Leila

by Prayaag Akbar

The burden of age is expectation.

‘Survive. That is the important thing. When they are fat and slow we will get revenge.’

It is not something from me but something of me that has been taken.

Is it lonely people who are mad or mad people who are lonely?

That’s what this city is like. I feel it all the time. Everyone tucked behind walls of their own making, stewing in a private shame, like I was that day. They can’t come out into the open. Anyone who can afford it hides behind walls. They think they’re doing it for security, for purity, but somewhere inside it’s shame at their own greed. How they’ve made the rest of us live. That’s why they’re always secluding themselves, going higher and higher. They don’t want to see what’s on the ground. They don’t want to see who lives here.’