Ritwik’s room smelled like a curious mix of stale McDonald’s burgers and musty clothes. Anyone walking into the room of his studio apartment (technically, his room was the studio apartment) would take a step back because of the smell. Ritwik couldn’t smell it, just as fish can’t smell salt in water. His single-size bed lay on one side of the dimly lit room, unmade with the pillow crumbled up on it. A pile of clothes lay on the other side waiting for the laundry; his favourite T-shirt, somewhere deep in the pile, had been waiting for over a week now.
Ritwik sat comfortably on his chair with his legs raised up on the table in front of him. A stack of books lay on one side — a bunch of self-help guides and a Stephen King. His laptop lay behind his feet, at the edge of the table, pushed up against the once-white-but-now-yellow wall. The ceiling fan circled above him, stirring warm air that kept rustling the crumpled McDonald’s paper bag on one corner of the small room.
Ritwik couldn’t hear the paper bag rustle. His wireless earphones were plugged deep into his ears and his eyes were glued to his phone in front of him. His thumb pushed up against the screen from time to time, flicking away one video and pulling in a new one – a girl danced in that one, a cat fought with another cat in the next one, a heavily muscled man gave motivational quotes in the one that followed, another girl danced in the next one. Ritwik’s thumb kept pushing up. He chuckled from time to time. Sometimes his thumb would automatically go to the ‘share’ button at the bottom right corner of the screen and send the video to whomsoever would understand the humour imbibed in the video. The video would then fly across space through the air, wires, servers, and God knows what else — digital particles gone with the digital wind — and end up in his friends’ phones miles away and on a few occasions, continents away.
Ritwik’s responsibilities lay waiting for him on the desk where his legs rested, just like how his clothes waited to be washed — unfinished stories and incomplete assignments in his laptop, unread books, and empty journals. He left all of that for later. Now he was occupied — tethered to the device in front of him and submerged in his chair. His fingers moved in perfect harmony with the device. The light from the device shimmered in his black irises. A part of him, somewhere deep beneath the dopamine, knew what he was ignoring and how much he had once enjoyed it. But now, there was only one thought behind those glassy eyes – just one more scroll, just one more video, just one more share.
Just one more.
