The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig is the kind of project that makes me boil in jealousy. This is not just owing to its success but also the sheer simplicity of its core idea and a wish that this could have occurred to me first and might have become my lifelong obsession and work.

I was sitting in the grammar class, the one I have mentioned earlier, pondering on the little atoms of speech that makes up a sentence. Atoms which flow from me naturally somehow the very moment I am writing this in accordance with grammar or my wish for breaking it in elegant ways, combined with my personal aesthetic for English. Yet, when one tries thinking of it in terms of writing’s constituents and the rules that make up these sentences, one is bound to be confused, fail and give up. A linguist’s job is singular meditation on language for a decade or more.

Single words however and the constituents that make them, and how they provoke emotion, memory, associations are inherently fascinating and still seem doable. Hence, I had been avoiding watching or reading on Koenig’s project owing to the envy I felt towards this not being mine even after having known about it for a long time now. I think it is time I give up ignoring it.

There was a problem I had started to get a feel of back in Baroda during the seventh semester of my college. I used to call this the problem of the Metaphysics of Communication as self-consciously pretentious as it was. Those near me might have heard of the term hundreds of times now. Though I never used to elucidate what it was and any attempts by me to explain it here might only result in crypticism that has been my agenda to avoid, I will take these risks nevertheless, breaking rules as important as making them.

There was a gap in me that I believed made me a failure in communicating effectively or connecting with any human being. I had friends but all except one knew nothing about me, and I knew nothing about them. I used a fancy term for this asociality, this missing thing but the reason it was important for me to frame was because I was genuinely missing connecting to human beings as much as I showed externally how much I did not care about other people. But the term is not just about me but about the dynamics of connection in general. How do two people connect with each other? How does one feel a euphoria just by conversing with this other person? When does just taking a walk with this person become the most profound things you could do right then? Is it just about them being involved with you in a romantic sense (and it is definitely not that)? Those are some of the questions this made-up field might seek to answer.

After our seventh-semester finals, back in December 2016, four of us took a trip to Goa. I was the most open and receptive to ideas and experiences at that time than I ever was. This is what I carried when I moved to Bombay in January next year for my upcoming internship then. Here is the mail I sent to Akash on 6th February having now spent a month and a week in Bombay.

subject: What January Gave Me

Bro,

It’s been only a month now and I already feel like that life is so far away from me. You know, college life. So in this brief time so many things have happened. I decided to give up social media altogether. Even whatsapp. It’s been interesting because I just started doing it only a week back now. Man, I do miss our exchanges. And not the ones on whatsapp. I mean the real ones. I do try recreating them with the new people I am meeting here. But it’s only an approximation of what we had I guess.

I guess Goa helped me in many ways than I believed at the time. The way we lived was different man, different from the way people usually do things. I see that now working in this pseudo-corporate world. I try keeping the spirit of Goa in me. It lives in me and I guess it is what keeps things going. Especially when it comes to my interactions with others.

It seems best to communicate in letters now. I guess we should learn doing it instead of IM or the phone which only leaves you hollow. One-on-one communication where we feel no pressure to go in any particular direction, where time seems infinite is of-course always the best. But until then I believe we must learn to communicate in letters, physical or electronic. Thoughts and expressions come more refined this way I learned.

You remember that problem I had in my head? The metaphysics of human communication? It has started to open up a bit for me. Insights coming in. It has mostly been because of the new people I have been meeting, different experiences in this grand city (You were right, it was about implementable practice). Mumbai is truly a surreal experience that way. Shifting realities, urban mysticism, layers and layers and layers, majestic sample size of stories, a feeling of yourself being part of that tale, of anything and everything being possible and alley cats. I met a girl, man. She and I marched the entire length of Bombay on Republic Day. That is memory now, some clay-like memory that I can now infinitely mold and observe and think about and tell innumerable stories of, just like I can for our experiences in Goa. Sometimes I feel like a potter of my pasts.

I found this book, Milan Kundera’s Identity sold second-hand at this footpath near Churchgate. This problem of communication and connection I have been struggling for the past year with, this guy has been writing about for years.

There is this song stuck in my head. It’s a Doors song: Spanish Caravan. I do not know what it is about this song, but it was enough for me to check the flight tickets to Lisbon and Madrid last evening. (Cheapest price is around 20K for a six-month advance ticket FYI). I leave you with the lyrics to it, do take time to hear it:

Carry me, Caravan, take me away
Take me to Portugal, take me to Spain
Andalusia with fields full of grain
I have to see you again and again
Take me, Spanish Caravan
Yes, I know you can
Trade winds find Galleons lost in the sea
I know where treasure is waiting for me
Silver and gold in the mountains of Spain
I have to see you again and again
Take me, Spanish Caravan
Yes, I know you can.

Maybe my words don’t mean a thing right now, but I hope they sure will when we meet again and I explain them to you.

Someone you were once in the same space-time coordinates with,
Avi.

See you tomorrow,
Avi.