Let me assure you, in reality, washing carpets is oddly dissatisfying. I found that out yesterday. I hauled out a mysterious, grey-tinged, cardboard-like carpet, long folded up, with no recollection of how it ever got into the house. My mother said it was natural wool and that my father had bought it while I was still in school. It took a boutique blend of cleaners and about four hours of pressure washing to restore it to its original white and cream. My back ached for the rest of the day, and my hand buzzed from the washer gun's recoil for hours.
The monotony let the mind delegate the task to autopilot while it drifted to Albert Camus's Meursault. Not that I have read The Stranger or plan to, I just remembered a clever-sounding British fellow on Reels talking about what it would be like to only speak the truth. Well, I have been doing that for a long time, sometimes blunt, at times delicate, with minimal whitewash. No name-dropping, excuses, or self-aggrandisement. I even stopped telling young women how lovely they look. Sure, some act somewhat ill at ease in my presence, especially the pompous ones higher up the ladder, yet nobody ever accused me of being cruel or deliberately hurtful.
Meanwhile, the same can’t be said about many of those seemingly playing the social game of pretense and perfunction. Take this episode from almost a decade and a half ago. I had just sat on my bike for my weekly dip in the sea when I felt the buzz of my phone in my pocket. It was a college classmate. I barely knew her in college and later only spoke to her because she worked for a stint at a senior friend’s organisation. After a string of probing questions to which I grunted yes or no, she quipped, “Great, jobless and dumped by your wife, enjoying life on the beach!”
Trained since age ten to hear from all around that I was never good enough or didn’t measure up, even I was stunned by the audacity and waited a minute before replying. I said I would let it rest but warned that such flippant remarks could earn her serious enemies for life. She hung up.
Was she deliberately hurtful? I don’t think so. Probably just a little jealous of a seemingly jobless bum who still managed to live a freewheeling life in Goa and take weekend bike rides and dips in the sea. Besides, like many cranially deficient people, she also fancied herself quite witty.
A decade later, just before I blocked her everywhere, fed up with her mindless comments and constant poking into my life and zero respect for boundaries, I reminded her of that line. First, she vehemently denied it, then said she had forgotten, and finally, tinged with hysteria, claimed it was her revenge for my gaffes about femininity on social media. Inadvertently providing more fodder to laugh about.
Then there is another friend from school times through college who, after loitering through life until his mid-40s, finally found a calling as a wheeler-dealer middleman in one of the tribal hill states. He made a habit of calling at night, somewhat tipsily narrating about his various trials and successes, and also sermonising me about compromises and how I should learn from his lessons. Mostly, I listened patiently until one time I had enough and retorted, “Grovelling to corrupt and clueless bureaucrats and "Yessing" to vendors’ managers, is not my life - so let me focus on my innovations.” He slurred back, “So who has recognised your work that you are so arrogant?” This time I cut the phone, but first told him to Fuck Off...
He called up later, confessing he had had one too many. Laughing, I told him I welcome such drunken outbursts because people tell me what’s really on their minds. I haven't heard from him after I posted a slew of screenshots on my WhatsApp status about the international coverage my work received, which he and several others so obsessively keep checking daily.
Either way, both the characters probably see themselves as victims and not vice versa.
At last, the carpet looked clean, and instead of pondering truth-sayers, I next had to figure out how to lug the wet behemoth up to the balcony to dry.
Perennially tightfisted, my father had obviously not paid the little extra for the magic flying carpet option.
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