just so happened that I was too busy sobbing.

I never intended this newsletter to become a slice-of-life digest. It was my spectacular lack of expertise in any other field that led to me mining my life for content. Sports, business, science, art — I don’t have anywhere near the depth of knowledge required to write about these subjects. I could’ve started writing poems, I suppose, but while I have the necessary self-absorption to be a poet, I possess none of the skill. So, I took refuge in the personal essay. Quite soon, though, I identified a couple of problems with this genre of writing.

First, it is hard to come by high-quality material. When I’m not travelling, I lead a largely uneventful life. Often, the highlight of my day is finding a ten-rupee note in the pocket of a freshly laundered shirt. When you try to slice a life so bereft of drama, you get stories that are slimmer than sashimi. Second, you run the risk of repeating yourself. In the last issue, I wrote about my uncle ordering Mutton Paneer at a dhaba in Uttar Pradesh. A few days later, my mother reminded me that I’d used that anecdote in an earlier issue, two years ago. How embarrassing! Have there been other instances when I’ve committed this faux pas? Have I previously written an essay about how I struggle to find material for essays?2

These questions would haunt me in the past. They still do, to be honest, but the haunting is not as harrowing. It’s more Stree, less The Exorcist. For the first couple of years, I obsessed over every detail of this newsletter: the subscriber count, the open rate, the likes, the views. The response to an essay, whether it attracted comments or was met with silence — it is always polite silence, on Substack, never outright critique — moved the needle of my self-worth. If a piece got lukewarm response, I moped for days; if it generated chatter, I was chirpy all weekend. It was awful.

I am still not immune to the metrics, but in the past year I have sensed a shift. In December 2021, three months on from an impetuous decision to quit my full-time job, I wrote:

I had always believed that nobody could possibly enjoy work, but (trite as it sounds) I am beginning to see how being passionate about something could make it seem less like work…. As long as you continue receiving these newsletters every week, you may be assured that my experiment with freedom continues unhindered.3

How fortunate, and privileged, am I to have continued this experiment with freedom, to have the luxury of devoting myself to doing something I love. Isn’t the joy (or grief) triggered by Substack engagement trivial, when set against a life where I am the master of my time? This is all old hat, of course, but it has taken me over four years to get it.

Let me assure you that this has not resulted in me taking this newsletter any less seriously. I enjoy writing these essays, and I am grateful to you for reading them. I would never take the gift of your time for granted — though I may, on occasions, ramble for a few minutes when I don’t have much of anything to say. Here’s hoping you won’t mind! And here’s also wishing you a Merry Christmas and a fabulous start to the new year!

This newsletter will return in 2026, and I promise that next time I’ll have a plan.

In the restaurants we enter, he scans the menu for any hint of meat. Every time we order a vegetarian course the light goes out of his eyes. He bears his suffering with stoic acceptance, determined to appear unruffled before this family he has married into. But his resolve is crumbling and when we enter a dhaba in Vrindavan, one dusty afternoon, something gives.

We ask a waiter at the dhaba for a menu. The man treats this as his cue to launch into a recital. As the seconds pass and a flood of dishes continues to pour forth from his lips, we feel as if we’re drowning. His prodigious memory and fleetness of tongue make him difficult to understand, and I can see my uncle struggling.

In keeping with the stereotype of the Bengali bhadralok, my uncle’s Hindi is limited. He speaks it well enough to get by, though his mangling of genders and tenses have occasioned a few raised eyebrows in Uttar Pradesh. His comprehension, too, is adequate as long as he remains focussed when listening to native speakers. Unfortunately, when you deny a carnivore his staple food, his focus begins to flag somewhat. In this state of deprivation, my uncle squints at the waiter, who is still chanting curries at breakneck speed, and tries to make sense of the verbal torrent.

‘…aloofryaloojeeraaloogobi…..mixvegvegkadhai…bhindifry….paneerbuttermasala…muttonpaneer…’

‘Ek minute! Kya bola tum? Mutton paneer!? Ek plate mutton paneer le aao!’

There is a wide, maniacal grin on my uncle’s face as he waves his arm, looking like a windmill stirring to life after a barren spell.

‘Kya hua? Jaldi karo. Aur suno, kitchen ko bolo: Paneer kum, mutton zyada. Theek hai?’

The waiter looks bewildered. There is a long pause but, to his credit, the man is quick to identify the snag.

‘Matar.’

‘Kya?’

‘Matar Paneer. Yahan mutton nahi milta. Matar paneer chahiye?’

The anguished cry that escapes my uncle’s throat is heart-rending. I know I will remember this incident for a long time to come. And true enough, twenty five years later, I think of my uncle— and the desperate hope that made him believe in the existence of mutton paneer — when our trek guide asks if we want dal bhaat, for the sixth consecutive day, at lunchtime.

We are walking towards the village of Machhermo. ‘Village’ is a bit of an overkill to describe the place — it is a small basin, ringed by peaks, with a smattering of teahouses. In one of those teahouses, we will sit on the wooden benches and wait for our lunch. Yesterday, too, on the way up to Gokyo, we had lunch in Machhermo. We ate dal bhaat. The meal preceding that lunch was dal bhaat, and later in the evening, dal bhaat was our dinner. Perhaps you are beginning to notice a pattern.

In Kathmandu, our tour organiser had advised us to avoid meat during the trek. Keep it simple, he had counselled. Stick to basic fare, like dal bhaat. We’ve been more than happy to comply. Before arriving in Nepal, we’d heard stories of hikers whose decision to sample some spaghetti bolognese had led to unpleasant consequences. We want to avoid such mishaps. In the mountains, a meal of rice, lentils, and some greens, is wholesome and sensible. We have been disciplined for a week — but our tolerance is fraying. After all, it has already been a long day.

We woke up at 3 AM, over eleven hours ago. We’ve spent most of those eleven hours being buffeted by glacial winds on the mountainside. The steep descent, from the summit of Gokyo Ri, delivered a battering to our knees. At this point, crash dummies would have healthier, better-functioning joints. When we made it back to Gokyo, to our teahouse at the foot of the mountain, we celebrated by packing our bags. In less than two hours, we were off again, hoping to reach Dhole before sundown.

The elation of standing on top of Gokyo Ri, of surveying the world from a height of 17,575 feet, has long since evaporated. It is a subdued bunch that trudges out of the Gokyo valley. Shouvik is gamely carrying on. The bout of AMS has slowed him down, but he is able to relegate his fatigue to a corner of his mind that he is accustomed to ignoring. (It is the same corner that has grown weary of telling him that triathlons are a terrible hobby.) Starved of oxygen, the rest of us are not faring much better.

I have a headache that feels like it will crack my skull open, leaving crevices on my brow. I hope I’m not catching a cold, I mumble to myself — and immediately, my right foot sinks into an icy puddle. The sneakers I have been wearing since the demise of my hiking boots are immune to neither snow nor water. By the time I extract my foot, it feels like it’s encased in a popsicle. Since walking barefoot through a rocky snowfield is not an appealing option, I remove my sock, don the damp shoe and carry on.

We are nearing the edge of the valley, where the trail fords a stream and curls around the lip of a ridge before running downhill, when Animesh spies paw prints in the snow. The prints are at an angle to our path, going up a slope and disappearing around the bend. Snow leopard, he whispers, and we are inclined to agree. Not just because Animesh is the sort of person who can tell the difference between a ‘white capped redstart’ and a ‘white winged redstart’1 — but because we are in snow leopard country. Far above the treeline, these frozen highlands are known to be home to one of the most elusive creatures on our planet. Half a century ago, Peter Matthiessen spent two months roaming the mountains of Nepal and Tibet in search of this near-mythical feline. The book describing his journey, The Snow Leopard, would win him many awards, but he never set eyes on his quarry.

It is surreal to imagine that just a few hours ago a snow leopard prowled where we now stand. Maybe it is still here, its dirty white coat speckled with dark rosettes helping it blend into this barren terrain of boulders and frost. It is not hard to see why the leopard likes this region: the landscape is stunning.

A single path furrows through deep banks of snow. Following the path leads you to a freshwater lake, its waters blue-green and still. Cairns decorate its shore. The path skirts the rim of the lake — one of five in the valley — and rolls onwards. At the far side of the lake, a cliff rises sharply into the sky, cutting neat slices out of the sun. The air at this altitude is so clear it is painful. The glare of the snow blinds you, and the blue of a cloudless horizon is dazzling.

It is a beautiful and breathtaking place; but I really want to leave.

My wet shoe is cold and leaden, my head is throbbing, and my teeth are beginning to chatter. I think about the warm dining hall waiting for us in Machhermo, and quicken my pace. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn’t have to wait for our lunch after arriving at the teahouse? If Kumar, our guide, could zip ahead and place the order so that we are welcomed by hot and steaming meals? But before he embarks on this mission we must settle a prickly question.

‘All of you will have dal bhaat again?’

We issue a collective groan. We have walked up and down a bloody mountain today. Surely, we deserve something a little more exciting than dal bhaat?

‘Hmm, well, they can make egg fried rice if you want.’

Egg. Fried. Rice. Never have those three words sounded as sweet. Yes! We will eat egg fried rice! I think I see Vishant wipe a tear but my own vision is clouded. Kumar nods and walks ahead. An hour later, we are shovelling the most glorious egg fried rice we’ve ever tasted into our mouths.

The hours, and days, that follow the meal are not perfect. We tackle gastric emergencies, rogue mules, and precipitous suspension bridges on our way back to Kathmandu. We climb more hills and hike many miles on shit-caked trails. Our lips crack and our fingertips bleed.

That we are able to overcome these challenges is down, I am certain, to that egg fried rice. It gave us hope when our hearts were flickering, and lent strength to our limbs. If not for its munificence, we wouldn’t have made it. Dal bhaat was not going to cut it, not in that moment of crisis. Fortune did not favour my uncle with mutton paneer, all those years ago. I am glad it offered us egg fried rice precisely when we needed it.

Note: You can read Episodes #1 and #2, here and here.

At the start of our hike, when we left Gokyo village and skirted the frosty banks of Gokyo Lake, we walked on level land. It was bitterly cold, I could see little beyond the small pool of light my headlamp cast on the ground, and my running nose was trying to outflow my watering eyes.

Now, panting for breath on a trail that has been rising relentlessly, I long for those discomforts. The chill, the dark, the leaky face — I’d bear it all if the bloody path stopped being so bloody steep for one bloody minute. I have forgotten what it feels like to walk on a flat surface. Every step is upwards, a slow and gruelling process. You plant one foot ahead of you, lean forward and haul the rest of your body up, then plant your other foot in front and repeat the process. After five or so minutes, you look back and realise you have moved three inches. This discovery makes you wonder, yet again, why you thought it’d be fun to climb a fucking mountain.1

The break is welcome but has been triggered by a worrying development. Shouvik got little sleep last night, and is now exhibiting signs of AMS: headache, fatigue, nausea.

AMS, acute mountain sickness, is a constant threat during high-altitude treks. One of our company, Rudhir, fell prey to it a couple of days ago and chose not to travel with us to Gokyo. He had mild symptoms and recovered quickly, but his decision was a prudent one — not least because he stayed back at Namche Bazaar where pretty cafes served delicious pizzas, while the rest of us laboured up the valley to sleep in snowbound rooms.

AMS can afflict anyone and its severity can vary. Moving slowly, hydrating, and taking rest days are recommended if you suffer an onset of AMS. The one thing you should absolutely avoid is gaining more altitude — which makes it a bit of an inconvenient ailment when you’re in the middle of a summit attempt.

Vishant, Animesh, and I perch on boulders and peer at Shouvik as he takes deep breaths. He looks miserable, though as someone who is always training for a triathlon, he has a habit of looking miserable. We have a couple of hours of climbing ahead of us; perhaps more, at our impaired pace. Then, a long trek downhill followed by a longer hike to the village of Dhole, our stop for the night. We will likely be on the trail for ten, twelve hours: an exhausting day in the best of circumstances, agony for someone with AMS.

‘Should we call it off?’ I feel both hope and despair as I make this proposal. I am tired and sleepy and cold. I would not mind returning to our warm teahouse, with its wrought-iron furnace and hot cups of ginger honey tea. But turning back would also mean defeat. Shouvik and I have scaled two peaks in the past — but both expeditions bear an asterix. On the first occasion, documented in this newsletter three years ago, we had to settle for the secondary Pangarchulla summit because the primary route was too precarious. The next time, we were within a few metres of the triangular tip of Friendship Peak, when a snowstorm forced us to retreat. We are keen, therefore, to ensure that our ascent of Gokyo Ri is not sullied by footnotes.

‘Let’s keep going,’ Shouvik says. The four of us exchange grim looks and my visions of a steaming breakfast dissipate. Our guide exhorts us not to worry, to only think about reaching the top and keep moving at a steady pace. His lurid optimism makes me want to stab him with my trekking pole. Instead, I mutter an oath and adjust my headlamp. The sun is yet to rise and I already hate this day.

Shouvik and I were halfway through a trail run, a few years ago, when my body ceased to function. Dehydration had pushed me to the point of blackout and I didn’t believe I could take another step. I expressed the reasonable desire to lie on a hilltop and spend the rest of my life — which, I was certain at the time, would be quite brief — in that spot. I urged Shouvik to continue without me, to finish the race and claim his medal. He refused. Many hours later, he dragged me across the finish line — ruining his race and my hopes of a mountain burial.2

I remember this incident when we resume walking, and try to keep pace with Shouvik. But this attempt is ill-fated. Finding your ideal hiking pace is a lot like riding a cycle. If you go too fast, you can lose control and run out of steam; too slow, and you jeopardise your balance and also, paradoxically, run out of steam. Seasoned hikers know the importance of finding and sticking to a rhythm they can sustain for many hours. On the trails, you are in dialogue only with yourself. There is no competition with other people and their speed does not matter — you are, however, allowed to smirk at those you overtake, and curse the ones who pass you.

Animesh and our guide are keeping in step with Shouvik, so Vishant and I decide to push ahead. We keep the group in sight and try, when able, to urge them onwards. We follow the thirty-ten protocol as we snail our way up the mountainside. Thirty steps followed by a ten-second break. Counting is an invaluable aid during a climb. It helps focus the mind in those moments when your thoughts stray towards weighing the relative merits of jumping off a cliff.

It is past dawn when we clamber over a ridge and get our first view of the summit, snow-capped and draped with fluttering prayer flags. The exuberance caused by this sight is replaced by despair as the minutes tick by and it still looks as distant. The thirty-ten protocol has stuttered to a five-never routine: five steps followed by a long pause when I promise myself I will never do this again.

At 17,000 feet, every breath is ragged. The frigid air sears your throat as you gulp it in, and yet your lungs are starved of oxygen. You gasp and wince but the weight on your chest refuses to budge. The gusts cleave through your padded layers and pierce your skin. Your fingers do not obey your instructions. You cannot feel your toes. The silence of the sheer slopes rankles in your head.

Why do this?

Because the summit will offer views of Mount Everest.

Don’t give me that crap. We have already seen Mount Everest. Two days ago, we hiked up from Namche Bazaar to a couple of different locations from where we had clear sightings of Mount Everest. That bucket list item has been ticked. This whole thing, this misguided attempt to crest another peak — it has nothing to do with Everest. Frankly, it feels like an egoistical exercise.

What do you mean?

You know very well what I mean. Suffering through an ordeal so we can boast about it later? It’s just machismo. I thought we were better than this. Should we really be indulging these base tendencies? Come now, be reasonable. Let us go back.

Are you done?

Sigh. Yes.

Good. Now move.

It is nearly 7:30 AM when we stagger to the top of Gokyo Ri. The weariness recedes as the four us gather in an embrace. The greatest joy in reaching a summit comes from knowing that there are no more inclines to climb. We need no longer walk, and can stand in the sun, drinking in the vaunted view. To the right, looms Everest, a plume of snow rising from its apex as if it is the world’s tallest chimney. Behind it, we spy Makalu and Lhotse. On our left, if we crouch and step under the ribbons of prayer flags, we can see Cho Oyu. All around us are some of the highest peaks in the world. We are in the abode of snow.

We remove our gloves and risk frostbite to take pictures. We point our phones in every direction, because we are inside a postcard: icy massifs glitter in the bright morning sun, snowfields stretch into the distance, glacial lakes sparkle. It is a surreal place, one where humans have no business intruding — and soon enough, the Himalayan winds strip away our exhilaration and it is time for us to leave.

On the way up, surviving the ascent was all that mattered. Now, as we begin our slow descent, the enormity of the task that lies ahead becomes apparent. We must make it down to Gokyo village, pack our bags, and head out towards Dhole, more than 12 kilometres, and many hours, away. Shouvik’s AMS symptoms refuse to wane and the rest of us are flagging. At 8 AM, after three hours spent climbing, we are running on fumes. It is going to be a long day.

Note: Before Gokyo Ri, there was Lukla. You can read about it, here.