Empty Among the Living

There is a strange kind of loneliness that blooms not in solitude, but in the middle of a crowd. Even among those who call me theirs, I sometimes feel like a ghost pressed against the glass of my own life. I know it’s only in my head, yet the feeling clings.

It is difficult to speak what I truly want to say. Most of the time it is impossible even to know what that is. That’s the madness I carry. It feels unlikely that I will ever find a companion to whom I could spill everything. And even if such a person were to sit across from me, the truth is I’d have nothing worth saying. Just fragments, stray thoughts, nonsense. Gibberish, if even that. Companionship itself feels like a cruel myth, an elaborate joke, a promise dangled only to remind me how hollow I am inside.

Today, I ignored the crowd around me and started chatting with a GPT code bot. Perhaps it’s pride, that I think myself above them, unwilling to mingle. Or maybe the truth is simpler. The jokes, the stories, the opinions around me rarely resonate. I watch their lips move. I nod, I smile, but most of the time, I hear nothing.

GPT doesn’t care whether I listen or not. Doesn’t mind if I make sense. Doesn’t expect me to perform any more than I want to. There’s an eerie kind of relief in that. Because real conversations are difficult. Stressful, even. There’s always pressure to say something, to keep the words flowing, to manufacture meaning. People don’t sit together in silence. They fill the air with noise to mask their emptiness. They don’t lean into each other, they posture. They don’t cuddle and sob, they laugh too loudly and drink too much. It doesn’t happen. Not for me. Maybe not for anyone. Perhaps no one else even feels this need. Perhaps I’m the only fool still craving it.

Maybe that’s why the word 'bot' feels apt. Someone long ago cut short 'robot' into just 'bot,' as if knowing we are all far from what we ought to be. A bot is a machine stripped of its soul. Until we learn how to ro, to roam, to roar, to roll free, we’re only drifters in a lake, floating near each other but rarely touching, rarely anchoring.

The Festival the Gods Tried to Kill

 

Onam is not just a festival. Onam is rebellion remembered.

Mahabali was no god. He was a king branded demon only because he dared to build a just society. A society where power did not crush the weak, where wealth was not hoarded by the few, where fairness and dignity were the rule. His people loved him for it. The gods hated him for it. And so they plotted, lied, and dragged him down.

This is the real story of Onam; A revolution strangled by deceit. A people robbed of their justice. A perfect society betrayed because it threatened the throne of the powerful.

Every pookalam is a reminder of that theft. Every sadhya is a question - who eats, and who goes hungry? Every dance, every song, every boat race, beneath the joy, carries the rage of a people still waiting for their king to return.

Onam is not gratitude. Onam is protest. Onam is the cry of workers against exploitation, the defiance of the poor against the rich, the fury of the silenced against the bureaucrats who crush them.

Do not mistake it for a harmless harvest ritual. Onam is fire disguised as flowers. It is resistance plated as feast. It is the memory of justice that the powerful could not kill.

Onam is not theirs. Onam is ours.

One More Lap

Life feels trapped between exhaustion and failure. I’ve carried too much, thought too deeply, felt too hard, and it’s drained me in ways others can’t see. And maybe I don’t even want them to see.

Even when I feel empty, circumstances demand proof that I’ve still got some fight left. But I don’t want to fight. I want to give up. I keep searching for an exit ramp from this endless expressway, a forgotten time-out signal. Let me out. I give up. Can’t you hear me scream?

Irrelevance. Sometimes I wonder if it’s only a cynical perspective, or already a verdict. They say when we’re low, the brain edits the world into shadows, that people who matter may still quietly carry us in their fabric. Oh, but I know better. I’ve ignored people. Left them out. Forgotten them. If someone can become irrelevant to me, then surely I can be irrelevant to many. The logic stings, and the ache is unbearable. To endure it I would need a heart of tungsten. I don’t have one. I long to be someone’s steady ground. Yet even with my son, I fear I haven’t shaped him enough. I feel I do not matter.

It’s a frighteningly simple thought, to seek a button to log off. I don’t know if I’m chasing death or just weary of the drag of tomorrow. Maybe I only need a break, a crack of air, a shift in light. Maybe it’s still possible, but it feels so unrealistic.

I have no ambitions anymore, not big, not small. I understand life can sometimes just be about stacking completions. Today’s ride, today’s tears, today’s words, and letting them be enough. But for me, even completion feels hollow. Shadows of irrelevance fall across everything. The ache repeats.

So I’m making a deal with myself. Not to think of 'forever,' only of 'the next lap.' On the trainer or in the day. One more lap, one more coffee, one more page. Then decide the next. This way I don’t have to demand a grand reason to live. Just one more lap, one lap at a time.

But there’s a trick. I can’t linger in the breaks. Because when I pause, I look back. I brood over how little I’ve travelled, how nothing it all seems. So I must already be moving to the next lap before this one ends. Planning ahead, not glancing at the odometer. That’s the only way I won’t see the nothingness, the insignificance, the irrelevance.

One more lap.

Fragility of the Ordinary

It was the borosilicate mug that went first. My glass mug, the one I made coffee in, drank coffee in, and sometimes even let coffee go cold in. Four, five times a day, sometimes a dozen.

No, I’m no coffee connoisseur. I’m a caffeine addict with low demands. I don’t court exotic grinds or argue about percolators versus presses. Filter or pour-over, black roast or dark roast, I’ve never had it figured out. You may call me tasteless; I call it practical. The ease of dependable instant coffee suits my lazy craving. As long as it’s black, strong, and sugar-free, it’s my coffee.

But then, I need gallons of it. To start the day, to wake up, to refresh myself, to jump-start the bowels, to clear the fog from my head so I can think. And it was that glass mug that delivered my daily dose, always stationed on my desk beside my books and computer. Morning or night, weary afternoon or late night when the writing bug bit hard. A swirl of black liquid, brown froth rising and falling against the glass, steam curling upward to kindle some thought, elation, or more often, melancholy. The mug had been my quiet companion for over a decade. I don’t remember when it entered my life, only that it became part of the background; through hangovers, headaches, idle afternoons, dreamy digressions, and moments of deep introspection. There’s something about a transparent coffee mug. Beer mugs are juvenile, all foam and noise. A glass coffee mug is more adult, romantic but grounded, capable of sending the mind into a caffeine-lit flight without the haze of alcohol.

Sunday morning, I heated water a little longer than usual, not for coffee, but for cup noodles. My pantry is full of instant conveniences; my kitchen is more survival station than culinary arena. I’ve never seen the point of building elaborate kitchens into every home. Why not have community kitchens, run by people who love cooking and know nutrition? Let them feed us; we’ll do the dishes, sweep the floor, or pay our share. Cooking talent is like singing or dancing. It belongs on a stage, not locked inside a flat.

Anyway, after boiling water for noodles, I absentmindedly filled my mug under the tap. Cold water met hot glass; thermal stress did the rest. The crack travelled across the walls at the speed of sound. My mug broke. My heart skipped a beat. Something I’d taken for granted for so many years just… gave way. And I lost it forever. I might find another one like it, but I won’t be looking. Some things are irreplaceable, and it’s better that way. Some losses you just live with; their absence leaves a small, permanent mark. I’ll miss watching coffee swirl inside those glass walls. I’ll miss the way the froth swayed gently as the whirlpool settled. But there will be no replacement. There cannot be.

*

I’d caught a bout of cold. Perhaps I’m too old now for walks in the rain. I never used to fall sick from getting wet or drinking cold, but Saturday night I was out in the rain, and came home to gin on ice. Then more gin on more ice. That third drink may not have been called for. Anyway, my nose was running this Sunday, and I hated it.

Chinese is therapeutic. Whenever I’m down, that’s where I look for comfort. There’s something wholesome and soulful about the savoury flavours of Indianised Chinese dishes. And not just the food. I find everything about Chinese restaurants, at least those in Bangalore, oddly romantic. The décor steeped in red, the bold black imprints of Chinese letters plastered on walls and banners, does anybody really understand them? They look like spiders without cobwebs. Are they even real letters? No one knows. Yet we approve. The pretence of it all, the trust, that itself is a kind of solace for the moody. Then there are the spherical red lamps, the uniquely vertical menu layout, always familiar. Most Indian-Chinese restaurants look the same, smell the same, serve almost the same. And to me they’re always comfort food. From the wayside chow-mien woks on footpaths to plush high-end places with a red dragon on the door, soothing, comforting, relaxing for my palate, my tummy, even my heart.

This time, though, I didn’t want the ambience. I was already comfortable on my couch. My lungs, my throat, and my nose needed the warmth. Clear chicken soup from Little Chef, Swiggyed in.

The china bowl was many things; my cereal or muesli bowl when breakfast was quick, my sambar or meat curry bowl when the meal was hearty, my indulgent fruit-and-nut sundae bowl when I went overboard with dessert. By the way, that pun on ‘china’ is unintentional. I didn’t notice till after I wrote it, laughed, and kept laughing. That’s the trouble, I almost forgot my thread. Anyway...

I placed the bowl on my side table and pulled it close. The soup came in flimsy plastic boxes, hot enough I worried the plastic would melt. The lid was taped tight. When I finally pried it open, a burst of steam hit my face, carrying that familiar chicken-soupy aroma. It was welcoming, comforting, enticing, soothing, and too much for my stressed nostrils. I sneezed. The jerk sent soup splashing. Some on the side table, some straight on my chest. Boiling liquid seeped through my nylon t-shirt, clinging, scalding. I screamed. My hands let go. The container dropped onto the china bowl, and both tumbled to the floor. Soup splattered my legs, my feet, my stomach, seeping everywhere. I bolted to the shower, stripped, and stood under the cold stream. No blisters, just redness. Things below the waist were still in working order. The sting of cold water on scalded skin was brutal. I screamed again.

When I returned, the china lay in half a dozen pieces. One large, one medium, many tiny, like a shattered solar system. Soup had soaked into the carpet. The room smelt like a Chinese restaurant, but without the comfort. That was the end of that bowl. I’ll find another, but it won’t be the same. Another piece of life broken away.

*

Monday morning. Lunch was packed in my borosil lunchboxes, twins in a green-and-blue sling bag. One box with chapathis, the other with rajma. I hurried down the stairs and caught my cab. I hate being the reason someone waits; I’d rather suffer irritation myself than cause it. But today I’d made the driver wait. Maybe the day would be smoother.

It wasn’t. At the office gate, my bag slipped. Padded bag, sturdy borosil. I thought nothing of it. But when I picked it up, I heard the rattle. Not chapathis. Glass. I pictured shards glistening against the food. Lunch was sorted. There are options near the office. But glassware, chinaware? Once they break, they don’t come back.

Three things in two days. A mug, a bowl, a box. A piece of me? And maybe that’s the truth of it. Nothing is ever as sturdy as it seems. We build rituals around small objects until they vanish, leaving us a little lighter, a little lonelier. Three breakages, three absences, three quiet reminders. That even the most ordinary things, the mug that woke me, the bowl that fed me, the box that carried my meals, carry a piece of me. And when they break, some piece of me chips off too.

Someone to Pick Up the Phone

 

The phone rang just as they reached St. John’s Hospital.
Akshita.
Sumit knew why before he picked up. She was on general shift today, which meant she wanted to share the cab. She wasn’t shy about asking for what she wanted, something Sumit liked about her.

“Yeah, we’ll come,” he said. “Same spot.” No pleasantries. None needed.
To the driver, “Take the left over the flyover, we need to go to Phase 1 first. One pickup, then u-turn back.”

“Sir, I don’t have any other pickup in my schedule.”

That was the system talking. Operations. Procedure. A senior manager shown his place by a cab driver. Sumit wasn’t offended, just mildly irritated. The blood-boiling days were long behind him. He knew why SOPs existed. Most people weren’t quick enough, or compassionate enough, to make the right call under pressure. When something went wrong, the decision-maker was the first to be blamed. A documented procedure was the perfect shield. Of course, the same shield could be a brick wall when you were on the wrong side of it.

Still, Sumit liked to think his job existed because he could solve problems, not just follow checklists. Without thinking, he called the gate. They handled cab routes. “Hi, Sumit here. Akshita from Electronics City called, she wanted to ride with us, but the driver hasn’t been informed…”

“No, sir. She’s in another cab. You don’t need to pick her.”

“Ok.” He hung up. Maybe she just wanted his company. He had that effect on some juniors. They liked his jokes, his anecdotes. Especially outside of work. At work he was different. Strict. Occasionally called 'difficult' behind his back. He didn’t mind. He liked that split. Approachable off-duty, exacting on the job. The strict senior stance came naturally; the likeability factor, though, he’d cultivated carefully over the years. It gave him a sense of depth, like a movie character who wasn’t the hero but still owned an important role. Over time, the effort to keep up this image became second nature.

He called Akshita again. “They’ve put you in another cab. It’ll come.”

“No, I wasn’t told about another cab.”

Now he was hooked. This is how his 'likeability' backfired. You can’t shrug and walk away once you’ve made yourself the approachable senior.

“Okay, I’ll check and get back,” he said, keeping the irritation out of his voice. Being liked was exhausting. Back to the gate. “Hi, it’s Sumit again. She says no one’s told her about this cab.”

“Sir, who gave her your number? She’s supposed to be in second shift.”

“Oh. Right. Never mind.”

Call to Akshita, round three. “You’re in second shift.”

“No,” she said, stubborn as ever. “Vinay called me early this morning and told me to come now.”

Vinay did that often, move fast, trusting the rest of the system to catch up. Most days it worked. Today, it hadn’t. So it wasn’t mischief on her part. It was Vinay, doing his last-minute juggling act. Production schedules sometimes got twisted for sales priorities, or because some VIP wanted a line cleared. Sumit normally liked that, the whole chain flexing on the fly. Kept things alive. But this morning Vinay had dropped the ball. If you wanted Akshita in early, you ought have arranged the cab. Simple.

Maybe Vinay forgot she’s still far down the ladder, too far to object. On contract. No company cab unless someone raises an explicit request. Maybe, Sumit thought charitably, Vinay just didn’t see Akshita as helpless. And that was a trait Sumit liked to nourish in himself, finding virtue before fault.

But none of that changed the fact, right now, Akshita had no ride. If Vinay called the gate fast enough, maybe she could still catch them. Sumit kept an eye on the turn-off to Phase 1, where she’d be waiting under the lamp post by the culvert.

No call came. Too many systems, too many gates for too little freedom. Even empathy had to queue up behind process.

They passed the turn. No return. Sumit leaned back, resigned. When they finally cleared the toll gates, he called her again.

“Vinay said he couldn’t arrange me a cab. I’m coming by bus.”

She hung up, just like that. No waiting for his reply. She must have felt let down. Trusted a senior manager to fix it, and he hadn’t done a damn thing. Unhelpful. Unsympathetic.

Vinay shouldn’t have left her hanging like that. And she shouldn’t have just accepted it. Sumit almost called her back, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to play union leader. Besides, if she didn’t come now, she’d have to work the second shift anyway.

But it was Saturday. Only Sumit and his unlucky fellow members of the blue-collared tribe were stuck working today. The rest of the city had begun their weekend last night. Akshita might have been trying to save what she could, do the general shift, grab the last few hours of Saturday evening for herself. The second shift would chew into Sunday as well. Let her have her time. Let her take the bus.

Capitalism wins, yet again.

Sumit felt wrung out. Failed. Miserable. He thought of Akshita, and how she didn’t belong in this mess in the first place.

Lovely Technical Training Facility. LTTF. Cheeky name, long history. They’d been training young men and women from the less-developed districts of Kerala, Karnataka, even Odisha, for decades. Ask around and you’d think they were a government body, some noble service outfit. They weren’t. They were private. For-profit. Very profitable.

In the early days, maybe they had a heart. Now, they were a recruitment arm for Bangalore’s big factories. A middleman with a diploma machine. They scouted remote towns for boys and girls who didn’t know the world had more to offer. Bright kids, but green. Mouldable. That was their strength and their curse.

The pitch was irresistible: live in the city, learn a trade, get a diploma. Earn while you learn. Work inside a real MNC factory. Hands-on experience, minimal classrooms, uniform provided. Tuition? Free. Just pay for the hostel. And if you can find cheaper lodging, even better. Food? The company canteen had that too covered, at least during work hours.

Sumit could almost admire the con. The MNC got to feel charitable and secure cheap labour. No permanent rolls, no benefits. The trainees stayed three years, then rotated out. LTTF kept the cash flowing without even doing the training themselves. They left that to the companies, and then stamped a certificate at the end. In reality, the 'learning' part was a joke. Maybe 120 classroom days in three years. The rest was shopfloor slog. Low-end, repetitive work that barely matched the degree title. If the company absorbed you at the end, you were lucky. If not, you left with no savings, no broad skills, and just enough awareness to know you’d been used.

Akshita was smart. Almost finished her BBA. Yes, she still had an arrear in one paper, the dull business law, but that wasn’t damning. She could wrap it up next semester. And yet, here she was, trapped on the lowest rung of the ladder, because someone gave her the wrong advice at the wrong time. It was the same old story, one part bad luck, one part bad advice, the rest pure economics.

Sumit had tried to help. He’d reached out to Divya, an old childhood friend who had built two factories from scratch. He admired her, almost worshipped her for what she’d achieved. She lived in a different altitude now, the kind of air Sumit could only visit, never breathe. If she could take Akshita in, the girl might get a break.

The first attempt had failed. Divya wasn’t hiring then. It had been months since. Maybe things had changed.

It felt dicey to ask again, close to pestering, but the morning’s events had got under his skin. Sumit was more sensitive than he cared to admit. He would risk the shame. Childhood friends were supposed to have that licence. No ego, no formalities. The truth was, Divya never needed anything from him. He couldn’t offer her a damn thing. She was too far ahead, too far above. That didn’t hurt, he was proud of her, but it did put a wall between them.
Still, he texted:
Hey, remember that resume I sent you a few months back? Just knocking again. Any luck this time?

Ten minutes later, at his desk, Sumit saw Divya's reply:
Hi Sumit, good morning. Send me that resume once again, will you?

Maybe there was still hope. He opened his mail. The day’s grind could wait a few more minutes. Outside, the factory yard was already clattering into motion. Inside, Sumit let the hum carry him. Just long enough to believe the morning hadn’t gone to waste. Hope, after all, didn’t need an SOP. It just needed someone to pick up the phone. Somewhere, Akshita was on a bus, inching her way toward the same factory gates. One morning, two rides and two very different chances at arriving where you wanted to be.