The Capitalist Life

The day at the office had been a tiring one. It seems to have become the norm. And the niggling is still there. Just like a tiny piece of food stuck between your teeth reachable by the tongue but you can’t just get it out. It’s like some version of Chinese torture.

Dropping my bag on the kitchen table, I make my way straight to the beer tap. From beside the tap, I pull out a frosted glass (from the inside) from the refrigerator and put it under the nozzle before turning on the tap. The gurgling sound and the fizz of the beer coming out eases my headache a bit. Closing the tap, I take the first sip of the instantly chilled beer and the entire body eases itself.

With the glass in my hand, I sit on my massage capable sofa and switch it on to a gentle massage. The whirring of all the machinery within the unclingy leather fabric leads to the right pressures at the right points on my body.  The body is being eased into an even more pleasurable state and the headache is retreating a furthermore.

Having settled my body into a pleasurable rhythm and my mind into a mild delirious state, I take television’s remote control from the sofa-side table and start my television. The usual suspect options show up - Franchise Cricket, Mystery/Thrillers, Romantic Comedies, Jukeboxes etc. - and all of it filterable by your favourite cricketer, actor, location, mood etc. It was surprising when all of it was labelled as “debauchery of our times” at the start but look at the prosperity it has brought. To accommodate the infinite choices that people have and make new content available every second of every minute of every day of every month of every year of every century, billions of people have been provided employment while others are making money by selling their land or getting into manufacturing of physical assets or delivering of ancillary services to keep the cycle going. What blasphemy.

The television prompted me to make a choice. Or did I want it to make a choice for me? I thought about what I wanted. After pondering for a few more seconds, I chose Mystery/Thrillers and filtered on Vikramaditya Motwane. The lights in the living room dimmed themselves and the thermostat adjusted the room temperature to enable the best viewing possible.

As Amit Trivedi’s music started flooding the room, I thought to myself - this was heaven.