If my hands could reach out

2:00 AM

P. is having trouble sleeping tonight. Like the other night, the one before, and the one before. She has sampled several sleeping poses in all the cardinal directions, a few breathing patterns, and a long-form square root calculation of her birthdate in her head. After every such failed circuit, she looks at me in the dark, pleadingly. She daren’t shine a light on me, lest it become real—her insomnia. She wouldn’t look at me.

I made my way here only about a month ago, when a friend pointed out how remarkable my absence felt—that I could be the all-seeing commander of operations in a house. A helpful Sauron’s eye, if you will. Bearing a weakness for such allegories, she took me from her childhood home and hung me summarily in one such niche. But in truth, I have been around since the time she toddled and watched her grow up until the time she left home for college. I watched her from a subliminal space, what your kind calls, the ‘four-dimensional space’, similar to the way a camera looks at its subject. I wasn’t always ‘sentient’; I didn’t play much of a role in her life back then. She had all the time in the world, or so she thought. She was happy, only the way kids are.

One day I ‘woke up’. I can’t tell exactly when I did, but I can say I saw it coming. It was around the time she was appearing for a flurry of national college entrance exams. Everyone was, I'm told, with the gravitas of one going to war. I was getting increasing amounts of attention from P., or rather, at the receiving end of concerted efforts at forgetting my existence, which is the same thing. And one day, poof, I was pulled into this material world. I gained sentience out of the inordinate dread P. developed for me, churned out of her tussle against the passage of time. Since then, we have had a fraught relationship: I wake up when she pays me attention, and I sleep when she forgets about me.

Right now, as you may have guessed, I am at peak consciousness. Her fear of the current time has reached manic levels. She spent hours lost in the pursuit of sleep, time slipping away as sleep eluded her like a cat. On a good day, she steals the merest glance from the corner of her eye. In a room full of the blandest baubles hanging from the wall, her eyes will neatly flit over me and gaze at the rest. But tonight, the trinkets won’t make the cut. Much like a car accident, she wants to avoid locking eyes with me but finds herself unable to look away.

She has picked Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. What is she trying to do? Live second-hand childhood memories? Evoke her own? It is not working out. For someone who dreads the passage of time, insomnia is a vessel for torture.. every second is magnified and made felt in its essence..

Now she is biting her nails and pacing up and down this cubby of a room. A room of one’s own, she declared on moving in. Hell’s own crucible now. She is pulling her hair. She collapsed back on the bed, sobbing bitterly. If only my hands could reach out to her. All they ever do is march in relentless goose-step. Commanding is my bane.

I can see her drifting into slumber. Maybe a pleasant smell from childhood did visit her after all. Or the peaceful wake of catharsis took over. Only my tick-tock and her lub-dub, syncing briefly, mars the silence. I too fall asleep..

10:00 AM

If looks could kill, I’m being hung, drawn, and quartered right now. She’s finally up, and it’s late by a good hour. She attacks her teeth as the first order of business, hamfisting and wrecking through the morning rituals, while one whole eye burns a hole through me. It turns out she rinsed her face with the hand wash and slathered her hair with the body wash. In this moment, both of us are hanging by a thread. More daggers are shot my way—displaced anger. I am not the playwright of your tragicomedy, P., I only have the front-row seat. She sees a mirror when she looks at me. That disappointing look—if my hands could reach out, they’d point to you, P. Once again, I’ve kept score.

What’s the pinch, I wonder. Through sheer force of will, P. gathers the last shreds of something resembling aplomb, steadies herself, and readies for the day.

10.10 AM

“Miss P., you arrived a tidy 10 minutes late for a virtual job interview. You can imagine how it would not bode well for your prospects.”

“I am extremely sorry. There was an unavoidable emergency. I cannot emphasize how much I-"

“It’s fine, Miss P., let’s get on without much ado. We have gone through your portfolio for this position. It’s not often we meet applicants from a STEM background vying for a magazine editor’s role. What made you make the switch?”

A heartbeat skipped, a knowing look directed my way. She has rehearsed and timed the response to this question for a full minute.

“I always had an interest in weaving stories, even in the most mundane places. This is something I realized relatively recently. Reflecting on my college days, I clearly see now that I excelled in subjects where I could craft interesting narratives, despite their technical rigor—something my professors woefully neglected. I couldn’t see myself walking the hallowed grounds of academia the way they did and risking losing my love for storytelling in the process.

Some people do find creative avenues for narration and presentation in STEM too. And maybe this is promiscuous teleology on my part—looking for narratives everywhere. Nonetheless, it is clear to me that what I seek lies not in STEM. The choices presented itself to me in black and white and I took the leap. ”

That took fifty seconds. She looks pleased with me.

“Hmm, I appreciate that, Miss P. But I can assure you that not all is hunky dory in the world of writing. The subject matters we deal with require the same degree of attention to detail, fieldwork, bookkeeping, and learning from experts as in STEM. There are other aspects to writing as well that can be disenchanting. Should that happen, would it impact your work output? Not to mention, will you make another switch from writing to a different vocation?"

“I assure you that my heart is in the right place. I have confidence in my work ethic and integrity, a commitment that persisted even in my last job, despite it lacking any personal meaning to me. Writing to me is more than a living that puts food on the table; it's my calling, and I've never been more sure about anything in my–"

"I hear you. But for your entries, Miss P., they are quite direct and informed in their approach. Which is not bad news, but we are looking for a certain..je ne sais quoi. I believe that a great deal of what has to be said and written by humans has already been done so. We want someone with fresh, avant-garde perspectives on what you aptly alluded to earlier—commonplaces.”

She said 'mundane places’; are you even listening?

“Maybe your training in STEM disables 'flights of fancy' a touch? That’s just speculation. I am just a guy..”

A guy with not so much brain as earwax. If my hands could reach out, I'd throw them in despair.

"Another thing: as a magazine editor, you will encounter tight deadlines and the need for quick decision-making. How do you handle pressure and time constraints?”

“I..

A booby trap?

Time has not exactly been her staunch ally.

"In my last job, I’ve worked on projects with tight deadlines, requiring me to prioritize and stay focused under pressure. I have…developed effective time management skills…and the ability…to make informed decisions quickly. I feel these skills…will be transferable to the fast-paced environment of magazine editing…"

I can see her suppressing a gag at that response. How much of that holds water? She can't wait to ruminate on that once this interview gets over...which seems to have been going on forever. She fixes her gaze on me with the intensity of a drowning man clinging to an anchor.

“I see, Miss P. That’s something we sure are looking for in our candidates."

P. sends a silent prayer my way for this to be over.

“Well, Miss P. That would be all for today. There's some paucity of time, and I need to screen a few more candidates. It was nice to chat with you. You can soon expect your results. I appreciate your time today.”

Ironic how the time offered to a time-strapped man carries little worth for him.

4:00 PM

The phone blares at full volume, jarring the reverie of a midsummer afternoon. P. jolts from sleep into an upright position, facing me. I follow suit. Summers never treated her well. Something to do with the heat resonating with her choleric temperament, I heard her once say. “April is the cruellest month,” she would quote.

The call is from her mother, and she is dithering about picking it up. She knows the script by heart now; she shouldn’t bother. But it hasn’t been her day, and she misses her mother’s voice regardless of what she has to say.

“Hello beta. How are you doing?”

“Hello Ma. All good. You say.”

“How was the interview? Was this the 7th or 8th in the line?”

“7th. It was not peachy, but I have hope.”

“Haii. Good to hear. When are you planning to come home?”

“I don’t know..soon..”

“Come soon. We miss you..”

“Hmm, I miss you all too.”

P. has entered something of a meditative state. She is studying the contours of the numbers on my face: the odds, the evens, the primes, and the Fibonaccis. Her face is a study in unfocused attention. Moments like these are rare, when she forgets everything she doesn’t have and everyone she doesn’t like. When not a cloud of thought floats in her mind’s sky. Just the two of us, studying each other’s visages.

“So..there’s actually..”

“What?”

“…”

“Out with it.”

“I have nothing to do with this, full disclaimer. We were approached by a suitable family, asking for your hand in marriage. The boy works—”

“Hard pass,” says P. coolly. I can tell she is lost in thought about Mark Twain’s watch. “A correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch.” If only I could entertain P. like that watch, I would have a better chance at holding P.’s attention more often.

“It is nice to know you’re doing well, Ma. I have to get on now. See you.”

“But what’s the harm in meeting once? And interview after interview, you are not getting any–"

You may love your people on average, but on a given day, they can appear anything from endearing to insufferable.

6:00 PM

P. has a sudden realization and jerks her head back to check the time, her eyes all lit up. She squeaks in delight and dashes to the TV. Her darling football club has made it to some finals, and the odds are in the club’s favor. It amuses me to see how she treats this game as the last shot at redeeming an otherwise lost day, week, or even a month. Maybe she feels the same sense of solidarity with her club as I feel towards her. In that case, I find myself rooting for —FC to win this thing.

(The thought of how she might handle a loss sends a shiver down my hypothetical spine.)

7:50 PM

The game has entered what P. and her kind are calling ‘death’. Intense jargon. That is, the game is in its final minutes. —FC has one goal advantage over our opponents. And it is just a race against time from here onward. P. is talking frantically over the phone with someone. Meanwhile, her one whole eye burns a hole through me, begging for an uneventful ‘death’. I gather this must be important for a lot of people. The subliminal space I come from is experiencing tremors of tremendous proportions. There is an abnormal amount of attention thrown at us and massive friction between the desires fueling them: “just one goal,” “a corner,” or a plea for penalty echo on one hand, while the likes of “all hands on deck”, “guard the goal with your life” reverberate on the other. Me and my kind are at peak consciousness in this moment. If my hands could reach out, I’d cross my fingers.

8:00 PM

—FC has won the game! Woohoo. P. is dancing and crying tears of joy. She is talking to someone over the phone frantically. I hear fireworks outside. I am fading back to sleep..P. is happy..I am happy..

10:00 PM

P. has decided to throw all precautions to the wind. Unfazed by the plague of insomnia, she accepts wakefulness. Just for tonight, she is not going to court sleep. Should sleep happen to visit, she will welcome it with open arms. The only correct way to entice the cat. Otherwise, she is going to read Proust in earnest.

She threw the merest of cursory glances in my direction and plunged headlong into her book. Her face slowly turns into a theatre: bathed in the soft glow of the lamp, every emotion and expression is played out vividly by the sentences and passages in the book.

P. is swimming in her element, which is also the precursor to her great leap, her artistic agony, and ultimately her insomnia. But for now, she is in good company. And I know what she seeks within the pages of this great piece of literature: a memory of a time when she didn't have to worry about its passage. She is happiest when she forgets time.

I have a feeling I am going to be asleep for a long time now..If my hands could reach out, I'd curl them up like a baby..