A Ghost's Monologue

A GHOST’S MONOLOGUE

By

S. Ahmed

Contents

Hello

Where It All Began

Where It All Really Began

Zaryab

Sara and the Sexy Scientist

The Big City

The Initiation

Mothers’ Day

The Puppy

Boys’ Branch

High School

The Brick Lined Street

The Unexpected

The Big College in the Big City

The Life After

The Love Life

Business School

The Decision

Death

One Last Time

Reunion of the Dead

Goodbye

Hello

Have you ever had the chance to read the Harry Potter series?

If not, I envy you, and I also feel sorry for you. I feel sorry because you haven’t yet been introduced to an amazingly spectacular world, a world that is parallel to ours and is completely awesome; and for the very same reason, I envy you. I mean, if you started today, you would have a set of seven new, completely unread, completely magical books to take you on an extraordinary journey; a luxury which I, having read those books multiple times, don’t possess anymore. Of the many things I’ve felt badly about during the latter part of my life, this goes right on the top!

But let me give my apologies. This wasn’t supposed to be the promotion for fantasy novels or anything. I actually wanted to talk to you about ghosts. If you’ve read the series, you may be familiar with the many ghosts you’re introduced to in the very beginning. But the series does not introduce them in a dark horror manner, instead, they’re introduced as a colorful detail of a wonderfully magical world and are often portrayed in humorous ways, which is strange because ghosts are associated with death. I mean, you must die first to become a ghost. That’s not humorous. Someone died.

But I guess that’s just a testament to the vividness of human imagination; or the bitchiness of it – I don’t know. Anyway, the reason I’m talking about ghosts is because I wanted to introduce myself. I’m a ghost, not the scary kind though. I mean, I can be scary if I want to, but since it’s not cool, I mostly don’t want to. I could also be called a spirit or a soul, but I don’t think I’m pious enough to be called a spirit, and I’m definitely not romantic enough to be called a soul.

So, I would prefer to be called a ghost. There is a certain feeling of coolness attached to the word ghost. It’s like a fond memory that slowly fades away, in a cool, classy way. I’m a cool, classy ghost – sort of. I don’t have a name. I mean, I did have one when I was alive, but now I don’t feel like sharing it. I just want to be an anonymous ghost. A male, cool, classy, anonymous ghost. Although, I’m not sure if being a male or a female matters much at this point.

I do come across other ghosts occasionally, but I seldom talk to any of them. Now that we’re dead , we don’t feel the need to socialize much. There is little we desire now; no goals or objectives requiring the cooperation of others. There are no hierarchical needs either, starting at the bottom with safety and security and ending at the top in self-actualization, which we might feel the need to fulfill. We don’t wish anymore to understand the desires of others and align ours with theirs or theirs with ours.

We don’t want to be at any specific place or state anymore. We just have this feeling that there’s a place we should all be going to soon, but there’s neither anticipation nor excitement. Whatever the place may be or when we should proceed doesn’t matter much now. We are no longer on any timelines. It’s difficult to describe this feeling to humans. The best I can say is that there’s not much we feel by way of the future: good or bad. When you are alive, the idea of death creates great anticipation. We don’t have that anticipation anymore. For the time being, we’re simply lost in our heads, thinking about the time when we were alive and how stupid all of that had been. And I’m not sure if this is what the other ghosts are thinking about too. Maybe that’s just me. What others think doesn’t really matter anymore.

I’ve come to the understanding that not all ghosts remain in the state that I’m currently in because, well, I don’t see many of us around. The numbers I’ve seen are certainly a lot less than the prevailing mortality rate. Maybe a vast majority of us go to the next place immediately afterwards, while some of us are left here longer. For what reasons exactly, I have no idea. One good thing about being a ghost is that there’s no longer the desire to philosophize about why some of us are left behind for a little longer while most are sent ahead immediately. We no longer feel the need to create stories that make ourselves feel better and others worse.

I can’t speak for other ghosts because I don’t know them, but I can speak for myself with some authority – which I should have done more often when I was alive. So, as for myself, I’ve led quite a miserable life until now. Being a ghost is awesome. That misery, I believe, ultimately took my life. But don’t feel too bad for me; mainly because I’m quite okay now and because I didn’t have any famous miseries.

I wasn’t poor, never had a frightening illness, was never in an accident, and never had to see a loved one in pain. I was handsome, intelligent, respected, etc., etc. But, for nearly my entire life, I was still miserable. There were pockets of happiness, excitement, and contentment here and there but mostly just misery. If we become friends, I’ll tell you all about it if you’re interested.

If you’re someone who thinks that this is just another man-child talking about non-existent problems and feeling sorry for himself, blaming others for his failures and becoming your typical, irresponsible jerk, then fuck you!

However, if you’re someone who thinks that misery is misery, and anybody can fall victim to that, and we should listen to each other and empathize, then – to be completely and utterly honest – fuck you all the same!

I’m sorry, I really am. I’m not someone who curses a lot, especially not to bully. It’s just that all my life I kept telling myself I didn’t care about what other people thought of me when I always did. And now that I really don’t care, I want to say it out loud, which – now that I think about it – might also be a way of caring, I suppose. Whatever!

Cursing as a ghost is kind of freeing too. It’s like how you feel when you come out of the exam hall. In that moment, you don’t care that in a few weeks’ time, results will be announced, and you’ll have to face the fact that you basically suck and are completely doomed. Or that you don’t completely suck and almost made it, but not quite, and therefore, again doomed. Or that you don’t suck, and you did good too, but the daughter of your mother’s friend did slightly better, and you’re doomed once more. Or that you don’t suck at all, and you did the best, and a whole, miserable world of expectations is now upon you, in which you’re definitely going to suck, and so you’re basically, as always, till eternity, doomed!

No! In that moment, when you step outside that horrible hall, you feel the sweet smell of grass and hear the refreshing sound of birds chirping. The traffic is not so annoying anymore. Your breath feels fresh as if you quit smoking, and even the most stupid girl in your class feels especially enigmatic. In that moment, you’re the king! And not the one with so many responsibilities of the kingdom; no, that king is always worrying about his kingdom, his subjects, his political rivals; how to expand his kingdom, how to save his kingdom, how to stop his subjects from fornicating without the consent of the King in his kingdom. No! That guy is also doomed, just like you’ll be after your results. Instead, you feel like the real king, without a weight on his shoulders, finally free, and light as a feather.

That’s how I felt when I cursed about what you would be thinking of me. But anyway, I think people feel what they feel. Sometimes they feel miserable, and sometimes they feel happy. I don’t think one really has control over that. You feel what you feel, and that’s that. So, if you always feel optimistic and happy (that’s annoying to other people, by the way), then it’s probably your good fortune – it could be equally bad too. And if you always feel miserable, then it’s just your bad fortune – it could be equally good too.

So, it’s up to you if you want to hear my story or not. I can finally not care. Also, it’s a little hard to care when you’re sitting on top of the highest billboard in town on a rainy night, looking at life below with nowhere to be.

P.S. If you’re a psychologist psychoanalyzing me, I think by now you already know what I’m going to say to you next.

Psychologists are great, by the way; they really help people, I think.

Where It All Began

Let me take you on a journey of really ordinary and mundane events. All events, I believe, are ordinary and mundane. There is nothing interesting about them unless they’re part of some story, and there’s no story to them until we put it there. A story, in turn, is nothing but the coherence we seek (you seek; I’m a ghost now) in the random events happening all around us.

Stories are interesting too, but only to the central character. My story is the most interesting to me since I’m the central character in it. Everything about it would be special and unique and important. Nothing else would really matter in this story except that which is related to me. But I would be a boring side character in countless other stories around me. Bill Gates might be the software hero who changed the world, but to me, he is just this distant, geeky nerd who built computers and stuff and who is not central to my story and therefore, not that important. And I’m sure Bill Gates feels the same about me.

Although, towards the end, I became a boring side character in my own story too.

Let’s start with my school, as those are the memories, I cherished all my life. Those were the days that didn’t contain anything I was embarrassed by; early school, to be more exact, right up until fourth grade. In my school, boys were separated from girls in grade four and sent off to the Boys’ Branch, which didn’t make any sense since we were again reunited after a few years in college. What was the point of separation, then? Maybe they wanted to give us enough time, separate from one another, to come up with really elaborate plans of how to screw each other later.

My memories up until grade four are pretty awesome, and as I was saying, not many embarrassing ones or ones filled with failures (Those came later, in bulk). Although now that I have a lot of time sitting on top of buildings and thinking about this stuff, I feel it’s not that nothing embarrassing ever happened in those days. If I really think about it, a lot of embarrassing things did happen, but it didn’t really matter at the time, or, at least, it didn’t feel like it did. There is something about a young soul that refuses to bow down, stands up every time, forgives and forgets, and is finally crushed brutally when it grows up. I don’t know if it’s internal to that soul or if adults do that, but something does happen later. Maybe I’ll be able to explain it as we move along. Maybe not.

One thing I’m sure of is that everything felt like an adventure with a lot of rich and diverse characters, and multiple scenarios taking place in multiple universes. Those universes were all different and unique, and they never collided. It was like Rick and Morty as they go on quests in multiple parallel timelines. If you watch Rick and Morty now as an adult , you might get a little overwhelmed with the changes in each episode, or by the sheer bulk of the multiple parallel universes and new and important issues in each one. But not Rick! He moves between those universes with ease, doing stuff without caring.

Children are the same; you cannot overwhelm their spirits. They don’t carry the baggage from one universe to another. They don’t possess the desire to make sense of events happening in different universes. They can start over, forget what happened before, and focus on what’s happening in the moment. They don’t feel the need to behave in a certain way just because that’s how they behaved previously. They can get into new characters pretty fast.

Adults can’t do that, as I’m sure you already know. If you’re, say, a hot-shot banker, you dress a certain way, socialize with certain kinds of people, and feel awkward when you find yourself in situations that don’t match your context or your status – buying groceries, for example. These situations can either be lower or higher than the hierarchy level you currently operate on, and the reason you have difficulty dealing with these new situations is you carry the baggage of your current position in the hierarchy, and that tiny, useless brain of yours tells you that to operate on a different level in the hierarchy, you need that particular character suitable for that level. And if you try to emulate that, there are high chances you’ll suck, and you don’t want to suck so you start avoiding such scenarios all together. This makes you strengthen your existing character in your existing scenario because here, you don’t suck, and so you create a silo around you. You may have difficulty communicating with the world outside of your little cocoon, and to make up for that, you try to become the king of your silo. This surely sucks for you and the people around you. I think this is what is meant by ‘not leaving your comfort zone," which all the extremely annoying, ambition-selling, artificially hyperactive, motivational pricks talk about all the time.

But why in the fuck would you want to get out of your comfort zone when it sucks so bad outside? People in the new scenario will be sizing you up based on your ability to act according to it, looking down upon you: some sympathetically, some contemptuously. Why would you want to be in such a sucky place at all?

Imagine applying for a fast-moving consumer goods company that wants you to go HOOPLA all the time. I mean, what is that all about? Their job application forms are filled with questions categorizing you either as an extrovert or an introvert, and those stupid introverts, to whom honesty is still the best fucking policy, fill those forms with the truth and are kicked out at the very first stage. And then only extroverts and introverts who are very good actors remain. And then you need to be happy and jolly all the fucking time because that’s the culture of the organization, and recreational activities and team building exercises are shoved down your throat – and up your ass – and before you know it, you have an entirely new character: Standardized zombies with standardized, horrible smiles over their faces, expected to behave in a standardized way forever and ever.

Would you want to get out of that and go through the whole process again to get a different character? Why would you go through all that agonizing experience again? I’m sure you’re proud of yourself for doing it once and have received some form of self-actualization – whatever the fuck that is – but you’re smart, so you’ll preach others to get the fuck out of their comfort zones and be successful like yourself. But you’ll never ever do it again, because the last time you did it, you almost died.

But only you know how much you hated it, and since you’re a pathetic loser, you won’t ever admit it to anyone. To the world, you were passionate and did hard work. You gave blood and sweat to be where you are today, and you got out of your comfort zone to be here, when you were actually just scared and didn’t have any choice other than to leave your comfort zone when you did it once. But never again. And so, you wouldn’t get tired of preaching to other people to really grow – again, whatever the fuck that means – and live life etc.

But only the people who are below you in the pecking order will idealize you and buy into your bullshit and present you as their role model; the people higher than you in the same wretched order will know you to be pathetic and a sucker. But your clever little brain will hide that from you and will show you only that part of the story in which you’re the king, and that will be the secret to a happy life; in your heart, though, you’ll always know. And in case your brain still believes in that honesty is the best fucking policy bullshit – well, you’re pretty much fucked!

Adults try to put kids in a certain character as they’re growing up, and when they do form that character, the same adult world forces them to look outside and not be afraid of new experiences. Phrases such as ‘strengthening of character’ and ‘focused effort’ are used when they want to put us in a zone, and then later, when we’re in that zone, phrases such as ‘getting out of comfort zone’ and ‘experiencing life’ are used. I mean, it’s all fucked up. Everyone is making fools out of us all the time, and we keep feeling fucking bad about ourselves.

Anyway, coming back to my point, you can never leave your character the way children can, and that maybe is a good thing too. Or maybe it depends on who you are; maybe it’s awesome, or maybe it sucks. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.

Where It All Really Began

I know I’ve digressed a lot, and I can sense I’m getting all rude and worked up again. I’m sorry for that. We have started to become friends now, I think, and I don’t want to upset you with my harsh tone or obscene words.

Now that I’m a ghost, I’m not part of anyone’s story, including yours. There is nothing you can give me now and nothing I can give you. Free from any give and takes, we can only have pure conversation now. I don’t need to establish any dominance over you, neither am I afraid of your dominance over myself. I can disappear whenever I want to and never see you again. I don’t have to feel bad if you kicked me out of your story, nor do I have to worry about kicking you out of mine.

I can’t screw you over, and neither can you. I don’t have to weigh the pros and cons of having this conversation. I don’t have to define the parameters of all this. I don’t have to be in any character now. I can finally care or not care about your feelings without using any of the useless metrics I used to analyze everything back when I was alive. I’m cool, and I’m nice. And it no longer feels bad to be nice or not nice.

So, we were talking about my school and children. See, children don’t carry the baggage of their previous selves because a) they don’t have any previous selves and b) everything is new to them. They are still absorbing stuff and not looking to avoid anything. Children are also hierarchy blind, up to some extent, anyway. When I was a child, I could hang out with the coolest kid after the first morning period or with the thugs during the recess. My hanging around the erudite kid didn’t come in the way of my hanging around the thug, and my hanging around the thug didn’t interfere with my hanging around the cool kid.

Until grade four, cool kids were the ones who brought top grades in all exams, but that changed quickly as we grew up. And yes, there were thugs, too, and they were also cool in their own way. But all lived in harmony. I mean, everybody knew that some kid was the top scorer and was made prefect. They knew he/she enjoyed an elite status, but nobody was envious of that. Elite had their own life; thugs and jocks had their own, and there was mutual respect. Sure, sometimes you’d find someone annoying trying hard to establish dominance, but by and large, the different groups respected each other.

That reminds me: I’m a ghost now and don’t have to remember the physical details of my school to describe them to you. I can go there and show you in person. I can travel at the speed of light now. Actually, I don’t know if it’s the speed of light that I travel at, but it’s pretty fast. So, let’s go! See you again, Hong Kong!

Well, this sucks! The school is in no shape at all. It’s like zombies had a nice feast here. Everything is wretched. The buildings, the playgrounds, the tuck shop, everything’s in ruins. Screw those planners. I barely even recognized it. All memories gone, nothing left of what once was. The magnificence, the beauty, the grandeur! Nothing left!

I didn’t know I could get sad as a ghost, but this has really broken my heart. I feel like that puppy all over again – I’ll tell you about him later. I think I need to sit down. It’s just too much. Even though it’s dark, I can still see the shit that happened here.

I’m standing in front of what we used to call the central building. Before me stands a tall, multi-storied block of a building with equal sized classrooms all around it. It’s all perfectly planned, making efficient use of space, and even though its night, I can see the design ensuring adequate sunlight for the classrooms. It’s just heart breaking!

In my time, there used to be a single-story square building that looked so old it felt like ancient hunters and gatherers first built it. Its classrooms came in all shapes and sizes and ranged anywhere between a broom cupboard and a Japanese Hotel room, which is bigger than the broom cupboard but still enormously small, and there was no sunlight inside – adequate or otherwise. Each classroom had a different kind of antique door, and when you opened that door, you entered a new world, completely different from anything you had seen elsewhere in the school.

Each room had its own character with a mix of vintage and modern furniture and fixtures. The walls also depicted different eras; some had cemented bricks with no layer of paint, some were painted white, which hardly concealed the brick and mortar but did give the walls a spooky look. Only a handful of the classrooms had wallpapers, which were so old and battered they seemed like the abandoned ruins of a once-great civilization.

The humans inside those classrooms also belonged to unique cultures and identities, which evolved over time. Children in a particular grade were divided into sections A through E. According to the official brochure, the school was supposed to have a maximum of thirty children per section, but obviously, it had around sixty. The classrooms could, at maximum, hold about twenty-five if seated in a manner that humans find normal. It was, therefore, great fun to get lost among sixty children, creating new parallel universes inside the mother universe of the class.

We used to call the different sections as Ants, Bats, Cats, Dolphins, Elephants, etc. The names didn’t represent anything, really. I have no idea why we called them those names.

The Ants section was supposed to be for the really intelligent kids, and the toughest teachers were placed there. Parents went to great lengths to put their kids with the Ants because this was supposed to ensure their kids remained ahead and shone and rose and all that. Of course, we later learned it didn’t fucking matter.

My parents also wanted me in the Ants section when I joined the school in second grade, but I ended up with the Dolphins. It wasn’t because I was dumb; I aced the entrance test. It was because all the other sections were overflowing with kids, and a new section ‘D’ was created to accommodate the newly admitted ones. The second grade seemed to be in demand at the time. Looking back, I’m glad I was placed with the Dolphins.

Kids did turn out a little differently in each section, but that was because of the self-fulfilling prophecy, not because of any difference between the kids to begin with. I mean, how in God’s name can you tell by looking at a kid’s stupid face if they’re section A material or section fucking E’s. It was just a marketing gimmick,