Why do people drink?
As I snug my cigarette tightly between my fingers filled with all but emotions on the lowest brink of anxiety stress depression or perhaps just a pervasive emptiness, I grapple for words. I seek to decipher what missteps led to this moment, question why it went wrong how it could have been different, and when I’ll just get up and run as I always do…Gazing upon the desiccated expanse of a once-teeming lake, its arid vacancy mirrors the barren landscape of my thoughts—devoid of dreams, aspirations, and desires, gazing at the skyscrapers peering deep in my eyes reflecting and competing among themselves who is taller who is brighter which one among us will pitch for a higher dollar and which one among us is better to sell the vivid abstract of a dream…Dream of a better life dream of a world where it’s you, your perfect car your perfect family the pretty wife, and the adorable kids only to realize when the reality hits, that a feet left and a feet right you’ll find someone else with a better car a better perfect family with a golden retriever jumping in its own pool a wife, now whom you consider out of your league…kids are anyways adorable when they’re not yours.
A perfect society with cubes and cubes multiplied and multiplied like the cells of cancer till the limit tends to infinity squeezed in a 1300 sq feet 3BHK wall of fly ash brick sold as the aspiration ambition pleasure not something you brought but earned.
In the race of life’s pursuit, you find yourself on a track where the finish line keeps shifting. You stride alongside neighbors, colleagues, and friends, their goals mirroring yours yet seeming just out of reach. Picture this: you’ve worked tirelessly to acquire a shiny new sedan, a symbol of your achievements. But as you revel in its gleaming exterior, a neighbor cruises by in a sleek sports car, leaving your accomplishments eclipsed by their luxury.
Imagine you’ve tenaciously built a thriving business, each success a brick in the foundation of your dreams. You revel in the profits you’ve earned, envisioning a future of stability and prosperity. Yet, as you count your earnings, your co-founder announces plans to acquire everything you’ve painstakingly constructed—the fruits of your labor, the embodiment of your aspirations—leaving you feeling as though your accomplishments are but fleeting shadows in the wake of their ambitions.
Then imagine stepping into an elevator you can barely recall in another skyscraper you can’t even afford, the doors closing to reveal a stranger regaling tales of exotic adventures—a trek through the Amazon a cruise through the south of France, or a weekend getaway to a private island near Sicily and a hike through swiss alps. Their anecdotes resonate, stirring an unsettling feeling within as if your escapades pale in comparison.
As the days unfold, you’re reminded of the perpetual race, where success is but a fleeting illusion. Your achievements, once sources of pride, now seem diminutive in the shadow of others’ triumphs. You’re left grappling with a reflection of yourself, wondering if there’s ever a finish line, or if it’s all just a continuous loop of comparison and dissatisfaction.
Where all your mid-life crisis and existential questions knock and knock and desperately bang the door of your self-esteem prestige respect.
It’s as if your inner demons have seized control, orchestrating a cacophony of self-doubt that drowns out your inner voice. and the motion where all your insecurities drive the propaganda and scream with the top of their agendas as in a unanimous notion you’re thrown out of your own government your own cabinet and all you can hear touch feel visualize or even imagine standing all around in the circle of fire whispering ravishing to even shouting ‘shame’ ‘shame’ ‘shame’ as you chisel down to a derivation rushing towards the limit zero.
It’s ok my friend why don’t you sit next to me…here let’s share this cigarette in this life shrinking in the cosmos of self-destruction awaiting the sun to shrink to a white dwarf
Awaiting a star to die which we all will remember and forget sooner than the cigarette evaporates.
Before lighting another cigarette let’s just pause our thoughts and look at that guy…vomiting the toxins he had never consumed just another rounding error.
Another who placed all he ever owned in the numerator and the void he always felt in the denominator thinking he was different and he’d be anything but undefined.
I know you’ll ask me now…why do people drink?
And you know what I’ll tell you, my friend…
Come let me show you my perfect life my dream house my superfast car, my pretty wife, and my adorable kids.
By: Kshitij Sinha
05/04/2024