Not All Those Who Wander
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ARJUN NATH
Not All Those Who Wander
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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PENGUIN BOOKS
NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER
Arjun Nath is the author of the acclaimed memoir White Magic: A Story of Heartbreak, Hard Drugs and Hope. In his past lives he has been a teenager, a heroin addict, a corporate lawyer, as well as a screenwriter, webpage designer and once, briefly, a nine-year-old professional bootblack. He chose to become a writer mostly because wearing pants is optional.
Arjun lives in New Delhi and Not All Those Who Wander is his first novel. If you have any recommendations for sports movies, please send them in to [email protected].
PRAISE FOR WHITE MAGIC
‘An endearingly honest book that treads the fine line between tragedy and comedy, hope and hopelessness, self-loathing and self-love. Nath writes like a champion’—Indian Express
‘The story remains with me. It is almost filmy—the locations and characters, the scenes the author recreates, the heroic narrator. His combination of being vulnerable and insightful, friendly and awkward, loving and lost is impossible not to identify with . . . not to want to be friends with’—Livemint
‘Nath’s prose, peppered with yuppy jargon (the F-word occurs so frequently, one loses count), is refreshingly original and he has a wicked way with words’—Deccan Chronicle
If you say anything out loud often enough, it eventually disappears. With each repetition, names shed meaning like a tortoise moulting, the skin coming off slowly in white, flaky bits until the original creature, in a sense, no longer exists.
Try it. Say ‘egg’ out loud.
Egg.
Now say it a few more times.
Egg. Egg. Egg egg egg.
You see? After the fifth or sixth time, it isn’t something you make an omelette with but just an undefinably silly sound. It might even make you laugh. You won’t know why you find it funny, but it probably has something to do with the nonsense rhymes you chanted when you were yet young and shiny. Eenie meenie. Akkar bakkar.
This is how we learn to remember. By repeating names. This is how we forget.
Start small. Say spider. Say mos-qui-to. Move on to the higher animals. Say fox. Did you know that there are thirty-seven species of fox in the world? If all of them simultaneously became extinct tomorrow, it would not impact your life one whit. You might not even notice. Say fox.
Abstractions are trickier. At least an egg is always an egg is always an egg. But love? Oh no. Love is a slippery sonofabitch. Love is a many-splendoured thing. It is blind. It makes the world go ’round. Love is friendship that has caught fire. Love is madness, a swelling in the chest too big to contain, and photographs of puppies that somebody posted online. You don’t know what love is, not really, but you know what it isn’t.