Plastic Puff
I don't entirely remember anymore the specifics of the events that ailed Kamal's family a couple of years ago, but I do remember his elder sister being at the centre of it all - most likely the instigator. The egregious nature of her action(s?) had been enough to send the father in a harrowing funk - the kind of funk fuelled by unadulterated consternation, mostly self feeding. It was November when the news had been broken at their residence, and soon enough, all the relatives who had little to no stake in the matter (apart from a voyeuristic one) rallied together at his house to inquire further. Life altering events like these followed generally a similar pattern at most Indian households; the amount of investment on display by related parties often inverse in proportion to their actual emotional investment in the affected people. November also implied haze and sickening air pollution throughout Delhi, and so the ensuing quarrel was marred by synchronised coughing which sometimes combined into an oddly rhythmic staccato, and Kamal found the entire thing suitable enough to mentally lay some appropriate free-falling-anxiety-inducing chromatic piano runs over, ascending and descending with respect to the intensity of the ongoing squabble. In the same vein that Kamal had misgauged the severity of the ongoing events, his sister also hadn't learnt even in her late twenties the very necessary art of arguing (i) cogently and (ii) amicably, and so couldn't convince the attendance's middle class sensibilities that she was perhaps not in the wrong and had acted out with the best of her intentions. Her meek attempts otherwise only garnered a rather tepid response from the elders at best, and highly agitated gaali-galoch at worst. An hour into the quarrel, and the collective coughing was now annotated by soft sobs and tears, which Kamal found sombre enough to temporarily suspend his internal operatic preoccupations. That was also his cue to intervene and maybe try and appease the mood a bit, so he did what younger siblings generally do to help their elder siblings whom they love only from a distance: threw conversational curveballs. This time it concerned the pain of others. He'd mention the usual whataboutisms - how they (the family) should at least be thankful that it was just this and not that, that they'll recover emotionally from this sooner or later, time being what it is and all. Kamal was 19 back then, which of course helped zilch. The jury eventually reached a non sequitir (typical) and hammered down a rather brutal judgment on the family, then rose collectively and left, the same way they had somehow arrived, conjured out of the aether, mumbling as they went. Indignant, the father would then refuse the evening tea, making his displeasure known to the mother - a rather timid and docile presence, who had been sniveling in a corner till now, with a part of her brain somehow almost reflexively rationing the remaining supplies for dinner (she hadn't had the time to shop for groceries, what with the pandemonium that had just entailed). The mood for the rest of the day was rather glum, and the aformentioned consternation came crashing down on the sleepless father only later in the night, the tingling sensation pulsated throughout his left arm, then numbness, which culminated eventually in a cardiac arrest, and death followed.
Following the antim sanskaar then was the period wherein Kamal had to now suddenly grow up: succeeding the previous patriarch brought with itself the so called responsibilities grown-ups in India themselves learn haphazardly but then never learn to properly edify to their offspring(s), thereby ensuring that the cycle sustains. Having to peruse through property documents, inheritance, financials etc. would occupy his next couple of months. No respite. His time otherwise was spent tangled within heavier internal monologues; still in between logical objections regarding the entire affair, and of course the loss of a parent. Is stress induced death akin to suicide, considering yes, stress can be controlled, surely? Did this even warrant a heart attack? Blame samaaj or self? And so the internal debates would spawn answers that birthed further ideological traps and/or frustrations, the (metaphorical) projectiles stretching the fabric of his attention to its limit. Absent-mindedness. His sister left home shortly afterwards, you can perhaps infer or even hazard a guess that it'd have been hellish for her to live with herself after what happened, so I'd rather not talk about that. The mother was more or less a husk post bereavement - disconsolate, dispirited, depressed - eventually operating on auto-pilot too, lifeless but somehow still sustaining life, carrying on her daily duties, as she always had. Kamal felt more or less helpless observing the Husk, his acts of little consolations for her didn't once manage to bring even a mirthless response. People tell you that time heals all wounds, but no one warns you beforehand that it flows painfully slowly for the aggrieved, that the flow itself may also sometimes stall altogether and so resemble not a steady downstream of Improvement but instead a stagnating lake into which all directed words of kindness and comfort will disappear without a trace.
Hapless. Interesting word. Etymologically, the word is a compound of hap and less, former meaning good fortune, from the old Norse word, happ. Logically then, hapless should perhaps be the opposite of happ-y, which is indeed not the case; hapless just means unfortunate, and when you apply it to a person, it doesn't necessarily say much about their mood. They're just unfortunate.
Kamal was hapless. He had hoped that his suffering over the years would dawn upon him some larger realisation, a grander revelation, a realignment of purpose. But nothing really happened. The more he read and watched and read again about his heroes - both actual and fictional - the more he craved for his moment. Kamal was a musician (that's how I met him), a multi-instrumentalist at that, the only thing lacking in his repertoire at this point had been writing. As in, the lyrical stuff, all that. I'm almost certain that he had internally hoped that an immense personal tragedy would somehow suddenly grant him great (but endurable) pain which would (eventually) culminate in some deeper discovery that he could rhyme about on paper - all that hero's journey bullshit kids grow up on, mixed with Byron's best. But Kamal wasn't a kid anymore, and the actual tragedy hadn't done much, really. Now that his college term was coming to an end, Kamal pondered if he should take up a regular desk job like everyone else. Pondered because of course he wasn't like everyone else, no one had felt a loss as terrible as he had right at the cusp of adulthood, mostly everyone had both their parents functional, right? And so shouldn't his path be different from the rest? Reality's ever present though, and no amount of escaping's ever enough - so he did acknowledge the importance of a steady source of income every now and then. Husk had pretty much busted through all of the late father's savings, and was mostly making do on small acts of financial kindness from other relatives. And so Kamal was always mentally caught up in between. In between. In between he'd think about how his friends would often regurgitate self help advice they'd read on the back of second hand mass market paperbacks they had come across at some roadside stall (but never bought) in Connaught Place when he had wanted to discuss these in betweens - advice like, those who cannot decide have their decisions made for them, indecision being the enemy of progress or whatever, etc. And so get your shit together and decide really, the cosmos doesn't give a fuck either way. Aforementioned friends had been more prudent than Kamal had been, and were now trying to be prudent + considerate, but Kamal's attitude wouldn't let them, which they found terribly offensive, because being prudent + considerate isn't really something most people do for other people a lot these days, or so they'd tell him, remind him of, usually after they were all done getting collectively high in the boy's hostel. They probably had the best of intentions, but Kamal was perhaps too stuck in his own head to listen. That, and he was high most of the times.
Home was, for the lack of a better word, dreadful. His sister, who although didn't visit much anymore (perhaps Husk didn't like her very much, that one's easier to guess), was now one of the few sources of light in Kamal's otherwise dreary existence, the siblings having grown closer since the father's passing. But her visits were sparse, and also used to tense him up quite a bit, himself now being the sole receptacle for Husk's venting that follows the sister's occasional visits. He had asked her to visit today to discuss a couple of things, but she was preoccupied with some things she couldn't tell Kamal much about when he had inquired, although she did promise she'd tell him later. So he mostly practiced his instruments right till it was time for dinner. That was his choice escape. The music that is, dinner was mostly terrible, especially the food. But that wasn't really the issue; it is totally possible to derive absolutely no sensual pleasure from eating terribly cooked and mishmashed together ingredients and reduce the activity's purpose to a very utilitarian one without thinking too much about it if people have other things to think about, which is to say, if they talk at all, and it was perhaps this lack of conversation that really killed him. Almost soul numbing silence, interrupted only by the clunk of the cutlery. On some lucky days Husk would actually talk, but only about the cursory stuff - his future plans, whether he'd been studying well for the interviews or not, if he needed any financial help of any sort, how his friends were doing, etc. The only two other entities that produced any sort of of audio and visual response were the television and Husk's phone. Former would mostly blast the news out, mostly about some scandals involving some politician or some actor or somesuch, and didn't offer much in terms of talking points to the more alive members of the household. Kamal didn't use his own phone much at home, he didn't have much on it to distract himself with. Probably a couple of games here and there, and since he was a pretty lousy texter (being lost in your own head most of the times does that), he wasn't really reached out by most people anyway on online social avenues. His mother had found some comfort in the device, however her phone was quite old at this point and had a broken speaker diaphragm which often made little tinny hissing noises whenever it was supposed to reproduce treble notes.
Done with dinner a bit earlier than usual today, Kamal thought about having a more serious discussion with Husk about his future aspirations. He thought that he'd found a way out of his indecisiveness. A regular desk job perhaps wouldn't hurt for a while, now that he'd given the matter a serious thought. He can pay off some debts, and then gather enough financial resources and take a leap of faith and pursue music more seriously. This was the only prudent path he could come up with, considering his grand moment was yet to arrive. Of course it would be terribly difficult to explain and win Husk's approval on all this, who had also thought of his musical proclivities being nothing more than at first (i) a nicer hobby she could brag about to the relatives whenever they'd visit and now (ii) a cope. He had to start though: she would probably be disapproving at first (what Indian parent isn't), but then it was unlikely she'd offer much in terms of absolute resistance, maybe a little passive disapproval here and there and more pragmatic inquiries. Kamal knew he could handle those. And so he washed his hands and gargled and cleaned up, but then heard this crass cacophony of noises generated by a steady feed of looping videos of everyday people in various supposedly funny/weird/questionable but ultimately vain dispositions being piped out of Husk's phone, made even crasser by the bespoke hissing effect, and this of course deeply irritated Kamal. Husk was glued in an almost catatonic hypnosis to the screen, which (the catatonia) Kamal theorised scaled in direct proportion to how anxious she had been before picking the phone up. It's not entirely impossible that his irritation was also exacerbated by his absolute powerlessness over this situation - he sort of understood the importance of the activity being carried out at the moment, the near sacrosanct nature of it. So he sat silently next to her, hoping she'd perhaps look up for a bit, which she eventually did, but by then Kamal had already lost the will, and so he popped his own phone out and watched a couple of videos to "kill time", as they say. Husk eventually left for bed, and Kamal started his ascent to the rooftop. Routine.
Kamal had this skill of humming little tunes through his frustrations - a skill I don't fully understand or empathize with, and it sounds made up if you ask me, at its most believable it's perhaps a forced act, but then who's observing him anyway? He had crooned like this for a long time now, completely alone, underneath a starless night sky, light pollution, thick air. There's no conventional skyline in Delhi, houses more or less look like tetris shaped blocks carefully placed next to each other, what with the city's overpopulation dictating whatever space remains has to be maxmised for habitation, people have to live after all. And so his peripheral vision was full of rooftops similar to his own, but since it was late in the night, most of them were rather unoccupied. He thought about calling some friend to vent out, but then thought otherwise - they'd pass him off the usual consolations anyway. Talking too much about your own suffering pretty much ensures the palliatives you're going to receive, one way or the other. He stopped humming and then took a cigarette out, tossed it around in between his fingers, felt the menthol ball in the filter, popped, lit, wheezed. The first puff was always weird for him, even though he had been smoking pretty much regularly for the past couple of years. Eventually he found his rhythm, turned somewhat pensive, and wondered if his late father would've perhaps made any difference by being more present at the moment. He hadn't really played out such scenarios before, it had seemed rather inappropriate earlier. But right after you perhaps make peace with the loss of a loved one - whether you've lost them permanently or temporarily (death being the delimiter here) - you then go through the period of what-ifs - this was Kamal's. Not like Kamal had shared a particularly affectionate relationship with his dad during the halcyon days. For one, he barely ever made eye contact with him while conversing, and then also disagreed with him on mostly everything, and the things that he did find himself in agreement with his father on, he'd never really told him. He winces internally at this knowledge now, every now and then. It's weird, really: boys who are somehow fortunate enough to grow up in a halfway functional family in India often tend to harbour at least some amount of love or care or respect or a combination of all three for their resp. fathers, which they somehow don't really acknowledge or don't want to acknowledge till the very end - regret being stronger than gratitude, all that. So anyway, Kamal imagined how he'd break this news of him wanting to pursue a career in music eventually, with all the steps he'd decided he'd take, right from the shitty IT job he thought he'd easily secure (even though he'd only received rejections so far). Weird thing about his dad was, had he been alive, he wouldn't have rejected the possibility of Kamal trying to follow a career in the arts outright, like most sensible middle class families would. You'd think that for someone who pretty much died from a stress induced cardiac arrest over a rather unpleasant (but not damning) family affair would also be pretty much opposed to such an unorthodox life choice his son now wanted to make, but Kamal's father had harboured a deep love for the music. It's not wholly unlikely that he would've been internally pleased at the prospect even, however much resistance he'd have offered externally to appease the relatives. Growing up, music of all sorts had been commonplace at Kamal's house. Papa had been a huge fan of all sorts of tunes - from bhajans to Fateh Ali Khan's ghazals and qawwalis to western disco tunes of the 80s. At the very least, had he been alive, Kamal could've had a more vibrant and animated discussion with him, maybe even at the same rooftop - they could've scampered quietly up here, him and Kamal, post verifying that Husk (non-Husk in this reality) was sound asleep. But then he suddenly realised how idiotic it was to play this scenario out. Papa's death was supposed to be the impetus here for pursuing a serious career in music, after all. He tried to think of a term that would best describe this altogether absurd make believe conversation - paradoxical? And then for the next hour or so he went through three more cigarettes and even deeper self absorption. All kinds of monologues and dialogues around terminology and the absurdness of things and the lack of purpose and the general solipsistic dives into the psyche at 4 AM in the morning. Conversations around music would serve as pit-stops for his racing thoughts, mostly held with papa, and sometimes with his ex girlfriend. There was this song Kamal had recently discovered, this old Bollywood tune. The singer was singing about singing and how singing allowed him to sort of live with himself better. One of those tracks which are thematically minor scale, but played major - spiritually similar to how (and this is true) some people find deep comfort and happiness on relentlessly gray and overcast rainy days. Kamal had liked the track so damn much that he had then also felt immediately depressed and discomforted by the sudden realisation that he had absolutely no one to discuss it wholeheartedly with. His friends would be dismissive - this was seen as mostly a counterculture and hipster-ish thing now, listening to old Bollywood music. He'd pretty much be setting himself up for the usual puckish remarks and ridicule, and won't even be granted the still dehumanising but at least somewhat salvageable reputation of being an "old soul", whatever the fuck that means. He wondered if papa had listened to that track, and if he had also liked it, and if he'd have discussed it with the kind of earnestness Kamal had imagined he would.
His stream of thought was then disrupted by a sudden and rather inappropriate outburst of fireworks in the sky, perhaps some idiot had decided to get married or maybe the cricket team had won some stupid match and/or series he couldn't care less about. He stared at the fireworks for a couple of minutes, his annoyance swelling, surging. And then after a while all of a sudden he whimpered a bit, a tear rolled down his cheeks, followed by another fat one, glistening against the backdrop. The fireworks continued and only grew louder and more vivid, and without realising much about what was really going on anyway, Kamal finally did cry.
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