I would rather entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully, sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.Two Gentlemen of Verona, William Shakespeare
I remember rolling something illegal at my friend's place when the first Covid lockdown was announced in March 2020. We watched the news, took a few hits and decided to shop for groceries for the next week in advance. As we roamed through the market, we figured out that vodka was selling cheaper than sanitiser. What better excuse to stock up for a weekend of day drinking! So we skipped the mandi, went straight for the theka and came back grinning like idiots. In a couple days, we ran out of Marlboros and Maggies. Our hangover wore off, and the markets were still closed. It was supposed to only last a Sunday, but they laid the siege for another three weeks. Cooped indoors, we became lonely. Immigrants were dying on Facebook. Stock market was booming on the news. Ramayan was back on TV. Business was down but our bosses were lining up more and more meetings. Nothing made sense. Slowly, they opened up malls and markets for limited hours with soap water spraying on entrances. We’d mask up for ration shopping in the morning, rush back home for a Zoom call, open the door knob with our elbows, sanitise our bananas, look outside the window waiting for World War 3, while some voice blared in our headphones and echoed in our hearts for a millionth time, “Hi guys, I hope I’m audible…”
Wait, is it evening already. - But I just cooked breakfast! - When is the next meeting? - 10:30 PM. - Damn, who’s working that long. - You are. - Since when? - Since last saturday - Saturday was yesterday. Don’t tell me I have meetings on a Sunday! - Today’s Wednesday.
And then it was Wednesday for an entire year.
Loki and Mobius
Choose life. Choose tax deductions. Choose Sodexo reimbursements. Choose an EMI. Choose your background on Zoom. Choose wine on video calls at 4 PM. Choose business casuals with boxers. Choose coworkers who don’t understand fashion. Choose rumours about delayed appraisals. Choose a reality confined to a laptop. Choose bureaucracy in the form of a budget. Choose an outsourced LMS instead of talking to colleagues and get sick of it all either ways. Choose a career defined by pats on your back. Choose your misery before it comes looking for you in the middle of Gobi desert as you chase your Glorious Purpose.
Our friend Loki is arrested and recruited as an analyst (not kidding) by an organisation that keeps multiple realities in sync with a singular flow of time. It’s called the Time Variance Authority aka Time Police aka Marvel’s hack to introduce a Multiverse. The TVA is like the Jedi force with Mad Men dress code and an SBI style of working to keep things predictable in the Multiverse, as they have been written. Not hard to imagine with your day job, right? But now imagine, in this creative wasteland you find someone to show you the ropes, give you a meaningful project and protect you when your PPT tanks. They keep the gossip on your crush in marketing and tell you stories about last year’s offsite in Goa. They believe in you despite your average résumé, lack of workex and second rate gradesheet. In the corporate jungle of hyenas, you’ve found a rare unicorn- a good boss.
That’s Mobius, a middle manager in TVA trying to fix Loki’s daddy issues and make him something more than a mischievous scamp. Now it doesn’t matter if Loki sticks the course or sticks it to the TVA. Question is, would you stay loyal in these circumstances? Sure, the work can get boring but the perks are good. Plus, you get a chance to put your foiled schemes in the past and rebuild your credit score. of course you’re no longer the God of mischief, but how far did that adventure take you. Out here, you can stay back on the meeting link for 5 minutes after the weekly review and bitch about the tech team with your boss. You’ll get family insurance, stock options, a raise and even Employee of the Month. Maybe facetime with the CEO someday. Not a bad way to rebuild your life after all. Question is, would you take it? Or would you go rogue in the blink of an eye.
Loki and Sylvie
I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene
Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem
I eplehagen står møyen den vene
Og synger, Når kommer du hjem
That's Norse for love wandering across glaciers into apple orchards to finally come home. Home, what Loki had and yet never did, what the world took away from Sylvie. Sylvie is Loki's rogue variant who's kidnapping Time Police troopers, because they arrested her as a child on unexplained grounds while she played with her toys, before she went on a run across the end of a thousand worlds (not kidding). Now they assign Loki to help them nab her. Of course, Loki decides to break free and chase her on his own. Some inconclusive fighting happens over who’s the superior variant. Then a Loki truce. Then the two walk across a purple moon about to crash into space debris. Finally they board a rocket train that’s about to take off into space as a last ditch survival attempt. Meanwhile, Loki gets drunk and starts singing folk ballads for Sylvie. Because what is love if not being miserable together on long walks and train journeys between intense fighting, heavy drinking and motion sickness.
All this while, the contradiction persists in our romantic, self loathing minds: how long before Sylvie, an orphan with trust issues kills Loki who's turned into the lean, charming, British boyfriend. Or how long before Loki, the trickster God, stabs Sylvie like he does to every one affectionate to him. As Mobius says, It's always about the game within the game with Lokis. Maybe they're both lying, but to each other or to themselves, we do not know. Neither did they. Would you? If wherever you went, the Time Police chased you and erased a world in the process. If you spent a lifetime being rejected by every world you tried being a part of. If by chance or choice, all you ever gave was hurt, because all you ever saw was hurt. Perhaps it gets hard to look at oneself after a while. Perhaps one needs to accept their reflection before they accept themselves. Perhaps before we descend into love, we need to go back and fix our home, where we grew into madness.
Because love is home. And home is where the hatred is.
A junkie walking through the twilight
I'm on my way home
I left three days ago
But no one seems to know I'm gone
Loki and Lokis
Loki gets killed trying to save Sylvie from the Time Police and lands up in TVA's recycle bin: The Void. He meets Lokis from other realities who stick together hiding from a smoke monster called Alioth: the reset button. The void is an eternal purgatory, and everyone is stuck here forever. In five episodes, Loki first lost his glorious purpose, then lost his job, then lost his girlfriend and has now lost himself in a limbo with his multiversal clones who’re not too fond of him. It’s like being in the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno: a frozen lake reserved for traitors and betrayers with Lucifer stuck in it's centre. This disappoints our friend beyond measure. Wouldn't you be… trapped in your own head like in a sealed bunker fighting your own voices mocking you - an old cynic, a delusional fool, an angry child and a growling animal- stuck with you till the end of time.
Perhaps you step out of the bunker, tired of the bickering. Perhaps you try something psychedelic for the first time, at a friend's behest. Perhaps you thought it would make you Comfortably Numb. Instead you let another dozen realities in; presidents, vikings, hippies and recycled robots. Total delirium, paranoia, vertigo, alligators biting hands… How do you kill the demons outside if you can’t even count the demons in your head? It is the curse of being too smart for one's own good. Would you try to fight your other selves and lose your mind in the skirmish? Would you close your eyes and pretend it is all a bad dream? Or would you stop looking away from the narrative of your life and realise that even if you didn’t start it, it’s yours and only yours to take forward.
Cast enough illusions and you risk forgetting what is real
Grunwalski
At the end of the line, Loki and Sylvie meet a guy titled ‘He Who Remains’- an omniscient human stopping an all out war between multiversal realities. Our heroes face the age old moral dilemma between order and chaos. Sylvie- an exiled princess, wants to kill the gatekeeper and free the timeline. Loki- an adopted prince, wants to preserve the tyranny of the clock. Maybe he’s still vindictive about New York. The Summer of Loki, never forget. But the couple’s fight is more philosophical than personal. The unknown is unknowable until measured, but that doesn’t mean God plays dice. For the nerds, this is the root of the EPR paradox which leads to the first failed time travel attempt in Avengers: Endgame. This is also the reason why the couple proceeds to engage in some domestic violence that turns into steamy makeout that turns into Sylvie pushing Loki through a wormhole back to the TVA's headquarters. Sylvie kills ‘He Who Remains’ and the timeline branches ad infinitum into entropy, unleashing a multiverse of Marvel movies for the next decade. But that ending is for Youtube reaction videos. This piece is a little more cultured and pretentious. So here is a monologue from the French cult movie La Haine (1995) to ponder over the question that still remains.
Nothing like a good shit!
Do you believe in God? Wrong question. Does God believe in us?
I once had a friend called Grunwalski. We were sent to Siberia together. When you go to work in a Siberian camp, you travel in a cattle train. You go through icy Steppes for days on end without seeing a soul. You keep each other warm. The problem is relieving yourself, having a shit. It was impossible in the wagon. The only time the train stopped was to put water in the locomotive.
Grunwalski was a prude. When we had to wash, he was very embarrassed. I teased him about it. So the train stopped and everyone went for a shit behind the wagon. I'd teased Grunwalski so much that he went a bit further off. The train started moving and everyone jumped on because the train wouldn't wait. The problem was Grunwalski was behind a bush and hadn't finished. I saw him come out from behind the bush. He was holding his trousers to stop them from falling down. He ran for the train and I held out my hand. But every time he reached for it, he let go of his trousers and they fell to his ankles. He pulled them up and started running again but his trousers dropped down every time he held out his hand.
So what happened?
Nothing. Grunwalski froze to death. Goodbye.
Goodbye, Goodbye.
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