On missing cafes, overpriced cappuccinos, and dramatic gestures
I’ve been thinking a lot about cafes. The younger version of myself attempted to emulate things like reading in a cafe, which I thought was so chic, so cool, so grown up. I did become a person who read books in a cafe, to the point of boredom, as routine, as necessity. I made this life happen, I remind myself. I’m now a person who now misses that very much. I miss seeing other people’s clothes — a feeling that Paromita Vohra wrote about so well in one of her exceptional columns — and I miss eavesdropping on conversations. I remembered, the other day, a long-ago evening when I waited for a friend for over an hour in a cafe, while the people at the next table dissected the lives of two acquaintances [which really helped me fill out the backstory to their lives]. I cannot believe I even miss this kind of minor, inconsequential event.
Anyway, the reason I really miss cafes is that I miss escaping into their standard-issue comfort. I stress-eat slices of lemon loaf at Starbucks when I’m abroad, going from meeting to meeting, putting on my best face and then diving straight back into Starbucks for another slice and dissecting every word I said, every idea I wished I’d pitched differently. In Karachi I go to cafes to work, to write, to read, to be somewhere with air-conditioning and plates I don’t have to clear. I miss escaping my head, my desk, my space, for some place else, some other noise, some other person’s drama in the background.
I don’t do very much to self soothe. I usually find it difficult to relax, to find the right space. The sheets are too rumpled, the chair isn’t comfortable, my clothes feel too fussy, too casual, it’s too hot, too cold, everything seems restrictive and oppressive, including the sheet of nearly waist-long hair I have grown — are we a nation of Rapunzels? – and by the time I am done with cleaning the dishes and changing clothes and finding the right playlist and locking up, the night is almost over too. I envy the ease at which others relax, their ability to look comfortable, as if they operate in a cloud of always-clean velour and plush sofas and have a permanently serene expression. I can almost never find the right space. I used to feel comfortable on planes, in socks, a hoodie, a scarf, and an airline blanket, in the chair in a cafe where I could finally become the person my younger self willed into existence, the person drinking coffee and reading a book by herself.
There are no cafes now, nowhere to go to escape my head, my space, my desk, but worse, there is nowhere to escape an overwhelming change of mood, a cloud of emotion that doesn’t lift by just going from one room to another. I miss staying outside to the point of exhaustion, of falling asleep, tired of and by the city. Instead, I reread old books. I finally managed to start knitting again.
A couple of weeks ago, I strained a back muscle, got the flu, and managed to slosh hot joshanda on my hand.
And I began reading A Little Life. I couldn’t remember reviews from when it came out, I didn’t know anything about the plot, I only knew that it was meant to be very good. I’d been planning to listen to the audiobook, which I kept downloading and could never really start.
I began to cry. I put the Kindle down. I focused on knitting a scarf. I picked it up again. For an entire day, I couldn’t stop crying. And I couldn’t stop reading. It is one of the most beautifully devastating things I have ever read. At one point, I had to cover my face with the end of my sari pallu to hide my face from a visitor, a dramatic gesture straight out of a 1970s Indian film, the kind of thing, I’m sure, is what I associated with being an adult but in real life felt like something else altogether.
I don’t know why I cry now at books after a lifetime of almost never crying at books. I don’t know if I like this stage of growing older, of being more aware, of dealing with pain head-on, instead of escaping into a cafe, into work, into a cloud of despair, into a tweetstorm, of being that person who cries over books. I wish I could process this outside, in a cafe, hunched over a laptop, half pretending to write, half listening to everyone else. When all this is over, I’ll go to a cafe. I will order a massive cappuccino. It will taste awful. I will eat slices of cake. I will read and I will be thankful for being an adult, for willing this life into existence, for being able to process at all.