21 grams of indifference

Milos was precisely made up of three emotions…21 grams of indifference that was weighted down by 19 grams of nonchalance and 5 grams of self love. The rest of him, like the red planet, is mostly unknown territory and no amount of trawling would yield any results, was the general consensus.

When I say precisely, I mean that the quantity of each emotion was very carefully dispensed, perhaps when he was pulled out of his mother’s womb kicking and screaming. And to his credit, Milos lived his entire life within the boundaries of these emotions. His indifference was more fine grained than lumpy and it had the tendency of seeping through other people’s emotions and caused them to choke on it while Milos, having doled it out generously went back to being himself.

The nonchalance, it was said, was of a thicker consistency. He sometimes tripped over it and one classmate from high school chemistry class swore that a piece of it caught fire when Milos was in the process of throwing it out to the teacher’s assistant. She said that the others stared in awe as it crackled and spluttered and then finally ended up as a dark spot on the table. The teacher never found out the truth about the spot.

When he turned 25, Milos decided to abandon his family and make a life for himself in another city. When asked how he would support himself, he said, he wasn’t planning on supporting himself. Instead, he would give someone else that opportunity. His response meant that he would be back home very soon. But clearly nobody had anticipated that five grams of self love could see him through life. Unchallenged.

He was known to display flashes of it every time he smelt a challenge in the air. It could be as simple as someone stealing his seat in the bus. Milos would gently sidle over and hover around in the person’s line of vision and proceed to gently move his bag from one shoulder to the other as if his shoulders were made of delicate porcelain that were not meant to shoulder the weight of anything heavier than a puff of frivolity. Most often, Milos managed to reach into the recesses of the person’s guilt and pull at a stray strand. It always worked.

When it came to paying for anything, he would look at the person with tears trembling at the precipice of his luminous eyes and say, ‘you’re a truly divine human being and I hate doing this to you, but I have some medical bills to take care of this month.’ By the time next month came around he had found someone who could be unraveled strand by strand.

For Milos, it was always, all about him. And just like that five grams went a long way.