Deleted Scenes and Private Shames

It starts with T-shirts. Or rather, with the want to avoid them. It's the shame running deep, of wearing something that exposes my arms, which innocently reveal my irresponsible commitment to fitness, a routine of forgettable ordinariness.

This is Bombay's doing. All these only-in-movies category of fit people in Bandra and Juhu have led me to objectify my own body. Disgusting.

And it's because of the movies. You watch too much Woody Allen and a bit of French New Wave cinema in Delhi (at your parent's house) and Landour (with no one around) and you hope that the only thing that's stopping you from the ideal thirties life is a fresh start in a big city. You do, and the reality strikes.

Because you realise over months that there's no intellectual or romantic possibility emerging from existential ideas—no cute girl's head will turn if I'm performatively seen reading Kierkegaard. But maybe my kurta splattered with penguins and loose jute pants and broad distinctive eyeglasses might just catch an eye? But then the arms are revealed, and you are shunned.

The cacophony in the head reaches absurdist dimensions at the group workout class when god forbid the T-shirt lifts to expose my remarkably spongy belly fat—scars left after the weight loss battle was won—especially when I am proudly killing at the twentieth burpee. No pride, only prejudice.

This isn't a lecture on self-acceptance. Neither is this the preachy internet talk (to which I have contributed my fair share) on embracing your messiness because "oh that's so human". None of that.

This is not okay. Don't be like me. It's stupid. My mind is conjuring stories without asking for consent. "No means no," it doesn't understand. It needs to be taught a lesson. But then, I don't like self-flagellating bores and self-pity magnets—what a tragic drain—so I get back to the normies world. Wear a full-sleeves or don't give a fuck. Or give fucks and die in shame. Because I don't have the physical ability to live this one precious life in guilt.

I don't know where this piece is going. I just feel like writing. And I am.

Which, perhaps, is the public documentation of my irresponsible self. (There is "important" writing that needs to get done, and look what I am doing...)

Which is not very different from my habit of irresponsibly caffeinating myself at 9:30 PM: I know the right thing to do (no coffee after 3pm), I know I can do it (just don’t), and I am not (sigh). I can become better, but my behavior reveals I won't budge. Like how I want to throw out every mention of "becoming a better version of yourself" from the internet, while living my own cliché.

The truth is, I actually enjoy these narrative-shifting detours in my otherwise choreographed trying-to-be-a-good-person role play. No reason why. No meaning must be derived from the absurdity of my inner life, which at one point, is lost in the world of a dreamy journalistic publication representing the higher ideals of the profession, and at the next moment wondering if there's ever a chance to live a scandalous adult romance life in my own Emran Hashmi era, with the sultry lusty eyes of an egoistic king, featuring smoldering looks and rain-soaked dramatic encounters, Kaho Na Kaho end sequence looping in the background.

I think what I'm trying to capture is this duality where I might spend bulk of my day chasing the good quests—which I deeply care about, I really do—and then feeling disgusted at myself for having a subtle crush on a woman who is taller than me (#FML), and then spending hours looking at photos of Tom and Zendaya to give myself some hope, and wondering if I should make the humiliating attempt of making a move.

None of this is new. When I was living my Bohemian solo-writer slow-life in the mountains, the puffery served as material for my future autofiction. Cute. But not so when you entangle your life with orgs and missions and people—good leadership asks for more, in every sense: others look at you for direction, for mentorship, for hope, for confidence. That is not a problem. It’s just this crazy buffon inside me complicates the situation: you are doing what it takes to perform the role of a Serious Leader™—deeply concerned about editorial ethics —and hours later, your mind is wondering who will spill the tea about industry drama, or which B-Town power couple is secretly breaking up this week. (Curse those who dare fact-check the goss and ruin it for me, because I don't need this information to be accurate—all I need it to be juicy.)

I actually just find this fascinating: there is this world in my head only I can access—my world, my narrative, my aesthetic. All the stuff that gets edited out of narrativised adult friendship catch-ups. The world remains hooked on dramatic conversations and meaningful glances, while real life happens in the T-shirt anxieties, late-night coffees, mindless crushes and fucked up gossip. In the deleted scenes that make up most of our days.