••Letter to an ✫Internet to RealLife✫ Friend••

Hey, Adéle

I'll begin with a tiny story.

I often sit for 3.23-7.17 hours to write at this Starbucks across Hansraj College — Delhi University — North Campus. I get up after every 61-87 minutes to take a brisk 14.9-min walk in the back alley.

As I’m old now, nothing surprises me anymore & when something does, it’s always something a little peculiar. 

In that alley where I walk, I often cross path with this lady dragging two oversized bags of recyclable trash. There’s nothing distinct about the lady or what she does — what’s distinct is her age. I don’t know her age, but like my grandma, she has a million wrinkles. My grandma is 87-odd years old. Looking at this million-year-old lady do what she does to put bread on her table makes me realize that before I complain about anything in life, I must always remember my undeserved privileges. And shut the fuck up instead of whining about how the bloody Goa airport is a Disgrace, how the washrooms at most cafés are filthy, how my room at my rented apartment at Versova is so tiny. Because most humans —including this ancient lady who collects trash to live— in this godforsaken cuntry don’t ever travel by airplane, don’t ever sit in cafés, don’t ever have their own room in an apartment in Versova.

That lady demolishes all the phoney pride I, sporadically, feel for my [internet-approved] high intellectual & emotional quotient.

That lady humbles me.

Mostly, life is unexciting without money, beauty, youth, charisma, or sporting/artistic abilities. As I have none of those, I converse frankly, I go on long walks everyday, I travel by unairconditioned buses, I introspect on wednesday nights, I love humans even when they depart from my life, and I write letters.

All these things I do don’t make my life exciting, they do make it a little less pretentious. And I’m grateful for that. Like I’m grateful to that lady for showing me the mirror — for showing me that I’m dirt.

Adéle, I bumped into you on the internet in late 2019. I first met you at Starbucks in Infiniti Mall in Andheri. That’s the coffee shop, I sat at —94 days straight— to write my third novel —143 days. In those days, I didn’t speak with humans, including the human I lived with in an apartment in Versova. I met you once I had wrapped the first draft of my novel. It’s been 2.5 years since — it’s a tiny miracle that we still talk — haven’t ghosted or forgotten/despise each other’s existence. In fact, it felt really awesome meeting you for a few hours in Bangalore. And now I’m seeing you in Bombay where our journey began.

In between ’19 & ’22, the world underwent a tectonic shift — the masks, the sanitizers, the vaccines — ‘Death’ & ‘Fear’ were the two superhit movies of the last two years. And unlike movies, they were real, they are real. These two movies are still running to ‘packed theatres’ in human hearts & psyche.

Death is inevitable & Fear is exhausting. 

Once we know that — Life is a tiny station before we get off at our sureshot Destination — Death 

& 

Fear is the greatest thief of the tiny bit of life we all have,

We realize how stupid we’re to be still married to these two blockbuster movies — Death & Fear.

It’s about time we kick them out of our beds & divorce them instantaneously in the cult-classic triple-talaq style.

As I write this in a café in Nainital, you’re in Spiti. To the ire of the socialist Wokes, we both are contributing to the capitalist economy in the Hope of extracting a little bit of Freedom from our blood money. Wokes have also tattooed us ‘murderous monsters’, who eat meat. And surely, it makes them mad that we still use the oppressive gender pronouns — he or she. To all that I will quote how a 19-year-old girl summarized her 1-year journey as a Woke Human.

“Being Woke is exhausting.”

—————

All my life, I always believed I was super liberal. Since the arrival of this new human avatar — The Wokes, I feel like a misogynistic, fascist, insensitive parasite.

I know I went on a tangent, but humans don’t have Free Will [that’s what supersmart human Sam Harris says]. But I will use whatever free will I can muster to get outta this slippery slope of standing up against the Invincible Wokes.

Cut to the chase, I’m happy to have met you in the world before masks, and I’m happy to meet you in the world after masks. As I’m not sold to the seductive sales-pitch of life after death, I’m hellbent on doing a few things now that I feel real [I know we may all be in an elaborate simulation] & before AI eliminates the unnecessary ‘moving morons’ a.k.a. human beings. 

I hope to make a few more memories with you on this tiny stop-over before death embraces us & takes us wherever it likes. As I write this on 17^th May ’22, all I’m hoping is to be alive to board the train on 3^rd June to Bombay and meet you on 4^th morning. And we will take it from there wherever the river of life takes us — till it eventually swallows us alive. 

Take care
Don’t Die

P.S. This is the third letter I’ve written in a week, with this one song playing on an endless loop in the background. I don’t even know if I like the song. It’s pretty pop — It’s sung & written by a teenager — but there’s something about the lyrics that pierces me — it cuts out the distraction & lets me write letters.

Hope ur ok — Olivia Rodrigo.