Letter 7

Dear Sec,

I am worried about your mood because I feel it might just get transmitted to me. In any case, you are one of the few people to be aware of my perpetual boredom. And that’s exactly why I get into all the mess with HST folks, for they are bored too. I think we bitch about them because at different points we shared special bonds with them over trivial things.

Actually, the entire world is bored and that’s why we have news channels and reality shows all the time but I will leave that for Rakhi Sawant to judge. By the way, I was thinking of doing a research paper on Karan Johar’s films for my Romanticism core paper- don’t you think that the titles of his films take on Wordsworth in their range of sentimental excess? Do advise me on this.

I have once again started on my habit of reading old chat transcripts. I wish they did not get automatically saved, then I would have no means of retrieving them but of course, that’s the thing about existence. All that you want to be saved never gets saved and all that you would not rather have gets saved.

I do not lie much, so looking up past chats is not a means of self-reminder or anything but it is a means to remind myself of all the kinds of conversations I have already had- ones that I should not repeat and all the same I will. This is a variation on the Sisyphus myth- I choose to repeat things, the notion of free will comes here.

My mind is quite messed right now with a pan-Protestant argument of free will and fore-knowledge at odds with Tralfamadorian sense of time- I have tests on both in a few days.
I sympathize with HST people on this one aspect- they too have endless tests- half-sems, full-sems and so on.

Anyways, coming back to my past chats I have rediscovered Dugald’s history.

Dugald’s onion eyes have remained spectacled for years. I am very fond of bespectacled men but Dugald’s spectacles were obnoxiously over-sized, taking up more space than a pair of spectacles can be allowed in this over populated country. And that is why perhaps Dugald started dreaming of migrating to distant shores which have comparatively lesser population and would easily accommodate his twin eyes.

He thought HST would be the passport to just such a future. Meanwhile Dugald and I shared interest in a certain subject when we were batch mates at a preparatory institution and I was perhaps better than him in the same- so he decided to sit beside me and pinch me through the exam on that paper. Later, when I complained about it to our faculty Dugald said that it was supposed to be “an affair between you and me, why would the faculty interfere?”

No wonder I almost ran away from the affair, or possibilities of it right then and did not bump into Dugald for years till he joined HST. HST-Earth is strategically located close to where I stay and their ever expanding network gets them access to anyone almost through the web. So Dugald sent a wire asking me if I remembered him. Now that is a rhetorical query really because I can never forgive or forget the master-pincher and then, there were his spectacles and onion eyes. So I answered in the affirmative (because I do not lie, remember?)

Since he apologized I forgave him for past wrongs and started on a clean slate and mine was way too clean because I was pissed off with non-HST-ans too back then and so he had a fair chance. Yet he spoiled it with his over enthusiasm and inflammable temper. I can not stand arrogant people, because I am arrogant myself and Dugald knew it. It is his free will that led to his Fall and my foreknowledge of any sane human being’s incompatibility with a HST-an had nothing to do with it. There I rest my case.

By the way, Dugald used to be very good quizzer like most HST-ans but that’s exactly the problem with them. They know a lot but hardly absorb anything. That’s why they succeed in quiz and fail with women. What say girls?

I am trying to do away with HST-bitching syndrome and I hope my story with HST-space shall be a better one. What stories life writes… Do keep writing your name everywhere, that’s the only way to fame and identity.

Love,
Tan