​The Half-Broken Soap Bar: On the Muscle Memory of Scarcity

 

​A few days ago, my mother visited. I am preparing to leave this city, packing up the life I’ve built here. She picked up a new bar of dish soap, looked at the calendar of my remaining days, and snapped it in two.

​"This should be enough for the time you have left," she said.

​It was a small, practical gesture. But it sent a tectonic shift through my mind.

​I realized then that poverty—or the memory of it—never truly leaves you. It isn’t just a bank balance; it’s a nervous system. It’s a muscle memory that stays tucked away in your subconscious long after you’ve acquired the luxuries you once dreamt of.

​The Ghost of the Electric Rod

​In the quiet of my modern apartment, where hot water flows from a tap 24/7 and food arrives ready-made at a click, I felt a sudden, violent longing for the "uncemented" life.

​I started seeing fragments:

  • ​The ritual of heating bathing water with an electric immersion rod.
  • ​The rough texture of a chauki instead of a mattress.
  • ​Running to the terrace to pull dry clothes from wires tied to naked iron rods.
  • ​The sight of a verandah lined with bare bricks, waiting for a future that hadn't arrived yet.

​In those moments, life was raw. It was manual. It required a specific kind of vigilance.

​The Boredom of Perfection

​People often call me "fluctuant." They say my feet are never in one place, that I am constantly shifting. For a long time, I took that as a critique. But standing there with that half-bar of soap, I realized: I crave the motive that struggle provides.

​There is a strange, hollow boredom in "perfect" living. When every need is anticipated by an app or a service, the "why" of existence begins to blur. I find myself missing the friction. I want to jump a social class through sheer, exhausting hard work—just as my father did.

​I don't want to just be somewhere; I want to reach somewhere.

These are my raw thoughts, the ones I don't rhyme or refine, like in my poems.

​Returning to the Raw

​Maybe I sound like I’m romanticizing the hard times, but it’s more than that. It’s about the rawness of the small town—the places where life isn't polished to a high shine.

​I am leaving the convenience behind because I need to feel the ground again. I need a life that isn't readymade. I want the change, the movement, and the motive. If being "fixed" means being stagnant in perfection, I’d much rather stay fluctuant.

​I’d rather have a life that is broken in half to fit the time I have left, than a whole life that I’m too bored to live.



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