It’s late night. Probably the best time to write about him. I see his books on my study table. He’s surely a night person, I tell myself. But he is not. I know that from memory, his interviews, all telling a different story. Memory defeats perception.
He is an early riser, writes till afternoon. He runs. It makes him more disciplined, he says. I stare at my own lack of discipline with disgust. I will never be like him. But no one can be like him, or for that matter any other person. Everyone is unique. We are all separate entities. It is precisely why his characters bother me. They seep into me. I become them, they become me.
His language is simple. He catches you off balance, trembling, weak. The words look back at you, mapping your fragile self. Maybe that is why some people find him difficult.
They are hardly heroic, his characters, nor do they fit in the mould of an anti-hero. He sketches shades of grey which are difficult to judge, impossible to categorize. His wisdom cannot be summarized in a proverb or a quote, yet it never fails to be profound.
It’s always a journey. A journey to somewhere, yet nowhere in particular. But no matter wherever he takes you, you end up going deep, very deep into yourself.
Often, there is sadness on the pages. The emotions about to implode. There’s emptiness too, liberally poured all over it. The protagonists are searching for someone, their own selves in most cases. People like to drown in this world. It’s fruitful, drowning, within yourself.
His world is marked by the lack of a structured world. Or to put it more precisely, there are worlds, intermingling, touching, and fusing. Then there are aphysical spaces, product of someone’s unconscious imagination, trapping people and places in spacelessness.
Then there is friendship, love, often both. You pick it up when you are sad. It may not uplift or inspire you. But it becomes part of you. Maybe it’s cathartic, maybe it isn’t. I am still unsure about that.
When our worlds merge, on a night like this, it creates a whole universe. This is the best place to rediscover pieces of myself, long lost or intentionally hidden. I continue to suffer from my own existential crisis. But with him around, it’s less lonely. I find people with similar internal wounds and we heal together. I keep reading, waiting for the day I undertake my own journey of discovery. Then, maybe, this is that journey.
