Swallowing Life Pt. I

It's a cloudy, foggy morning in Delhi as Ravi wakes up from his deep slumber and glances at his phone. The clock points at 11:23, usually the time when Ravi should be up and running to class. Ravi unlocks his phone and sees a stream of notifications, text messages from hundreds of groups he is a part of, emails from college professors regarding assignment deadlines and also notifications from his ex-boyfriend which he reads and switches off his LED screen and keeps it aside. He gets up from his bed and draws the curtains of the window, the air is polluted and sick just like his brain and he feels that he does belong in this city. He hasn’t been attending lectures for weeks now and all his assignments are overdue but Ravi takes a deep breath and goes into the kitchen to get a cuppa tea.

While coming into the kitchen he sees a note neatly placed on the kitchen counter. His mom had left for work and had prepared some tea and breakfast for her young lad. Ravi takes a glance at the note, reads the words which have stopped making sense to him, keeps the note aside and puts the bowl of cold Poha into the microwave and presses the 1-minute button. The machine lights up from the inside and the bowl continues to rotate on the glass slab placed in the machine. This minute seems to be the longest minute of the day to Ravi. The spinning motion of the bowl of food inside the microwave seems to put him in a state of trance. The microwave dings signalling that the food is ready and the ding manages to get Ravi back to his current realm. He takes out the bowl and goes into his room along with his tea.

The room is well lit, but the buttons always seemed to be switched off. The bed faces the room door and has a small table to the right and a small cupboard to its left. The room is neither messy nor clean, it seems like no one has inhabited the room for a few months. Ravi comes in with his bowl, draws out his desk chair and sits down. The desk is completely empty, with a wall in front of it that has some post-it notes stuck to it which also seem to be a couple of years old. He turns to his left to look out of the window and sees buildings everywhere, smoke coming out from each residential complex and his own too. It's the winter season in Delhi so frequently, people would be out at night lighting a campfire to soak in the warmth on chilly nights, those fires seem to be finally dying out in the morning.

He muddles around with his spoon in his bowl, he feels no hunger yet his body tells him to swallow the morsels in front of him. The delicious smell flirts with his olfactory senses as he reminisces those days when he would be dying for his mom to make some Poha and finish his serving in a jiffy. He shakes these memories off and starts eating, rather, begins gobbling up his breakfast. His phone makes the notification sound which he can’t stand anymore. He picks it up to see an email from his Head of Department with the subject

Suspension due to Poor Performance

to be continued next week…