Life's a Pitch

A loose record of a day

On waking up this morning, I saw that Ila had sent a text about a dream she had. Kiese and I were the last professors left and then Hua joined us. I made my drawing of Mbappé: I’ve been making a single drawing, mostly unsuccessful, of his face each morning. Opened Instagram and there was this collage by Bharat Sikka which I quickly took a screenshot of to return to later. See above. I read in the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle about his grandmother, suffering from dementia perhaps, repeating a joke every few minutes: “Life’s a pitch, the old woman said. She couldn’t pronounce her ‘b’s.” Starting next week, I’ll be teaching a writing workshop at Sewanee and am required to offer a craft lecture as a part of my duties; this year I plan to speak on the subject of autofiction and decided that I must, at long last, read Knausgaard. When I was on Instagram earlier, I had seen a post by my friend Ken. It was about the jailed Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya. The doctor was quoted as saying: “This is the last time you will see me… They brought me here to kill me. I do not see myself leaving here alive. This is the end.” There is an action planned on July 15, at noon, local time wherever you are, to appeal for the doctor’s release and medical care. For more details visit the website of Doctors Against Genocide. I dropped off my son at a church where he was learning about the history of the Black community in this town. From there I drove to the bank to deposit a check; I paid for parking and the receipt slipped out of my hand and fell down close to where someone had spat on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to waste the money I had paid and picked up the receipt and displayed it on the dashboard. I came home for a late lunch. How many times do I check social media in a day? I don’t know. Many, many times I idly scroll through other images and reels. There was a reel which showed Abhijeet Dipke from the Cockroach Party prostrating himself at the feet of an officer from the Delhi Police: Dipke was appealing for permission to have a tarpaulin stretched above the heads of the protesting students so that they were sheltered from the rain. Also on Instagram, there was a video of Sonam Wangchuk, who has been on a hunger strike in support of the students since June 28, announcing a peaceful march on July 20. Wangchuk is an activist, an educator, and an engineer responsible for designing the “ice stupas” in Ladakh to help irrigate the region. But life’s a pitch, and this became evident if one read the comments of many people who had written under Wangchuk’s video, accusing him of everything from anti-nationalism to dishonesty and hypocrisy.

I made omelets for lunch, both for myself and my wife. Ra ate the previous day’s leftover food from the Indian restaurant in town. When I checked my email I saw that a friend I admire had resigned from an organization of which I too am a member; my friend is a person of integrity and I felt overwhelmed by a great sense of sadness. I wondered whether what had happened was actually a well-orchestrated ouster by people who under the cover of fine words only want to protect their own tribal interests. Then, it was time for the France-Morocco match. My son Ra and I watched the match together. This is the fragmented collage of a life one leads: one moment you are thinking of genocide in Palestine and feeling helpless over the daily killings by a terror-state, and the next moment you are shouting in joy over the fast running and well-executed kick of a footballing genius named Kylian Mbappé. My wife brought us watermelon pieces to eat. During half-time, I tried to do word puzzles. Last month when I told my doctor that I was having trouble remembering things, she said, Hmmm, maybe you should do new things with your brain? Do you play Wordle? (Wordle? I’m a writer. I puzzle over words all day!) For dinner, I grilled chicken and fried green beans. My wife thought I could also prepare pesto pasta. I did as asked but I scalded my left hand while pouring out the water from the pasta. During dinner, I sat with my hand resting in a bowl of cold water. Later I was walking in my room and thinking about how my day had passed. My friend’s resignation after he protested what he saw as an injustice. I thought of the insulting remarks that my ignorant (and sometimes malicious) compatriots had made about Sonam Wangchuk and the protesters in Delhi. I thought also of Sharjeel Imam, a man born like me in Bihar, someone who used all his wide learning and intelligence, not to build a comfortable life like I had but, instead, devoted himself to the cause of social justice and has now passed six years in jail. How had this ordinary day passed for him in prison? A new day has already begun in India. How will it unfold for many others like him, not least Umar Khalid whose interview was recently published by The Guardian? Instead of writing in my journal, I thought I would make a quick post here. It is 12.22 AM now. I had told myself I would finish this entry at least a minute or two before midnight but it somehow took longer. While writing this I also listened to songs: this song by Bhupinder because it is a song about trying to remember everything.