The man sat at the table, his steady gaze never leaving the door. She was probably never going to come back. And he would probably never be hired again either. And yet, what was this feeling, closely resembling happiness, that wafted over him? When he saw the door swing forward, he was startled. And before he realised that it was only the wind, he was aware of suspiciously feeling disappointed. Between the feeling that was almost happiness and the feeling that was almost disappointment, there was nothingness, the most blissful of all. Nothing mattered in nothingness – it didn’t matter whether she came back, whether he got a job, whether he could pay his rent that week. And there, in the heart of nothingness, at the very core, the core that you couldn’t see unless you lived in nothingness long enough to know that there were answers in there, and if you peered really hard and were very silent, there was something: the kind of something that one should never talk about, the kind of something which is so heart-wrenchingly exquisite that you don’t ever want to share that beauty with anyone. In fact, it was the kind of something that entirely negated your desire or need for anything else in the world. Most importantly for the man, it had destroyed his need for people, or what little need for people he had once possessed.

He remembered why he had stopped dealing with emotions, what it was that had stopped him from dealing with emotions: the one single aspect of his being that actually mattered. And most incomprehensible of all was the fact that the only thing that mattered in his life was right there in front of him, and it would never leave. He clenched his fists. That was why people seemed inconsequential. They would leave almost as quickly as they came; there was no accounting for their responses and actions. But with something like this, the future was not paltry at all, the frustrating futility of desire did not exist: it would never leave. Never.

There it was, next to the door, wrapped up as neatly as if it were about to be shipped away. Could one ever look at the dismal brown paper and know, as instinctively as one knew the pain in the joint of one’s knee, that there existed, in as benign a way as was possible, one’s very life inside it? The world was hardly aware, in fact, that all its several strands of utterly meaningless lives had been choked together inside that package, stuffed inside the claustrophobic atmosphere of brown paper and brown rope, strangled into a pungent coherence that these lives would never achieve elsewhere. They continued to breathe and exist, not knowing that their lives had been painted away on a canvas and that their lives had been reduced – or elevated, depending on how you looked at it – to colours and brush strokes.

It all started with the painting. It would, predictably, end with the painting. And it would, in all probability, end very soon.

The first time he saw the painting, he was scared. What was it about? The colours just seemed to be flying across the canvas with some confounding rhythm of their own. He watched it carefully for a while, not trying to interpret it, but merely trying to come to terms with it. Why hadn’t anyone ever told him before that a feeling such as this even existed in the world?

He left the gallery after a while. He had an appointment with an important client. He was known for his punctuality. But he couldn’t get the painting out of his head. It haunted him, taunted him, the whole day. Sitting in his office, he tried to remember it, to capture it in his mind’s eye. But the picture just didn’t appear. He couldn’t – what was the word? – visualise it.

So he went back to the gallery the next day to visit it again. He stood in the same place, just watching it. First, there was recognition. Then, nothingness. That was the first time he had been introduced to nothingness. Their union was like none other.

Nothingness seemed to understand him. It seemed to make no demands of him. With nothingness, you can be yourself. And even if you are nothing, a total zero, nothingness doesn’t mind. In fact, nothingness welcomes your inadequacy, cherishes it, and makes you feel warm and special, because you, among all the people in the world, have walked past the infinite possibilities of the universe and have chosen to make absolutely nothing of yourself. It’s a sacrifice that you’ve made, a magnanimity that you’ve bestowed on the somethingness of the world.

With that open invitation from nothingness, the man knew then, as he knows now, that the painting was really all that mattered. So he watched it. Silently.

Then, it became a habit. He went to the gallery everyday. It was like an addiction. He felt the need to go, like some sort of inexplicable urgency. He never tried to fight it. He just went.

His wife began to get suspicious after a few days. Where was he going? Why wasn’t he ever available at the office? Was there a problem? Was there someone else?

Of course, he never answered any of those questions. They’d never shared great communication, his wife and he. He waved his hand evasively and mumbled something about being busy. He’d become immune to nagging these days.

Then, there was his boss. Almost as bad as his wife. Why weren’t the reports sent in yet? Had that order been dispatched? Why was that client made to wait for an hour? Wasn’t he aware of how important that deal was to the company? How did he expect to survive in the world of business if he didn’t put enough effort into his job?

To everything, he smiled sanguinely. He knew a secret that none of them did. He had witnessed what few others are fortunate enough to witness in their lifetimes. He knew things about them all that they did not know themselves. He began to feel superior to the world now. What did people know? They were not capable of real communication. At least the painting had a voice. People, in general, possessed less character than they were credited with; they were all the same – blacks and whites. The painting, at least, had sharper hues. Meeting people and talking to them would almost be a demotion after the painting.

Precisely on his fourteenth day at the gallery, there was a notice saying they would be putting up a new batch of paintings the next day. At first, he didn’t react. But then a sense of emptiness entered him. The thing about emptiness is how vastly different it is from nothingness. Nothingness fills you up, while emptiness drains you and leaves only pain behind. And pain can be very painful when there’s nothing but pain inside.

For the first time, he went up to the attendant and asked for the price for the piece. That was when he realised that he didn’t even know its name.

The attendant, who had been watching him curiously all these days, seemed relieved that he finally did seem to be capable of communication. He smiled that plastic smile that attendants are trained to wear and brought out the catalogue.

“It’s an especially fine, piece, sir. The artist died recently, and of course that adds to its value.”

Of course it did.

“It’s called The Return, Sir. It’s supposed to capture the essence of the cathartic confusion within the soul. It’s a very in-depth piece, Sir. The work is intricate, although it seems quite effortless.”

He saw that the attendant was reading out from the catalogue. Then, the attendant leaned over and whispered the price to him.

His commerce brain immediately calculated whether he could afford it. With his promotion, he could. Of course, the promotion wasn’t confirmed. But he reasoned that he would get it. He was by far the only one in the office who genuinely deserved it. His work was flawless. Maybe it wasn’t inspirational or brazen like the painting, but it was always accurate. Always on time.

Buying the painting would be an act of foolishness. But not buying it would be worse.

He chose to buy it.

He brought it home at a time that he knew his wife would be away. He didn’t unwrap it. He just hid it in his study. He knew she’d never find it. Let her think he was having an affair. The suspicion and the incessant questioning would, at the very least, be better than having to share the painting. It was his. Entirely his.

Every morning, he would tear away the brown paper and stare at it, before carefully wrapping it up again. He always made sure the room was locked from the inside when he did this. His wife grew increasingly suspicious, but he didn’t care. The painting was on his mind all the time. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t wait to get back home to look at it again. It became a fixation, possessing every part of him.

Soon, he even stopped going to office on time because he couldn’t tear himself away from it. And when he was home, he never came out of the study. That was his home, his life, his place of worship. The year went on that way.

He occasionally contemplated the idea of seeking more paintings by the artist. But the greatest fear there was the discovery that the painter was more inanimate than his painting, that the rest of his work was banal, hackneyed and dismal. What if it was, for the painter, an accident?

That year, he didn’t get his promotion. His wife left him. He had to mortgage the house. He discovered that the value of the painting had tripled.

He couldn’t even think of giving it up. It would be a veritable death wish – not dying on the outside, but rotting away slowly on the inside, bit by bit, and becoming a mental vegetable.

The next year, he lost his job. His wife got the divorce that she had applied for. He had to sell the house. The painting’s value multiplied massively.

He still hasn’t sold it. Today, he is unemployed, single, alone. He’s sitting at the table, watching the door, not knowing what it is he’s waiting for. Waiting is the only action that he is ever conscious of. Every other action dissolves into nothingness. He is what he has – nothing. But he has the painting.