It’s alright ma, I’m only sighing
Cubicles. They are unsettling to me but at the same time, I am settling for them. I don’t like them but I can’t think of another way to make it through the day without having to interact with others. I don’t like to be seen. I don’t like people looking at me, watching me do what I do, seeing my face when I make a stupid mistake or watch my head slowly hit the desk after lunch.
Many offices now have co-working spaces. Rows of desks stuck next to each other. It improves our productivity and interactivity, they say. Faces exposed, people would stare at each other in awe of their sheer existence — ‘Ah didn’t see you there. Anyways, what did you do over the weekend?’ I would go for a cubicle over this interactivity-productivity charade of co-working spaces any day. It almost seems as if they have to drag us out of our homes to get their work done. People would have been fine working from home, but they drag you out into a cubicle. And when you are just fine with them, they drag you into these co-working spaces. They want to look at us while we are being screwed. In school it was easier. We had our desks facing the teacher — the one we were supposed to rebel against. Here I don’t know whether to rebel or not.
Every morning I wake up and I just want to disappear. All the love has gone and the world has already turned upside down. Things have never been the same since the blues walked in this town. The blues have been following me everywhere — cities, towns, bars, taverns and sidewalks. Every morning at 9 am as I sit in my cubicle I just want to smash it into pieces but then I think to myself — ‘Should I disappear or get myself a coffee and a cigarette?’
It’s always blue and gray inside. Cloudy and serious. And the only silver lining in this cloudy space is in my hair. It always looks as if it’s just about to rain. And the pale blue white light shining from above makes me feel like I am being operated upon. Coffee and cigarettes making up for the anesthesia. My heart’s always beating a little fast. I am always a little sweaty on the forehead. My body and mind give in to the nicotine flowing in my veins. These offices are enormous towers of glass. But the tinted windows never let the sun in. George Harrison apparently wrote ‘Here Comes the Sun’ after coming out of a meeting room. Nowadays I seldom listen to the Beatles.
The life outside these offices doesn’t seem great either. This stupid city looks the same, in and out. Tall buildings, offices, flyovers always being erected, drains always being dug, roads always being laid, apps always being designed, bikes and autos always being hauled — only this time on a phone. It seems as if this city is in a perpetual state of construction. Like Paris in Godard’s ‘2 or 3 things I know about her’. The film follows Juliette who lives in one of the high rises in the suburbs of Paris. She resorts to prostitution to make ends meet. Pure Godard. He equates prostitution to consumerism which I sometimes think is a bit far fledged. But on some days looking at some people the idea doesn’t seem impossible. But hey who am I, he’s Godard.
But I guess the money’s good…
We work jobs we don’t like so that we can consume things we think we like. How else are we going to make peace with the fact that everything’s absurd. I think we put ourselves on the line each time we consume. And today there is no dearth of things to consume. Products, gadgets, creams, stories, influencers, drugs, pop-culture, hip-hop, veganism, films, books both self-help and fiction, shows, identity, politics, and revolution. The revolution Godard was so fond of is now consumed as a hash-tag. Consuming revolution is the easiest thing to do. All we have to do is like, share and subscribe. For Juliette, a 70s Parisian housewife, cigarettes and dresses and lipsticks and American magazines were a part of the consumption. We consume all sorts of things nowadays and there’s always that one OTT subscription we still don’t have. I live in a fairly decent high rise as well…
Every space we occupy we are being subjected to advertisements. At some point they collectively decided that hoardings and the newspapers are not enough. So now we have ads playing everywhere. On Instagram, YouTube, on Spotify, on any page that Google loads. And it’s not just about ads everywhere it’s about ads all the time. And so many. Selling stupid shit. The first thing that comes up on my phone when I switch it on in the morning is an ad. I once sat down to cry and all I could hear was Spotify asking me to buy the subscription to listen to music ad-free. I have never cried since. We buy. We subscribe. We share only to feel the slightest of human emotion.
I have been living away from home for about a year now. My family has lived in so many cities now that my sister once said — ‘we don’t live in a home, we live in a flat.’ It’s exciting but tiring as well. It’s exciting when I am writing about it or thinking about it in retrospect. It’s mundane and tiring when I am living it. I’ve always wanted to create a home for myself. My own space. ‘It’s exciting.’
I’ve got a small house plant for my room. It really ties the room together. I’ve got a small corner in my room filled with just books, papers, some postcards, a Marquee Moon frame and now this small potted plant sits there as well, on the lower shelf. I’ve got some second hand books that I bought from a book fair — a pulpy detective fiction about a killing spree. The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov. Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the mountain, India after Gandhi by Ram Guha. Tones of small books by ‘Penguin’ — short stories and poetry by writers from all around the world. Andy Warhol, Kafka, Orwell, Akutagawa, Baldwin etc. etc. On a trip to Pondicherry a few months ago I bought some cassettes. Live recordings by Pink Floyd, A tribute to Miles Davis & On the Beach by Chris Rea. So I went ahead and ordered myself a cassette player from amazon as well. They sit in the same corner as the books and frames.
Yes we are both consumers but of different sorts. Or maybe the same, I don’t know.
In the other corner of the room is a small stand where I keep my speaker. It’s always on. There’s always music playing in my room. There’s always ample sunlight in my room. I like the sun. I like the way it brightens my room. The afternoon sun makes its way into my room through the glass window, lighting up one specific corner of my room, everyday. The rain spoils it all. I don’t like the rain. And it rains here for most of the year. Rain makes me question everything I do in life. It’s harsh and depressing. What’s the point of rain if it’s not washing away my sins.
I want to get out of here. This life here is getting too overbearing. It’s lonely out here and nothing makes sense. How am I going to do this for all my life? I spoke to a colleague who’s elder to me and I asked him how he doesn’t go mad. He said ‘Look here junior, don’t be so happy and for heaven’s sake don’t you be so sad.’ Every day I wait for the lift to pick me up from the ‘underground’. But I miss it each time I run for it. One day I happened to catch it and they all said — ‘get in, get in.’ At night the lift puttered back into the underground. And me, I got out again.
