CURE-ALL // Chapter 4
Why do you sleep on this couch when we have that bedroom of ours right there, Tash would often ask Anand. When they started living together, she just thought it an odd quirk, but towards the end of their relationship, when she’d repeatedly find him on the couch sleeping with his headset on, her line of questioning took on a less playful tone. It’s comfortable, he’d reply, less playfully every passing month. Comfort. Some find it at the bottom of a bottle. Others at the end of a book. Others in a cab journey back home from a night out with old friends.
Over the last six months, with Tash gone, he’s found no reason to do much else at night but play Life Simulator until he passes out either on the rocking chair or on the couch. Every day at 7am, as he stumbles out of his couch or rocking chair or living room floor and into his bedroom to steal a couple more hours of sleep before work, Anand briefly considers picking up the headset for another hour of gameplay. Today, he decides against it. It’s going to be a long day.
As he walks into his bedroom, he remembers what his eye doctor had told him and his mother about visual strain all those years ago. Stop staring at those screens all day, Anand, she had told him, as his mother nodded knowingly. On the cab back home, his mother had extolled the virtues of spending time outdoors. Lying in bed, keywords from the monologue flash in his mind — physical health, human interaction, emotional well-being.
When she caught me smoking in college, emotional well-being. When I got fired, emotional well-being. When Tash left, emotional well-being. That’s all amma thinks matters.
After stirring for a few minutes, he gives up, gets out of bed, and struggles to the living room. He considers the headset.