in india: a sense of unreality (memories & photographs)

the world itself seems unreal to me: i am horrified by my every word, movement, thought. i wonder sometimes: do i control any of these things at all? is there anything i can do to be free?

Sep 22, 2024

with new friends in mumbai: i am afraid
(october 2014)

i live in kolkata, but i am here in mumbai for diwali. i am visiting friends: the festivities are bright, beautiful, sparkling.

with me are so many indians and americans: we are all working for organizations spread out across the whole country, and sometimes we visit each other.

i’m often lonely in kolkata: that fall i spend a lot of time in my cubicle before cajoling my way into working from the road and traveling around india. so i had been so looking forward to spending this time with these friends, whom i’d met once before.

but even with all the lights and good food, i can feel my social anxiety building up.

i tell myself i can overcome the fear: everyone is so nice and they are smiling at me!

i love these people; i want them to love me.

but the more time i spend with them, and the more things i say, and the more things i do with my body in front of them, the more frightened i feel in their presence.

diwali in mumbai (october 2014)

the door is closing; my friends are going out

i am in my friends’ apartment in mumbai: many of us are sleeping here.

everyone is having fun. people are drinking, smoking weed, talking about every topic and feeling imaginable: but i somehow cannot bring myself to engage. the moment anyone looks at me, i am terrified: i avert my eyes, gaze down at the floor. people ask me questions: i do not respond. my friend tries her best to talk to me, asking me what’s wrong, saying everyone wants me to come hang out: but instead of joining them, i lay non-responsive and inert on the floor, and i spend the night there alone.

when people speak to me, i have this feeling: i am not me, and i am not inside this body. when they look at me, i am unable to smile back. why? i have this feeling: i cannot make myself smile because i do not control this body. the world itself seems unreal to me: it’s like i am trapped somewhere, watching, and at times i am horrified by my every word, my every movement, even my thoughts. i wonder sometimes: do i control any of these things at all? is there anything i can do to be free?

but it seems there is nothing i can do. i hide in the bedroom with the door closed.

i am crippled with a sense of unreality, unable to speak and therefore abandoned as an antisocial outcast: i am alone in a bedroom when i hear the apartment door close.

their voices are gone now.

they are all going out without me.

photos from happier times in mumbai

i want to join them in the living room

i wait for hours, thinking i will sleep, but never sleeping. i cannot sleep because i am just wondering: why is it that i am unable to smile when i know i should smile?

i am still awake when they come crashing home at around two or three in the morning.

i want to join them in the living room. they are giggling and wasted.

i think: i should make my body open the door and go to the living room. i should smile and laugh. i should sit down and have fun! but i cannot make my body do this.

a couple of my friends come into the bedroom where i am inert: they talk to me and invite me to join them on the roof. i mumble non-responsively and they leave.

i am so desperate to go hang out with them.

high and wandering around kolkata with A.C.
(january 2015)

A.C. and i take bhang candy, which A.C. buys from a kiosk, and we are high out of our minds the entire day while wandering around kolkata.

A.C. lives in bhutan where he works in a village out in the mountains, and he lived here in kolkata a few years before me.

i have been here for a few months but i still have not seen many of the places A.C. shows me:

💖 the “indian coffee house,” which ends up being a true aesthetic experience and a regular writing haunt for me (above);

💖 the flower market, which somehow i hadn’t walked through yet (below);

💖 and the university, where we encounter lots of political graffiti (below).

above: the flower market and the riverside; below: political graffiti at the university

another thing A.C. and i love while walking around high in kolkata:

the trucks!

people in this country truly take the aesthetics of their trucks seriously.

trucks in kolkata

truck aesthetics never get old in india

flashes of freedom with A.C.

walking around with A.C. is one of the few times in last few months during which i have really felt like i can be myself, without performing, and in the back of my mind i am feeling so frustrated that i can’t be like this with almost any of my friends here.

in the back of my mind i am thinking about mumbai and the impression i made.

i fear i will never shake this impression:

this impression will haunt my relationships with these people forever, i conclude:

i will never escape from that impression!

and i am so mortified by this image of myself: who i am: hiding in a bedroom from my friends. why is that me?

why can’t this person always be me, the person i am with A.C.?

and that is when it hits me, just as we are returning to my apartment, that i am still not me! i am not even me when i am with A.C.

it’s like i am watching myself say things to him, do things in front of him, and i do not control these things. but then there are these moments, these flashes of freedom, where i am truly myself, only briefly until i am swallowed up again into the oblivion of the audience. and i’m not cheering for myself: i have all the hate of an opposing team’s fan. i am looking at my “self” and he is like a boomer’s favorite quarterback: me, but not me; an extension of me maybe; a source of rage maybe; a source of identity maybe;

but:

not me.

watching simulation theory videos with A.C.

A.C. is obsessed with simulation theory. we take more bhang candy and stay up in my bed watching a lecture about how there’s no doubt about it: we are living inside a computer simulation. A.C. tells me that the world around us is composed of pixels.

i am captivated by this idea. i once read being and nothingness in grad school and i thought for sure: i have infinite freedom, i am a human being, i am nothing. but i only concluded this intellectually: i did not feel that i had any actual freedom.

when people invited me to parties at georgetown, i did not feel as though i could make my body go. when people called me on the phone, i did not feel as thought i could answer. and when i found myself in social settings, i was watching myself constantly: watching myself talk, watching myself walk, watching myself express.

music: the only reality

there is only one time when i always feel like anything about reality is real:

when i am listening to music in my headphones.

as soon as i take my headphones off, i am stepping back into unreality.

i am stepping back into the audience.

it has always been this way, ever since i was in elementary school.

i have always understood: i am never inside reality unless i am listening to music.

now, after hours of debate about simulation theory:

i am trying to fall asleep next to A.C.

and i wonder: do i have a program that determines my actions?

is that why i always feel as though i am watching myself?

am i watching myself act out the program inside me?

am i a program?

it is not so difficult to believe:

i am an a.i.-generated entity.

this explains my lack of agency in the world.

this is explains why i am trapped in the audience while my friends go out to party.

but what about the part of me that is thinking this? is that part not there?

what about the part of me that is there in the audience, watching me?

and why can’t that part control my body?

more shots from walks around kolkata

A.C. leaves and i am sad

A.C. is gone and i am here with my roommates L and E.

i love L and E. i wish we could be good friends.

sometimes i feel like maybe we are.

but whenever i am with them, i know they are not seeing me:

because i am not there.

i am buried somewhere inside.

only sometimes, on cab rides alone with L, or while walking beside her on the way to buy vegetables, do flashes of light spring out of me. and i think she likes me then.