asymmetry

 # asymmetry 

life is continuous when it’s symmetrical. i’m talking about drawing a full circle multiple times in your life. meeting a stranger from a year ago at a new chapter of your life, a full bag of books that you can be sure to discard after a year of highlighting and makes notes of each page. like my name that catches my eye in every zoom call, “prarthana aggarwal”, the perfect balance between a’s and g’s. uniform. safe. 

but i have an unsolicited love for asymmetry.  it is the opposite of uniform and safe. it’s the feeling of coming west from home and hearing my mother’s footsteps in my nocturnal roommate’s, hearing the sleep-intruding sips of chai with the sharp rustle of the annoyingly expansive newspaper, hearing my brother’s obnoxious laughter in my roommate’s sudden early morning antics. i have to remind myself, shake my head physically, clutch the phone intoxicated on a full night’s charging, remind myself what this is. 

the best platform to have conversations is the gratitude time during wada meetings - all smiles shielded by masks and bandanas, and hysteria and impatience and poorly translated messages to papa de wada. eating cereal for dinner and the spotify playlist named in its honour. every stage of my life is documented in a spotify playlist. and i read this morning in a book about how music is the most aggressive art. if you hate my writing, you can close this tab and shut my words out - but music persists, intrudes, suffuses, bleeds into your life, forces you to have an opinion about it. music multiplies, expands, and reaches. 

who is an archetypal human? one who responds right or one who stops, breaks off, starts again? the latter will try to convince you it’s a human but it’s actually a poem. the people around you might be real, might not have minds, might just be computers, programmed by some remote, uncaring icy leader but here you are, forming bonds, drawing them, dedicating your lives to them. asymmetrical. 

today i ate the last date mix goodie from the old batch that i flew with me from delhi. the box is now empty, the white butter paper not sitting still anymore without anything to push it down, oppress it. and today is also the fourth day of online classes in the month of february. a sequel. let’s hope this isn’t a trilogy. faces on the screen are prone to freezing and breaking off. real people will just repeat their points till they’ve exhausted their brainpower but they endear you with their effort, their power, their love, their energy, their expanse, the space they take up and refuse to take up. you have to take in their appearance, their width, height, where they lie on the mbti spectrum, and you have to go through the database of names, come up with a match. 

real people are like zohra drif, who tears her gaze from the deluging innocence of ice-cream and the boy who needs it to not melt, but she forces her trembling hand to slide the handle, the bag, the handle on these people in front of her, the bag, and the bomb within it - she slides it underneath the chair and leaves her lipstick-stained glass of water. leaves behind not corpses, but real people like her, who are in love and don’t know when to stop and greedy and stupid. 

real people are like boy, the dog animal rescue service brought to campus. every ping of a notification is his location on campus. the hard, chunky metal collar around his brown fur makes it stick up and go haywire, in all directions, as if it can’t decide where to go. he ignores those who wave their hands, pucker their lips, reach out to him - but rather paws at those who look lost, glazed, somewhere else. 

sticky notes everywhere, half-written thoughts, half-thought thoughts, some notes, and declarations of independence. what does a mind do? except want to block any and all sight of hegemony, embrace anarchy as a mistress, roll eyes at justice for her coquettishness. i watch the blackboard, afraid and bored of the voices leaving the screen - the blackboard has travelled through time and space, marks and remains of the past, ideas and plans - i wonder if they have consciousness? i dare not.