Pink Nirvana Sweatshirt

By Shrayansh Chopada

It was sometime in the first week of October, when the eager cold of the coming months rubs itself against you from time to time. Luckily, it was one of those nights.

That Sunday started like any other. Waking up in the early afternoon, the house was already on its toes with all kinds of familiar sounds. Rigorous clicking of a lighter against the gas stove, the maid whipping a damp cloth onto the floor, and my 11 month old nephew chasing her on all fours. Servings of morning confectioneries and hissing of hot tea made its way straight up to my room, where if one walked in at just the right time, would find me spread apart on the bed in my underwear, limbs reaching for every corner and half a butt hanging out like I’m about to do some very ungodly but enticing things. Enticing to only the ones that lack a certain sickness in life. I know my crowd.

In a daze I wake up, trying to piece the daylight together and dress while doing so.This is all I give myself in the name of meditation, these few moments between an unconscious state of mind and real life. This kind of meditation is very addictive.

Almost zombie like, I make my way downstairs with half a bottle of water and a sense of impending doom, which is a sentiment I often find myself to take solace in. Chaos is very welcoming. There is a liveliness to it that makes up for a lack of mine, and a tone that is at par with my mental noise. Almost makes me want to go back to sleep. But no, there was something after sundown that I was looking forward to and it usually takes me till then to get out of this zombie trance and gain a functional amount of awareness. That, or getting slapped in the face by a gay midget, but that’s a story for another time.

Now it’s half past six, the sky is a heavier shade of pink, waiting to get darker and me getting more and more anxious by the second. I have a date.

I’ve known this girl for two days, spoken to her for one night, call it dumb luck or the start of a long demented plan by the God of wisdom, I was about to have the most interesting date of my life.

When I say interesting, I don’t mean like the time when I was using a dating app and matched with a forty year old woman in, apparently, a toxic marriage with kids who hate her and is trying to revive her love life. Which is something every twenty year old boy has been hardwired to find attractive. But when I showed up on that date, I was jumped by three scruffy, stinking men in their late twenties trying to juice out some drug money. This is partly on me, I should have figured it out when “she” asked me to meet “her” at a service road off a highway deep into the outskirts at 2 AM. I was twenty, can you blame me? I didn’t have much money on me, I figured, she’s forty, so she’s bound to have some cash lying around. I did have some drugs though, so we ended up having a good time. Anyway, I digress.

When I say interesting, I mean the conversation. I mean the way she carried herself, the way she walked like she knows every eye that catches her, lingers for a second more than it would for anyone else. The way she was conscious about her hair and how it curls up over the sides of her face, the way she smiled teasing the smallest of dimples you couldn’t help but fixate on. She knew what she was doing, but at the same time she was so charmingly unaware. And she spoke with such grace, every word she said had delicate and intentional thought behind it. She was careful with her language, consumed herself with ideas greater than her, and just like that, with every passing minute she became greater than who she was a minute ago. We shared thoughts about everything that came up, every little detail of the human mind we could fathom in those two and a half hours, and there was plenty more.

I feel incapable of going into detail, and it’s not that I don’t remember. I have a finger on every word that came out of her and every word I replied back with to try and match her allure, no doubt I failed. But it’s all just blurred into the background by the image of when I first saw her, in a pink Nirvana sweatshirt bright enough to stand out in a sea of cotton candy and the cutest pair of glasses I’ve ever seen. Walking down the street with that beguiling smile. Suddenly I wasn’t anxious anymore.

It’s Monday, 1:00 AM now, 4 hours after the date. I am wiser than I was yesterday.

Read The Complete Writing

By Shrayansh Chopada