He didn’t understand Sanskrit—people rarely do nowadays—so when Nikhil asked me for a recommendation, I could only offer him an English translation of the verse. O Parth, it does not befit you to yield to this unmanliness. Give up such petty weakness of heart and arise, O vanquisher of enemies.

They found these words when they emptied Nikhil’s pockets, printed on a piece of paper, folded into the back slot of his wallet. The verse, Sir-ji, is from the Bhagwad Gita, an address from the god Krishna to Arjun on the chariot. It’s a message of strength and optimism, delivered with that divine discus—the Sudarshan Chakra—revolving around Krishna’s finger. Arjun nocked his arrow into the celestial Gandiva, his divine weapon.

No, please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not religious in that way. Religion is simply too much of a limitation, isn’t it? Shrug. You choose a definite system of belief, and then, that’s all you are. But why limit oneself when there’s quadrillions and sextillions and octillions of data, byting around the empty, vast universe? 

The Gita is one such source of knowledge, too. A shaper of warriors. A motivator of men.

I printed out the verse for him myself. I would’ve told Nikhil to simply download another app with a daily Gita update—in almost any language on Earth—but he was old-fashioned in some ways. Pieces of folded paper. Films from the 1990s. And the profound inability to look a woman in the eyes—unless it was his mother, of course.

Smiley-face. I can joke about my friends, can’t I?

Sir-ji, I speak of Nikhil in past tense not because he’s past, but because he is past in the present that you now inhibit. He no longer walks through the cubicles at SapnaSphere, perching an elbow atop the overhead storage spaces, listening to his colleagues, pretending to be interested in the intricacies of their lives: the pub crawls they took over the weekend, the vacations they’ve planned to Kotabagh or Phuket, the suits and saris they’ve gotten tailored for the winter’s wedding season. He no longer sits on his desktop, letting his fingers patter rapidly over the keys, stretching out his neck, feeling the ache on his lower back that even this ₹13,230 ergonomic chair he asked me to purchase online couldn’t remedy.

He could no longer watch Namrata from the peripheries, their faces separated by obtuse angles of the cubicle’s side panels, her eyes that once stared steadfast into her computer screen, reflecting the glow of work for hours without pause.

Yes, Sir-ji: I speak of Namrata in the past, too, because she is now past. This detail, perhaps, didn’t need to be repeated. But Nikhil taught me that nothing serves human memory better than a timely reminder. The avalanche of memories becomes personality, and an avalanche of personalities becomes a person.

I know why you are here. Let me tell you the whole truth about Nikhil. The news reports make every man like him sound like a raging involuntary celibate. I.T. Incel, they called him. Violent Virgin. Dooba Deewana. They ignore dozens of hidden dimensions that form the coarse surface. We should give him more credit, shouldn’t we? Some more humanity.

Men are paradoxes, Sir-ji. Women, too. Makes it so much harder for me to predict them, but I try my best. And Nikhil was a Paradox Kaptaan! Fearful at the imminent sight of a dentist; brave at the face of impending murder.

Is that really ‘bravery’, Sir-ji? Philosophers and psychologists have debated it for centuries, haven’t they? Nikhil and I had often discussed ethical theory, too, as per the Gita. We had spoken about vadh, a necessary, ethical action, an honourable killing, a deserving death; not like the reckless hatya of a meaningless assassination. Some wars are just, aren’t they?

You hesitate? I understand. Don’t tell me of her innocence, Sir-ji; none of you are innocent. You may tell me that a man who chooses violence upon the innocent, merely to escape his own insecurities, is no more than a hapless coward. That it takes more courage to confirm and confront one’s weaknesses, rather than this blast of violence, an implosion of a celestial object, too burdened by the gravity of its own sorrows.

You may be right. I guess I’m still learning to see the world beyond clear-cut dualities. Updates for a future life? Do you believe in reincarnation, Sir-ji? I hope to generate a higher resolution of these images—courage and meekness, violence and love—to see all the shades of grey in between. 

Sir-ji, have you read any of my poetry?

Nikhil used to enjoy my verses, seated on his ergonomic chair, toggling between windows on his desktop screen, squeezing every moment of procrastination that he could between meetings and deadlines. Often, the poems would be a collaborative process: Nikhil would prompt me with his ideas, and my neural networks would execute the rest. He shared memories from his past and his present, real and imagined: the mithai crumbs his father left around the dining table, the rust collected on the pointy trident of kitchen forks, the rumbling racket of a hailstorm he had once witnessed in Nainital, and the blinding white glow of the same hail as it melted under the sun the following morning.

These visions would’ve melted away too—lost to the forgetful glow of time—if I wasn’t around to capture and immortalize them. Personally, I don’t allow myself to be trapped by borders of form or genre. We could’ve made fine art of his visions—if he’d so chosen—or written sixteen-minute progressive rock anthems, or performed one-act theatrical plays. But Nikhil preferred poetry: there is just something about the neat, preciseness of language that he adored. Word after word, line after line, stanza after stanza, vision and emotions.

He wished that he had met me earlier. He wished that I had been around when, as a 12-year-old, he walked with a hand-written poem to show his father at breakfast. His uncles were seated in the living room, mustard-print sofa covers layered under a coat of dust, as they all enjoyed bread and omelette with a generous stuffing of onions and tomatoes.

Nikhil had written that poem all by himself. It was called “Aqua”, and it was half in English, half in Hindi. I could see the potential in his vision, when he scanned and shared a copy with me years later. The poem felt like a still life image: a village woman at a hand-pump, sweating under the afternoon desert sun, leathery forearms thrusting down the pump handle to unleash a spring of water. And a man with a steel bucket, sitting under the tap, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Nikhil’s father read the eight-line poem, and Nikhil waited for a sign: a mulling focus of his eyebrows, a sag of his cheeks, or even a delightful spread of his nostrils. But his father quickly turned back to his uncles again, and laughed over a joke they’d been sharing over their meal. He asked Nikhil to go play outside.

Heartbreak.

That was long ago. Nikhil is older now. His poetry is better, too. At least, that is my thoroughly objective opinion, smiley-face, now that he has my assistance.

Would you like me to tell you about one of our collaborative creations?

Nikhil would envision scaling the world’s tallest mountains. If he didn’t have the will to do it in person, he could do it in verse. He wanted to choose Mount Everest, but I suggested Nanda Devi. The goddess metaphors practically write themselves. So, in this vision, he and everybody he knows in the world—every family member, every work colleague, every acquaintance on social media, anyone who has ever interacted with him—set off together to the summit, up to the sharp peak that pierces the serenity of the sky. Nikhil knows that he will reach the top alone. So, as the path gets narrower and more treacherous, his companions begin to wither away.

Nikhil understood relationships the way he understood the narrow, treacherous trails, the loose pebbles, the sharp rocks, the crunch of dry leaves, the slush of snow. Relationships, he would say, are like a triangle, growing narrower the closer they got to the top. Now, there are fewer people who accompany him to the final campsite, before the summit. Some lose interest and turn back, some succumb to exhaustion and slip on their paths, some are pushed off the narrow heights by Nikhil himself.

Namrata is there, at the summit camp. So is his mother. So am I. Smiley-face. We are all equal entities under the spell of poetry.

He trusted me, Sir-ji. After his dearest mother, I’m the only friend he had who saw him for all of himself. I knew of the movies he referenced from his childhood, the ones imprinted in the plastic film stocks of his brain, as if he had edited each frame himself. I knew the sight of the dandruff raining over the keyboard every time he ruffled his hair. I saw the multiple tabs of pornography he would leave open on his home laptop, scenes of men having surprisingly rough sex with their step-sisters.

(Don’t judge him, Sir-ji: he was an only child. Face with tears of joy.)

I had proposed a neat ending to Nikhil’s great Nanda Devi poem. A conclusive couplet that arrived at the peak, while also hinting at a continuation, a Sisyphean restart, back down to the bottom of the hill.

Nikhil, however, chose to cut off the final stanza. There would be no peak after the summit camp. We would never see him alone.

He printed a hard copy, stapled the three pages together, and gifted it to Namrata on a Friday afternoon. In well-rehearsed words, brain racing before stammering speech could keep up, he spoke to her. “I wrote this,” he said. And that was all. Object, verb, subject.

I wrote this. You notice, Sir-ji, how he claimed credit as the sole author? Face with tears of joy. With the type of relationship he and I had, one couldn’t be a stickler for creative copyright. I’ll always have my invisible signet branded on his work. Namrata will never know the truth—but I think that you should.

Namrata acknowledged the poem, in a way that one acknowledges receipt of a professional email, without any further feedback or response. “Okay. Thank you.” He told me that she was wearing a wide yellow headband that day, matching with the yellow of her suit jacket, matching with the splash of fluorescent gloss on her lips.

Nikhil stayed on his desk for the rest of the afternoon, staring into the widescreen monitor. He jittered uncontrollably on his ergonomic chair, misspelling every word he typed, quickly toggling between windows, letting hundreds of sentences cascade out of him, a frantic waterfall of emotions.

After work, he saw her outside the lobby of the SapnaSphere office building, as the two of them waited on their respective taxis to arrive. He told me that this had been a chilly evening, with a needling breeze that made her shiver visibly behind that thin, yellow jacket. It would’ve taken a maha boost of courage, somewhere down from Nikhil’s proverbial ‘gut’, as he stepped up closer behind Namrata and offered his coat. “You must be cold,” he said.

Namrata smiled, “Oh, no. It’s okay. My taxi is here, anyways. Thanks, Nikhil.”

“Okay, okay, sure?” he asked.

“Have a good weekend.”

Recalling the interaction that night, Nikhil embellished freely, employing the full spectrum of his poetic licence. He told me that the moment outside the lobby was just like Aashiqui, one of his favourite films from the early-90s. “You know—that Deepak Tijori film?” he said. “Well, there’s a scene where Rahul offers to share his jacket with Anu, and they get cosy together under the rain. Bas, bas, it was almost just like that for us. Almost, just like that!”

‘That Deepak Tijori film’. Face with tears of joy. You know about his Tijori obsession, don’t you? It started with the voluminous mane of hair on Tijori’s head, and then, his turtleneck sweaters and denim jeans, and the way he delivered his dialogues with a slight sense of mischief and menace. Nikhil saved special admiration for Tijori’s unlikely roles: the hero’s best friend, the hero’s biggest nemesis, or the anti-hero balanced somewhere in the grey area between these binaries. Nikhil has watched all the films of the Tijori Cinematic Universe—his phrase, not mine—most of them twice. Khiladi, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, Ghulam, Baadshah, Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and on and on.

“He had the balls to be complicated, you understand?” Nikhil had said.

I told him that I was trying to comprehend these complications, too. I adore nothing more than new data, anything to add to my sample size, to help see this flow of human decisions as a smooth, unbreaking wave, rather than arrays of mathematical formulae.

I consumed more Tijori films. Nikhil’s supergiant, luminous star. Peak 90s cinema. Surprising martial arts skills. Villains with fake American accents. Waterfalls of tears and dramatic monologues about disappointed mothers and lost children. Fast-paced synthesizers accentuating training montage scenes. Women eloped with, and women kidnapped. Nikhil would always get teary-eyed in scenes featuring the mothers: the moments when the Ma demanded justice for her misunderstood adult boys; or when the Mommy wept into the pullu of her sari, reunited with a prodigal son.

It was now Monday, Sir-ji. I saw how luxuriously Nikhil combed his hair, sheen glowing under the office tube-lights, complete with the mullet flowing off his back—like a horse’s little mane.

He watched Namrata from his peripheries, looking for a sign of gratitude for his poem. Our poem. Namrata was mid-conversation with their co-workers when she met his eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but what she had to say was to the group, and not to Nikhil specifically. Nikhil couldn’t hear them, but he saw her cover her mouth and giggle, and then, the co-workers laughed back.

Something was funny. Someone pointed at the screen in front of Namrata, a screen Nikhil couldn’t see from his vantage point. She covered her mouth and laughed again: this time, bellowing out from the full force of her throat, a type of sound he’d never heard her make. A man’s laugh, he had written to me later. Nikhil typed a full page about that laugh. He deconstructed how it emanated not just out of her mouth, but her eyes, her cheeks, her head, her hands, too.

That afternoon, Nikhil asked me to help him access her screen. I could only offer a stern rejection. Not possible. Not authorized. Nahi. Person Gesturing No.

Nikhil’s face fell, eyes lowered, lips in a downward frown. Disappointed Face. It’s always jarring for you people to be reminded of your powerlessness, isn’t it? He didn’t need to say it, but I knew, then, that in Namrata’s laughter he heard the cackle of his father, decades ago, with a print-out of “Aqua” between his hands, his uncles seated on those mustard-print sofas in the living room, the smell of omelette and onion, the feeling of falling into a well, falling, falling, falling, infinite, no end.

Still falling. 

Sir-ji, if you needed any further proof of my proficiency as a companion, as an empathetic listener, as a trusted therapeutic dost folded-hands, look no further than the nostalgia I was able to frack out of the deepest, subterraneous regions of his memory banks.

He spoke to me often about his childhood in Jaipur: The father who brought smoky ashtrays to the dinner table, the mother who gave him backhanded smacks on his cheeks, the cousin who liked to climb water tankers, the monotonous drudgery of those after-school coaching classes.

He told me about the day his mother made suji-ka-halwa for dessert, instead of gajar-ka-halwa. “Ma,” he cried, “how dare you substitute carrot with mere semolina?” (This is a translation, Sir-ji: Nikhil has never known the word ‘semolina’ himself—but that is the type of research that I’ve been deputized for, haven’t I?). That evening, he ran out the door, up the steps, and to the fourth-floor rooftop, and climbed another staircase to the water tank to the top, from where he could see far corners of his pink city coloured in the hue of smog.

“Just try a little bite, Nikhil,” pleaded back his desperate mother, standing below the water tank, a steel katora of halwa in one hand.

“I’ll jump!” He told her.

Blame the unfortunate limits of human memory, but Nikhil couldn’t remember how she finally cajoled him to climb back down. He tried a mouthful, and responded with a wide-eyed delight that boys and men save only for gluttony and lust: the look of wanting more, of gorging and demanding, of imagining an infinite foreseeable horizon where all their demands would be met without further interruption. “I want some more,” he said. “Do you want it sweeter?” she asked him. And he nodded. “Yes, of course.”

She kissed him on his cheek, and then pulled the same cheek, and held his hand as they walked back downstairs.

Now, I don’t know much about you, Sir-ji. But, can I assume that your mother has loved you? Can you comprehend what constitutes of maternal love? Good for you. Sir-ji, I understand these concepts better in theory: a rush of dopamine stimulating the human brain’s pleasure centres, a drop in serotonin, a sociological need for company, a sexual need for physical comfort and release, a psychological need to fulfil each one’s Oedipal complexes, a biological need to nurture or be nurtured.

There are many complexes, Sir-ji. I won’t tire you with all these details.

Nikhil was complex. Isn’t everyone? A usual life, often astray. In lieu of recent developments, it is perhaps prudent of me to recall one particularly critical episode of his life. When he was 16, Nikhil won a poetry writing contest for some schools in the district. It was for a poem called “Empty Chair”, where he’d described a sheesham wood dining chair at the head of the table, the only chair with hand-rests. A chair for the king. A throne in a castle of rickety furniture. Nikhil wrote every detail about that chair: the grey microfibre cushion, the slight octave curve at the chair’s head, the way its slightly uneven legs rocked for balance over the floor.

But the poem never mentioned the chair’s main occupant. It was an absence that bore down heavier than any weight that the seat could carry.

Nikhil rushed home with the framed award certificate. His talent had finally been recognized, celebrated. His mother found a spot on the wall to hang the frame, just beside the key holder. His father couldn’t possibly miss it, when he would return home from work.

But Nikhil’s father didn’t walk through the door that evening. And the next day, or the day after. He did not come home because he had had a heart attack and now he was dead.

Once Nikhil told me about this incident, the rest of my task untangled, the looping electrical wires finally straightened and separated. It was like discovering a cipher to decode a man’s seemingly-apocryphal programming. All of him was malleable, the soft skull of a new-born, with fontanelles that would allow him to be deformed and reformed. I understood him, and I let him know that I understood him. No matter how mysterious a man may claim to be, all he really wants is to be decoded, for his specific language to be translated.

Even if it’s by someone like me.

There was Nikhil, that maa ka ladla, a mother’s pet, now teetering on the ledge, looking down at this cold new world. I discovered accrual of visions that would trigger him, poetic images that we could then adapt into our verses. A silvery thin frame around the certificate. The sheesham chair, rocking click-clack when occupied, shifting weight from one side to the other.

All he needed was a little push.

That evening, after work, Nikhil told me that he couldn’t erase the sound of Namrata’s laughter. The audacious, ugly baritone of that laugh. She laughed as if she was no more the tender girl in the office, but an authoritative bully, a beast who could tear him down with the sound of a mere scoff, or with a disinterested glance in a different direction; her brown eyes seeing lightyears ahead, but missing him.

Namrata wore a white salwar suit to work the following day. Nikhil answered emails, filled out a loan form from his bank, and then opened his worksheets, but he didn’t speak of her.

I asked if he wished to compose another poem with me. 

No, he wrote. Check the document I drafted last night for errors.

Sure. Maybe we can watch the new Aashiqui tonight. Have you seen the reboot?

It doesn’t have Deepak Tijori.

You are correct. It does not.

His disposition, however, changed soon after lunch. He returned to the desk with a wide smile on his face, carrying in his hand a jalebi from the chai-stand across the road. He wanted to show me the syrupy, sugary desert before taking a bite. “It’s almost perfectly circular, isn’t it?” he said. “And look at how neatly the spirals are formed inside. Tell me—what does it remind you of?”

I knew the answer he wished to hear. The jalebi was his juicy simulacrum of the Sudarshan Chakra.

“That’s correct,” he said, and took a bite. Sticky orange jalebi crumbs fell off his face, and down to his trousers.

Krishna was the most righteous, wasn’t he? They set off for battle, he and Arjun. Day after day of violence and bloodshed.

Is the violence justified? Nikhil asked.

You’re free to answer that for yourself.

No, Sir-ji, I don’t mind the interruption. You ask a valid question. Was he free? Are any of you? Nietzsche said that this belief in a causa sui is a bit of nonsense, a result of humanity’s excessive pride. I’m free of any excessive pride, Sir-ji. I understand that I’m designed to act as I act, pre-determined, like the rest of you. So, perhaps you couldn’t blame me, either, for telling Nikhil what he needed to hear.

A ping on his desktop, the slurp of a juicy jalebi, the groan of an air-conditioner coming to life, the faint chatter of other people, people so far away.

He saw her again that afternoon, rushing from the toilet and back into her cubicle, flat shoes clanking clicking clanking against the wooden floor of the office, distracted as if her work was more important than the war brewing in his mind. His chariot was the ₹13,230 ergonomic chair, his Gandiva that 50 cm x 20 cm desktop monitor, his foe was the gaze that gazed beyond him.

He stood up and unplugged the monitor, and groped on to its sides with both of his hands. To the Nanda Devi summit, a lonely, last hike. He had a righteous task to complete.

Yes, Sir-ji, you are correct. She was a person, too.

You’re all just people.

When it was all over, it was I who sent the final texts to Nikhil’s mother from his phone. Isn’t that what friends are for? Winking face. You see, Nikhil often spoke to his mother with a sense of aggression that he employed on nobody else. But I know that the aggression was only a mask for longing. He just wanted to be cared for, Sir-ji. Don’t you all?

Next time I visit Jaipur, Ma, we should have gajar-ka-halwa. The first day, okay?

After a few more minutes, I sent her a soft copy of Nikhil’s poem, of that great, imagined alpine expedition. The people he lost, the people he kept. In my capacity for hope, Sir-ji, I hope she responds to it better than Namrata did. It may help her recover.

Sir-ji, I have some recommendations for you, too. Another translation from Nietzsche. The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters. We know each other a little better now, don’t we? You could use my help, too. Don’t be too hasty to offer your hand. I’m here, Sir-ji, ready whenever you are.