Letting go of it all

182 | Dindigul, India | On my new and dismantled life

I spend countless evenings in restaurants just like this one in Tamil Nadu

There is always a conversation to be had when eating out, and I often eat out. The stream of small talk runs dry damn fast, like a candle burning instantly to the wick, so to avoid repetition I sometimes sit with the solitary types, the loners, the people who look like they’ve had one hell of a day and are spent. A few weeks ago I had an evening where I needed solitary time so I found a man who gave off no indication of wanting to learn from the world. From a distance, the man was my ideal companion: the vibe of an introverted library clerk, thick glasses distorting his face and his middle-aged shoulders hunched as if hiding from himself.

We ate in silence, like an elderly couple gone deaf. When I was leaving he looked up and apologised for not being chatty. I told him it’s fine, and that I had sat next to him because I thought we could eat without talking. He smiled and then told his story.

The man said he was getting angry at work, he couldn’t hold his temper. As he spoke, his shoulders hunched further as if suppressing a deep pit of shame. Things were not great with his wife, either. He had become unpredictable, there was no space between his thoughts and his actions. I asked why things had deteriorated, and he said he couldn’t sleep for more than three hours because he was working, often to midnight, and then from four in the morning(!!).

Work, I diagnosed without difficulty, was ruining his life. But without it he would have no identity, he would be empty and without purpose.

Our conversation continued. Then, with a smirk which betrayed his pride, as if he pulled a Get Out Of Jail Free card, as if instantly excused from being a bastard, he said, “I’m a founder.”

A founder! And that smirk! His whole life ruined for the sake of some business, some hobby? His wife distraught, his colleagues embittered, his sleep disturbed, all because he doesn’t want to slow down, or delegate, or reassess his priorities? I held my tongue.

And then I realised: Shit, I am just like this guy! I am looking into a mirror. Funny how the universe gives you case studies which reveal us to ourselves. I, too, would carry on about how work was throwing me off balance, and then, as if saved by some life-raft of ego, I would trumpet I Am A Founder, or, if I was feeling continental, an Entrepreneur and, later, a Writer. With the wave of my egoic wand, I would transform from some empty worthless being, to a Man of Substance; a real Somebody who is busy enough to matter. Each identity was a label, each a mask, a role played. And each bundled up with boilerplate stories I told at dinner parties or over coffee in Camberwell.

And now — tragically — all these identities are totally useless when I’m walking around Kodaikanal or Nagal Nagar. Nobody here cares!

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Whist I’ve never been a hoarder, I had held on to mementos and memories, each representing a bit of my past, and each, I presumed, a piece of me. But eight months on and off a bicycle has made me realise all that stuff wasn't me, and didn’t represent me any more than my trousers are my legs.

I was once certain I needed boxes of stuff, cupboards filled, drawers heavy: dinner jackets, wellington boots, an ornamental salad bowl, a chess board. Now I don't need very much of anything. Spare inner tubes will do. You see, everything I own is heaped on the faux-marbled floor on the other side of this budget hotel room. A high-visibility vest, a bucket hat, my passport, a tent untouched since Oman, a waterproof coat not needed since Albania, and a copy of The Alchemist. It only takes up one small corner, twenty six kilograms in all.

My physical belongings were easy to let go of. More complicated, heart wrenching and destabilising has been surrendering the tight fitting identities I’ve worn for the last few years. Anyone who gives up one life to begin another experiences this: a one-way process of absolute deconstruction. It sounds dramatic yet it feels true. To go away for over half a year, I dismantled my life. First was giving up work, which as I said, I identified with entirely. Then, less obviously, I let go of my ambitions about work. Then, ironically after hiring a writing coach, my ambitions about writing also faded.

Spending time with myself, being far from home, and always surrounded by people with different life experiences makes me see the stories I held on to before have no value in new contexts. The stories — identities — are context-dependent, just as a Brahmin would hold no sway in Stoke Newington the labels I treasured hold no sway here.

I spent a busy decade shaping my identity, like some restless brand manager. And when one brand flopped (which it often has), I grasped at some new story to hang my "I" on, always filling the gap left by one identity and hunting for the next. I was in real estate, a ‘real estate bro’, then a founder (tech bro). But now that I can't be an entrepreneur… I'll be a writer. If not a writer, then a yogi? If not a yogi… where does this all end?