It's not decent or godly shit that goes on in my mind, and I don't get bored, I visualize - I just sit on the edge of my bed and imagine meeting an old friend (a childhood crush) in the back room of an old lentil store (daals in sacks). I'd kiss him and he'd respond with the passion and vigor that can only be born of the same brand of loneliness as mine, wasted days of sunny youth. Then I catch myself fantasizing and stop it. (...then he'd press me up against a wall, prop me on a sack, I'd run my hands all over his back, and our tongues would dance, and...)
I watch the knotted up mosquito net turn slowly, so slowly, on it's hook, like a slow, old lady. The little curtain on the window rises, then falls, then rises, then falls in the breeze. How time goes by. "Where are we going? Where do we go now?" Nanaji asks me. "I don't know", I say. "We are going to... (thoughtful pause)... London," he says. "Uhuh," I say. "Me and you, together, we'll go. You are my friend," he says. "Yeah we'll go," I say. "Where are we going? Now where shall we go?" he asks. "No where," I say. "Where do we go now", he says. "I don't know", I say. "Where are we going? I don't know, where are we going?", he asks. "I don't know either," I say. (How about London?)
Since everything is done for us, the cleaning, the meals, table laid, clothes washed, bathrooms cleaned, Nanaji fed and washed, I do the most useless thing of all - art. Beauty runs rampant in this country. An ant's first two halves are red, and it's butt is black. The ants make a neat line in the toilet, and quite a gathering around a bread crumb in the dining room (Why has that crumb not been wiped?). The ants come inside when it rains, they say, but really they come inside for the food, the little thieves. True to the high calling of art, I take a video of these ants. First zoomed out, then zoomed in. After watching it (the zoomed in one) a few times I believe I have witnessed a pattern these creatures of nature make - there is symmetry! And balance! Where and when do ants practice such choreography? Do they run underground sessions?
Truth is easy to come by when you look for it. Everything is open, fruits go bad in a day and people go bad even faster. Gossip makes for reliable exposure. And the great truth is: there is nothing. "There is nothing," Nanaji says, "There is nothing here." I am not sure how to respond. "There is nothing here," he says and waves his hand to indicate everyone and everything. "There is something," I say. "No, look, there is nothing!" he says. It's true, there is nothing here. And there is nothing there as well. We all know it. "Other old people watch T.V., some read magazines, to pass the time," Nanima says, "but nothing goes in his mind, so how can he?" How time goes by. I master the games on my phone. There is nothing. Just time going by. I make art. I knot my mosquito net, and open it at night...and take a video of it, to capture how it falls around me, tenting me.
"I don't know where I am," Nanaji says. "Home," I say. "But there is nothing," he says, "There is nothing here." "There is something," I say. "Now where will we go?" he asks, "Where will we go?"