Essay Series #1: Energetic Blackness

I could describe the bungalow that I live in. Or tell you how my neighbors made their wealth from factories. Or that only their paranoid patriarch is up this early, scolding his employees over unpaid *challans while nursing his diabetes. Or I could talk about my mother’s taste in furniture — Good Earth, a mix of assorted name brands, and standalone pieces from foreign trips in the 2010s. Or I could comment on how hornets hover around the taps jutting out of our garden walls. Or that people tolerate squirrels only because they’re rats hiding in the type of expensive fur coats that grant you access to an upscale party in Manhattan. I could even comment on the effectiveness our security guard developed once he went from uniform to plain clothes, instantly becoming an auxiliary member of our house, sometimes seen in the lobby and kitchen, and at other times in the hidden passages of the house, doing all sorts of invisible chores, becoming my mother’s Man Friday.

But this is an inward morning. The sort where I do things right in the first go. My phone lies far away like refuse from a restaurant. I shake the cortisol away and freeze a whole nebula of worries on paper. Then, in zen fashion, I descend down into the kitchen scheming for the energetic blackness of coffee and morning jazz. The earphones go in. My mother enters the kitchen a few moments later. I’m in the middle of concocting caffeine gold using a no-nonsense recipe borrowed from thrillist.com. I can see her lips moving. Like all mornings, I know what she is saying,“*subah subah coffee mat piya karo.” But Spotify’s morning jazz playlist has already hit the 15th minute and I’m no longer in Faridabad but in New York.

Everywhere on the streets, you can smell the aphrodisiac. Half sewer, half warmth from a down jacket, and sprinkled with an invisible helping of ambition. I silently greet all those awake at this hour, nostalgic of a simpler time — of hands warmed by cups, of Google Calendar, of beautiful and rugged boots, which I learned much later in college are a non-negotiable part of life on the East Coast, along with the peculiar life-affirming combination of steel, granite, asphalt, and windows. All the cafes that have tall barstools on which you can sit and look out onto the street must be empty now. I think of the plight of the New Yorkers who now sit in their pajamas fiddling with dull coffee machines, lamenting the loss of a lifestyle envied by many across the world.

The sun hits me at a different angle as a fly finds solace on my never-lotioned skin. I am back in Faridabad. I’m still in my head, though, in that warm place where my mind meanders to places and not events. I walk back inside the kitchen. The remaining coffee has gone cold. I think it will break my reverie. It doesn’t. Mumma is saying something again. I can tell she wants to make me oats. Her face has that look of anxiety that might descend upon a mother hen if a society of hens questions her ability to feed her chicks. But I already told you it’s one of those inward days. So I tell her, “No. I will make an omelet for myself.” But I don’t. Instead, I come upstairs to my room to find my table has magically cleared all the clutter to leave a rectangle of space for me to put my notebook. I think it’s overjoyed that it will be used to write this early in the morning. Now, my mind teases me with thoughts of my friends, their lives, my comparisons to specific parts of their lives. But I let it play. As long as the jazz keeps playing and the energetic blackness remains in my gut and in my ears, this will continue to be one of those inward days.

Legend

*challan: a fine for breaking traffic rules

*subah subah coffee mat piya karo - don’t drink coffee in the morning.”