Shards of Love

Chapter 7: He can(not) Break

February - July 2020

Arnav felt groggy. He lay wide awake at 2:50am in the night, unable to sleep. He thought after coming to the new house, all things will settle down, but things started to turn really worse for him.

To keep himself busy and occupied, he interviewed and got a teaching job at a nearby school. Upon hearing his qualifications, they agreed to his salary ask of fifteen thousand rupees per month. In his town, starting from scratch, he knew that was what he would get, which was a financial step down from his actual salary in his previous job where he was getting double.

Since the lockdown was heavy and strict restrictions were in place, Arnav was trying different things to ease his inner troubles. He had cut off ties with everyone after suffering a friendship heartbreak from Karan's unbelievable backstabbing and then deciding to move out of Chennai and the job that caused him a lot of pain, and knowing that his ex had married someone.

You can't blame a guy for his trust issues because many would have played with his emotions and left his scrambling to pick up pieces of his broken heart, all alone. And God forbid, if he showed any of this pain or vulnerability to the outside world. A man is a man. He can have no feelings of his own. He has to live for his family, his work, then the disgusting society which dictates day to day life.

Arnav had lost total trust in people in general. He came to an irrevocable conclusion that people simply use each other for some form of personal gratification. Friends and lovers in most cases fall under this category. A small amount of selfish families too. If the relationship is not interesting, fun or mutually beneficial in any way, people simply drop their kerchiefs for someone on the way. Real relationships need active energy and work, aside from the fun part. Apparently this drives the modern people crazy. Nobody has time to take effort out of their busy time of scrolling through social media and feeds. Passive loving and passive presence is what people go behind nowadays. If it takes effort, it isn't worth it.

Arnav started suffering more even after finding such a huge wisdom out of life - that everybody's selfish and nobody actually cared about you except your own family. If you are happy and successful, you'll be overflowing with friends and potential love aspects. If you face a struggle and need help, you'll be left all alone.

Arnav created a YouTube channel to post videos on stories he had read in an interesting manner. This idea struck him because he thought, people were doomed to be inside their rooms all day long. So, phone and internet was the only thing going to make them stay sane. He can use this time to launch himself with his really good storytelling and talking skills. His creativity can be put to the test. Due to lockdown, his teaching job would start after three months. He started recording videos everyday and uploaded diligently. He completed chapters for an entire Tamil novel called "Kadal Pura" by Sandilyan, which he loved more than the famed Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki. He thought would be interested to hear stories rather than read books.

The channel didn't pick up much. He started feeling dejected after uploading nearly 60 videos everyday for two months. They all had quality but it didn't become a hit or even visible to be noticed by the crowd.

For some reason he felt something wrong within him. He couldn't, not that he didn't, so much stuff. He didn't have the drive for anything. He felt extremely tired mentally and physically.

He was thankful he could still read books. He devoured many books during this period and one day, he realised something was definitely off.

There was a huge buzz about the Spanish series 'La casa de Papel' which was a money heist. Arnav saw the previous seasons and he liked it. The final season was out during that time and he downloaded all the episodes into his laptop and was ready to watch.