The Persistence of Luke- warmth
A Tirade against all the middlings that float around
What is it to have half an idea, half the strength, half the courage and even half the inclination to do a thing?
I wrote something about something I just finished reading. But what I read left such a faint mark, less than that of a mattress imprint on the skin, which at least you try to rub away for the first few minutes after you are up.
What I wrote was a nothing too. What I read perhaps was better, but the name that preceded it was bigger still. It wasn’t a letdown but mostly just a lukewarm read. Good enough to keep me going, especially on a cold day like this.
What do you do with lukewarmth? For the lukewarm last bits of my flat-white at least there is froth to keep me going. The rafts of consolation are what keep the lukewarm Industry floating.
Lukewarm is the word prompts on my phone keyboard, guiding me to pick the best option as I lose strength or inclination to type more. When will my keyboard learn to write like me about the everyday, in a style which feels like everyday (mostly a Wednesday)?
Lukewarm is Recommendations on Netflix, for I cannot type words (as mentioned earlier, where I forget qwerty) in the search bar, and I don’t even know, in a sea of middling entertainment, what middlebrow garbage is better suited to my dulled palette. What most looks or seems like a thing I loved. Or more accurately, what is most common between two shows I watched, wildly dissimilar to each other, but in between them sits this chimera from the depths of internet movie hell.
Lukewarm is my attempt at conversations, at the billing counter, for I can’t read the passions in their eyes, as my own eyes are tired by looking at screens all day (this by no means a bemoaning of loss of communication spurred by technology, I am sure people, who didn’t like talking to others earlier, would just uproot their families and move to the countryside, all the hermits were probably just men, who couldn’t handle another, "Hey, what’s up?").
Lukewarm is their professional servitude of smiling at everything that I say with the same intensity without too much pull on their cheek muscles, which I don’t begrudge at all, imagine being nice all day everyday to ever entitled pieces of shit like myself, who keep regular notes of your consistent smiles, smiles.. for god’s sake!, it must be a Herculean task.
Lukewarm is also my middle class contempt filled gratitude, which makes me smile back at them, as I have been taught so, smile so they don’t spit in your coffee making it extra frothy, no I don’t hate them, I am just scared of those who, I think, can claw up at me to get to my level. It’s the same passive contempt, which makes my kind vote for a genocidal maniac, as my living status, undesiringly, seems close to those below me and not those above. I digress.
We smile and so we are stuck in an eternity of half cocked smiles, till we get 'distracted’, me with my phone, and them, with the order bill.
Lukewarm is also me. I don’t have the strength mostly, I boil only half way, then I evaporate to unknown states, dispersed in my thoughts and actions. Losing heat constantly. The state I walk around in, around my house, with a blank notice for an expression, which I sometimes catch in the mirror, while I wash my hands. It’s not like I don’t dance by myself in private. I do. Or sing bad tunes. I do. It’s only that I am lost in the map of my house, confused which side of the bed I should get down from.
I am still the protagonist of my life, but it’s more a role of a reluctant protagonist. Yes, I am a trope. I feel sectioned, reduced. Then again, not much is required of me, in terms of gusto. I am thirty one, in the middle of a job I have spent nearly two years in, in the middle of career, which took some flights, only to land unadventurously in non-descript airports.
The story of a thirty year old man is same all over. You wake up slightly sore, with a grudge against the world which has made it your habit to wake up early, even on weekends. You have one endearing task, which you prolong or live again as much as possible, till it’s pulled cheese, if you can help it.
Subarban dads in America have golf; I, a millennial in Delhi, have coffee. I accompany my coffee with a sandwich, which I am half regretting ordering, it has a few sour notes too many. But my level of entitlement is slightly less (than whom?), I will not send this sandwich back, I will eat it with pride that I didn’t cause these guys extra labour.
I am now a woke, reluctant, protagonist. My trope grows bigger, based on the reflection of events onto me. I do wish I was a full person. But that would require much more than having half an idea, half the strength, half the courage and even half the inclination to do a thing.
I will start the new chapter by not sending back my sandwich, even inaction can describe us whole, as they say. I hope they do say that, for my benefit.
This is where I turn things around. Turn over a new leaf. Turn the page. Turn to a blunt corner, on a road which goes to the market, at most.
