Been a while, quite a while. We’ve been at it and look at how time’s flown and we are still where we were. Well, almost.

What are we here for, by the way? Summer. Winter. Rain. Or no rain and shine or no shine, or neither summer nor winter nor spring nor fall but something altogether else and with no formally designated name other than a season in hell? Why are we here?

Do we even know? Are we even agreed?

Anyway. We are here. That is something that can be said for sure. You can see us, we can see you, there is no confusion over that. So there.
Ab karna kya hai?

If only you knew. If only we knew. If only both of us knew ki karna kya hai.

Nothing is happening. Actually no, truth be told, that is not the truth. Things are happening. Things have happened. But we don’t want to say that, right? It works for both of us to say that: Nothing happened, Nothing is happening, Nothing was meant to happen, Nothing will happen.

Correct. Understood. Agreed. So then?

Why are we here? In this rather forsaken sort of place which seems not to have any resemblance to anything we may have seen before. Or at least seen at close range. We have seen the moon. From a far distance. And from close range too. In photographs. In short films. You know, the moon, it’s a thing we know. We landed on it man, we are there, apna hi ghar samjho.

But this place. Yes, this rather strange place, a bit like the moon, isn’t it? All desolate, and pockmarked, ridden with mounds and craters and bereft of vegetation. That sort of sameness. It’s cold here, can’t tell whether that’s the same as the moon. We haven’t landed a person there; someone else did more than half a century ago, and they were wearing space suits so can’t be sure if they got a sense of the sameness of temperatures. Gravity, or the lack of it, yes, that’s a tactile difference. But who’s to tell? We are also known to levitate in defiance of gravity on Planet E. Anyway, where were we?

Here, right here, in this tent, sitting across the table, eyeball to eyeball, or whatever to whatever, our national flags crossed, our maps marked out, our formations known to each other like swans know water and water swans. We are being pushed, back and back and even more back. And we are not talking about it. We know you have us. You know you have us. We know there is little we can do to change that reality. You know that we know that. Both of us know that we are sitting here talking about…

Let us go then, you and I
And stop asking each other why
This is how things are
We can argue par kya fayada.