How many things can be true at once?

Dear Reader,

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about the world, and so I ask other people, How are you? They say things like hopeful or tired or fine, I guess, which all sound like different ways of saying, I’m still here. Some say grateful, which is either very wise or very delusional.

I find myself biting my nails in unrealised anxiety, scrolling through headlines as if they were prophecies. And yet, in the same hour, I have also felt like a lion, regal and self-contained, absurdly confident that I could handle anything, even the economy. The human condition, or at least mine, moves between half-ragged and half-roaring, between “everything will be fine” and “nothing matters”.

Language does not help much. You ask it to hold your grief, and it shows up wearing a joke. You try to tell the truth, and it winks. Still, it gives us somewhere to stand while the floor moves, a small spell against the absurd.

During an early draft of Dey, my editor, the inimitable Divya Victor, told me that it seemed I had built a house but was only sitting in the bedroom. She said, visit the toilet, the kitchen, the balcony, and throw your dirty feet on the couch. I did, and found that even confusion has interesting rooms, a home built with chaos, care and the occasional open window. Through that window, the world keeps calling, asking what I make of it all, almost as if my answers mattered.

I like to imagine you still building your rooms, still opening your windows, still finding ways to talk to the sky. 

Regards, 
Shivram 

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