0.9 Expressions
The human condition
August 2024
Visual prompt by PAJA
The ‘goddam’ human condition by Stuti Sareen
I've been reading The Catcher in the Rye again lately. It's a book I first picked up in my first year of college, back when it was one of those "must-read" books. But it didn’t make me laugh back then the way it does now. Maybe being almost thirty is just as awkward as being an adolescent, and that makes me relate to Holden more now than I did before. Anyway, back to the point: when I read a book I resonate with, its writing style starts seeping into my thoughts and writing – which explains the crude, candid flow of thoughts in this little journal entry. If you've read my work before, it'll be clear that this is my first attempt at writing a raw piece straight from my journal. Readers of The Catcher in the Rye will probably recognise a (naive) attempt at writing like Holden.
There are quite a few words that make me cringe, inside and out. And when phonies use “the human condition” as a term in their pretentious casual talk and all, it kills me. It really does.
A condition, they say. Then it must be one with symptoms and all. What kills me is that these symptoms can be different for every person’s goddam condition, but they all fall into the same categories. So, here’s an attempt at listing those categories:
Symptom 1: Goddam Dread
Imagining scenarios that have not or will not happen, and reacting to them in the present.
Symptom 2: Goddam Pretence
Putting on “a show to be a respectable member of society” and all. Big deal.
Symptom 3: Goddam Dependence
Not being able to function properly without certain people, objects, or surroundings.
Symptom 4: Goddam Affection
Being vulnerable beyond reason.
Symptom 5: Goddam Bodies
Finding ways to feel comfortable “in our skin” and all.
Symptom 6: Goddam Insecurities
Thinking more about others and what they seem to be, instead of thinking about yourself and who you are and can be.
Symptom 7: Goddam Choices
Treating the act of making a choice as a burden, and living with the chosen choice as if it were the wrong one.
Recollection by Marina Lepcha
Like a leaf detached from the branches,
Pale yellow,
Frail as the veins are not stiff enough,
It was quite a fall,
But amazed at how swiftly it lands on the ground,
Gently comes in contact with the earth,
It feels soft, and it's warm,
It feels like a surrender,
A surrender to the wind, be it gentle or a whiff,
A sweet surrender.
From the Page of a Torn Dilapidated Letter by Mehuly Chakraborthy
“…And so, Darla, I painted the skies blue, the happier palette that reflects on calm river ends, unaware of despondency. My strokes are hence perfect, happy arcs carving right out of a starved heart, feebly beating. I know no melancholia or poetries of the dead. Philosophies of stagnancy have found shelter in my humble abode—literature for the imbecile, as one might put it.
Last week, my cat died. I doted on her like a child, feeding her the shredded pieces of my love that still somehow seemed to crawl out of my hollow shell. There’s no raucous now, except a haunting passivity of a war lost. And yet, my eyes stood numb and dry, as if incapable of a subtle weep.
The art of liberation imbibes addiction. The world seems to be a race of irrelevance, an unparalleled noise of constant hankers, killing your ears, or at times… killing you. Thus, you stand, motionless, smiling at every context that defeats you, humming songs of the bygones, while the earth rotates its regular circles.
The old broken building, right on the other street, has been grinning quite often. She seems to understand how alike we stand, sitting gracefully on empty plates of despair, reeking of battered bosoms and panging ruins. She reads me like a novel that meets hopelessness, eyeing me as I lie to my mother about how I am at peace. She smirks as I write this, for now, there’s no ache except a good long line of letting-go's.
I have seen calm sunsets on stormy evenings, dear Darla. I have loved oxymorons a little too much to begin with. There’s quietude—rather a wise passivity—in reading balladries of fathers incapable of love, lovers incapable of love, and me unworthy of love. So be it.
And so, I sit yet again, gracefully with a poised demeanor, naked. There’s strength in stripping off everyday humdrum, smiling at solace, to know nothing gets you unsettled. This is a deadly strength, Darla. I’ve killed myself time and again to learn it.”
K-night sky by Ashwija Eswar
Infinity yawns and stretches
Across the cosmic canvas.
The fluid night sky thickens
Like the voice of an ageless tale.
It's awake even as it sleeps,
Like a dark and rusty secret
Alight with worlds afar,
Like a dream bathing in silence.
Its untrapped mystery drips into my eyes,
My knight in shining armor,
My immersive, wild escape,
My freedom; the wings to my weight.
It seeps into me with cool fingers,
Hunting for forgotten magic,
And it finds dried traces of enchantment.
It finds in me a fragment of itself.
Naked thoughts by Atulya Aby
What do I wear today?
Sorrow or strength?
Failure or grace?
Or do I dare
To wear the naked truth today?
As I rummage
Through the racks and drawers in my brain,
I wonder,
Do we get our best ideas in the shower
Because in there
We strip off all our masks too?
PAJA is a Delhi-based artist whose creative expression spans across various mediums, including frame-by-frame animation, comics, and both digital and hand-drawn illustrations.
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Marina Lepcha, from Kolkata, West Bengal, enjoys reading and binge-watching various series without a preference for a specific genre.
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Atulya Aby is an aspiring writer.
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Mehuly, originally from Kolkata and now studying Big Data Computing in Italy, balances her technical profession with a passion for art and literature. She escapes daily routines by scribbling anecdotes and enjoying conversations about music and poetry. Back home, she spends Sundays sharing stories and reciting Bengali verses to kids in North Kolkata slums.
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Ashwija is a marketing and sales executive living in Cologne, Germany. She finds pleasure in oddly stitched words that carry her back home and enjoys expressing herself through stories and poems.