Black Coffee

I am sitting in a quiet coffee shop, just outside Leh. Alone. I order a black coffee. I have been drinking black coffee for seventeen years now. It’s good for weight loss, they say. I am 45 now. And I weigh almost the same as I used to weigh seventeen years ago. It’s the caffeinated hope that I am addicted to. Will someone be joining you, the waiter asks. I hope not, I reply. I chuckle sadly before going back to the book that I had been reading. Nowadays, I can’t leave myself alone with my thoughts. Things could go terribly wrong. I need my mind to be distracted. Always.

I have been living one day at a time for as long as I can remember. Just focus on the present, things will be fine. Things never turned out to be fine. They were far from fine. They still are so, so far from fine. But now I don’t complain. I have complained enough and I am tired now. It doesn’t solve anything. When you fall into the abyss for long enough, you realise that there is no point in screaming. The book I am reading is about this girl who traveled to a small island in Italy in her early 20s and then never returned. Nobody knows where she is, but she keeps sending letters to let everyone know that she is alive. She has no explanation for why she planned to settle there. It just felt like the right thing to do, she said in one of her letters. I think towards the end of the book she will stop sending these letters. I hope she does.

Have you ever felt that your whole life has passed by right in front of your eyes? Like you remember every second, every minute, every day, of the years that have gone by? And you are tired and you don’t want to watch it but you can’t help it so you just keep on watching. And some days your eyes are so wide open that you start seeing the future. The things that are gonna happen. All the unexciting events that are gonna unravel. And you know that it’s all gonna be true and you are already tired of them without actually living them. So all you gotta do is wait. Wait till all of it passes.

I am in a meeting now. It’s a posh office in Bandra. The kind of office where they value their plants more than their interns. I had a very bad morning. I woke up feeling breathless, so I just sat on my bed for two hours. Doing nothing. I have been having these kinds of mornings for quite a while. I should consult with a doctor. I am 36 now. My colleague called and told me that I was late for the meeting. He sounded kind of pissed. I didn’t care. I made my coffee and headed for the meeting. “What do you think about this?”, someone asks me. I stare at them for a while. “Do you like this?”, they ask back. Suddenly it strikes me. I don’t like this. I don’t like any of this. I walk out of the meeting. And then the city. And then the country. I am done, I tell myself, knowing perfectly well that I am not. I am far from done. I live in a different country for a couple of years. I come back, an unchanged man. Who was I running away from, anyway?

What’s the meaning of it all? I ask a friend at 3 a.m. We are both in our twenties. He smiles and goes to pee. I continue watching the TV. He comes back and tells me that I shouldn’t worry about the meaning of it all. Maybe the answer is in the search. I nod. Or maybe the meaning is so simple that we are unable to grasp it, he continues. You are drunk, I tell him. Or maybe, there is no meaning. We continue living till we die. Maybe we are too small to comprehend all of this. Or too insignificant. Okay, you definitely need to sleep. He nods off. I go to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. There is no milk. So I make myself a cup of black coffee for the first time.

It’s 6 pm and the sun is about to set. The waiter comes back with another coffee. I am almost done with my book. The girl indeed stops sending the letters. I hope she is happy. I finish my book and start walking towards my room. It’s unusually quiet today. I buy some apples on my way. Black coffee and red apples. That’s my diet nowadays. I haven’t felt breathless in more than five years. It cured itself. I enter my hotel room. I shut the door. I watch some more of this life pass by.