Old Sepia Pages

11. fake

7th august, wednesday, 2019

dear diary,

Today I went to Jama Masjid with the fakest person I've ever met.

We came out of college and this girl from my class — Meera⁠— proposed going to that far off ⁠place just to buy a textbook because books are cheaper there and are sold by the kilo. I said that I didn't have the money, so she said that she would pay for me. I agreed. I don't know why I did, despite feeling feverish. But okay.

In the auto, without me asking for her introduction, she started talking about how rich her family is, and that her dad is among the top 500 businessmen of India, and how she got a credit card when she was very young, and how she gave a loan of Rs. 2 lakhs to her boyfriend and then he broke up with her. It didn't feel like she was showing off, honestly, it just felt like she felt isolated because no one from our class is of her 'type' and she thought I was, and so she was confiding in me. She said that she finds Anshula from our class 'fake' and she provided no reason for saying so. I quite like Anshula, but I didn't say anything.

We reached the place. It was beautiful, of course, but the streets were narrow and polluted, and that was hurting my throat and making me cough. I had to pinch my nose to not inhale that. And then there was the crowd. Just outside the metro station, the road was lined with shops on both sides, and the narrow space left in the middle was occupied by pedestrians, goats and rikshaws. I wasn't feeling good, and so I said that I wanted to go back, and that I would buy the book some other time. But HERE'S THE THING:  I did not have the money to go home.

Saying, "Just five minutes more," in a patronizing way, she led me deeper into the labyrinth of roads. There, after buying the books that we needed, she wanted to get stationery from a shop from which she got 'good vibes' (why didn't she just go to a mall?) and then she got notebooks from a different shop, and then she wanted to try calligraphy pens, and then she took me even deeper to buy a stupid PARTICULARLY DESIGNED rakhi while telling me how sorry she was for causing me all the inconvenience. Yeah, right. Her apology was so visible in her actions. I asked her to lend me Rs. 50 so that I could fucking go home but she said that it wasn't gonna take her long, that she also had to go home quickly, and that we could go together.

Anyway, after the ordeal of shopping with her, she showed her TikTok videos to me in the metro, ignoring my hints of disinterestedness. The volume was loud enough to reach everyone sitting nearby, and when I told her to take it down a notch, she said, "I don't care what people think about me." What the hell? That's a good attitude, bro, but you need to know when to wear it. You can't kill a person and then say that you don't care what others think about you. Just saying.

You know how when you're showing something to a person, you look at their face to see their reaction and later ask them how it was? She didn't. She played the video and gazed at her face on the screen in a self-obsessed way. Halfway through, I stopped watching and looked away, but she didn't notice. Obviously. She didn't care.

Apparently, gaining 47K followers on TikTok is the one and only achievement of her life. It might be something great; it might even be considered 'acting', but I hold it in contempt. God, I couldn't wait to get away from her.

I don't know whether I deserve this college or not, but I hate it. Everyone is stupid here. What else did I expect from a B-grade college? But then maybe I don't deserve better. And perhaps it doesn't even matter, because these days I don't enjoy going out with friends or sitting at home or reading books. I don't wanna stay here and don't wanna go abroad.

Why am I even living? It's clear that there will be a water crisis soon. All of us already have to fight to feed ourselves. The roads are dirty. The air isn't clean. There are so many fake people everywhere. They are concerned about just money. And you can't blame them either, because we need money to live, unfortunately. I hardly see any genuineness anymore. The people that I meet are all the same. There's no one that is unique and will teach me anything. I want to meet someone amazing and be blown away. It's the same old story everyday. It's pretty clear that I won't even get a good job and will have to struggle to support even myself. Thank god I'm not gonna have kids.

Speaking of fakeness, I was thinking about telling people made-up stories about myself to appear cool. I can tell them about a life I wanted to lead in school but never did. They'll see me in a particular way and because I will try to live up to that, I will actually become that. I've done this before too. I guess I care about others' image of me as much as about my image of me, and I strive to reach a balance between that. It's fun to throw around exaggerated versions of my stories and then try to prove them right. I believe that is how The Secret and The Law of Attraction works: you make up something, repeat it to yourself till you believe it, and you start to subconsciously align yourself in the path of receiving it, till what you want comes to you.

❄