A conceited old man, 60-odd years of age, perhaps more, refuses to acknowledge that in the ways of the world, society’s sharp grimaces have deemed him a man who owes no worth to a single existing life. What was it like knowing he could be lived without?
Alone, he grows old in a stifling room with a musty stench and drawn curtains that let no light lose.
Spread unevenly over a stained, blue carpet, is a mattress, on top of which he rests on his side. He measures time with the burn of the cigarette between his fingers to the last drag. He lights another.
Everything near him is positioned within his reach. Ashtray, cigarettes boxes piled in excess, lighters, glasses, and the constantly-inserted-in-the-switch mobile charger. His scowling gaze remains fixated on his phone’s screen watching those silly TikTok videos that make him chuckle like one of them.
In a noisy, significantly populated portion, his family bears his silent but magnanimous burden of presence. Loud-mouthed, he orders dupattay to be wrapped around the heads of the household’s women when he enters. The corners of his mouth stretch in a grin, as his little granddaughters submit their respect by holding the head so low, it could touch his toes.
With a creased forehead, he grimaces at every insignificant detail that meets his eye.
The time ticks slower for his family as his bedtime draws nearer.
A breath of relief is thus drawn, as he disappears into the darkness of his room.
His family pities him silently as a lonely, forgotten man.
He is, indeed, a spent man.
A man who, with false conviction, tells tales of events that never happened, people he claims to have met, wars he has fought afar, accolades that exist in his memory, and, avouches for his unsaid words between cigarette drags, one after the other.
He offers his company a cigarette too.
It amuses people at the start, the length at which he can talk. The beams, however, never take too long to turn into irritable, desperate looks towards the life outside of the room.
Some would call it an escape.
This man is ‘a life that is unlived, rejected, lost…’
Mandir Gali | مندر گلی 