I heard a light thud outside, on my second floor balcony. I was anticipating this, half-heartedly. I was up long before the bright glow of the morning sun started to fade the submissive moon’s pacific glory. Sunrises are always despairing, as if the earth deeply sighed and said, here we go again. Half-drank now cold, green tea lay beside the hardened edges of toast on the table. I allowed my face to contort hideously as I sipped on the green tea, knowing I was alone. We never had a toaster at home nor do we have one here. The bread smells of poorly cooked ghee my Dadi sent in a huge steel container. Everything seems in place without, I wish my state of mind was as orderly as my room. The day is yet to begin but I feel extremely heavy as if I’ve been space walking, drifting from one day to another without a pause. I’ve realised after thorough personal experience that sleep is important to maintain consistency with the worldly notion of time and that if you skip that pause often, you begin understanding why Einstein said what he said about Time. While half the world was suspended in a limbo, so much passed; absolutely nothing had come to rest.

I open the door to pick the bundled-up newspaper. The grittiness of the paper with the sticky black rubber over it always made me want to wash my hands. I don’t like seeing faces in the morning. I can’t stand somebody staring at me. My agitation is partly compounded by the ongoing paranoia that somebody is constantly watching me. And newspapers are crowded with faces, none of them pretty enough. Also, they’re not monochrome. Looking at such immense colour hurts my eyes. So instead, I decided to sit all by myself, in the comfortable, old, broken arm-chair my father brought from kabadi-bazar, feeling important, as if I’ll pick up some world-altering idea out of thin air, just like Aristotle!

Mariyam was scrolling cat videos in bed with eyes half-opened, the white sunlight of late morning hours peering through the window, reflected from her oily face. I kissed her hair and breathed deeply as I put my head on her flat chest. I like how she smells in the morning, like the damp clay in the garden after the rain. Rumi was lying face down on her table. It was a pretty book. I had tried once to rush through all the heavy mystical content in the book but couldn't extract more meaning than a faint idea about how dearly he loved and missed God. On some days I miss God too and they are never the sad ones. I wondered why Mariyam didn’t read the paper? But then cat videos are certainly better than reading about the damned world.

I floated back to my room, like a restless old spirit, in a sweaty see through white cotton t-shirt. The corridor air was heavy with refined oil. THE HINDU flashed before my eyes, immediately producing a nauseous reflex. “It’s leftist”, my ex used to say, like the Left was the worst thing to happen to the world. Everytime I looked at the paper, his words came back to me. The way his pseudo intellectual, stereotypical mouth bragged about reading The New Yorker, The Economist, Time and what not. His attempts to try to keep me ‘updated’ by relaying what he read for my own benefit- coercing me to form an opinion about Trump and the Mexican-border crisis or if Amazon would be the world's first trillion-dollar company cause he didn’t think Apple could do it…I felt stupid when he talked like that.

 My father was rubbing his back with his sweat soaked undershirt while sitting on the cot in the verandah as the flies’ buzz past his ear. He rubbed his neck to peel the dirt off his skin, tanned and greasy. He was bent over, cross legged, over a newspaper spread before him, in hindi print. His asymmetrical frame with short, thin legs and broad shoulders sitting on an un proportionately large stomach overgrown with thick curly hair that formed a canopy over his huge deep belly button, moving inward and out rhythmically and steadily in the morning sun, making a distasteful spectacle. He brought my attention to an article describing the success-story of Akshay Kumar, asking me to read aloud the part where he talks about the invaluable lessons of life his father taught him, which apparently made him the superstar he was. Dad kept staring at me while I tried to read the hindi script, struggling to form the words right. Following my awkward narration, I sat there like a bobble-head for the next half-hour receiving “zindagi ka saar” (the essence of life) from my father, nothing I hadn’t heard before. My father likes to read the paper in detail, sipping on tea with two Good-Day biscuits, in his blue cheque boxers, day after day, reeking of god-complex, double-standards and patriarchy.

Will I be like my father if I read the paper? Will it make me talk like one of those self-appointed social scientists aka UPSC aspirants ? Blabbering about Indian politics and relaying statistical data like a government database, assuming they understand the world better, plainly because they are competing for the most difficult exam in the nation- the only merit ever to be associated with their name. What credibility could I give to the media of a fundamentally flawed system, a mock-democracy fuelled by misguided people led by religious fundamentalists ? I pay 375 a month (including magazine) for feeling guilty- selling 2kgs of unopened newspaper at the end of the month at 8 rupees per kg.

Seema Di knocked hardly on my door, jolting it open with her strong arms and shot words through her mouth like a tennis-ball dispenser machine, in her high-pitched bold Nepalese voice and said- “Newspaper pada hai kitne dino ka bahar balcony me, utha lo yaha se. Padhte nahi ho?” (Newspapers have been lying on the balcony for days now, pick them up. Don’t you read them?) I gave a silly smile as she rushed away with her heavy footsteps echoing in the staircase, shaking the ground slightly. I thought she was right. I looked at the dirty bundles, 5 perhaps 6 scattered in the balcony among balls of long brown hair and lint between the legs of the steel cloth stand. I tried to read the date on the one lying closest to me. I failed. There is nothing positive associated with the activity for me, moreover if my parents discovered I was reading the paper regularly they would definitely ‘encourage’ me to sit for the civil services exam. I sighed and shut the door behind me to ignore their existence. Looking at the tower of books on my table; blue white yellow and red I thought how pretty they looked. There are no faces on the pages, no dreadful articles or disappointing news, simply beautiful paperbacks inviting me in their silent glory. I am done, it's final. I’m buying The Thing Around Your Neck instead of next month’s The Hindu subscription.

From the coiled iron-frame of my window, I saw the sun shining brighter in the sky.