(Who would have guessed we were here already?) I have no idea what's going on. Rukia and Renji spar for a few pages in a dojo on top of a mountain where the air is dense with spirit particles. It is there that she finds out that Byakuya has regained consciousness. Byakuya is then shown saying to the guy who owns the hot springs that he doesn't yet have the energy to feel woozy, but will regain it soon. Then Rukia and Renji recall some horrific things they experienced at a previous stage in their training, and shudder to think that Byakuya will be put through the same things. There is some vulgar talk about Renji's dick being chopped off, but that appears to have been the extent of his humiliation. Back in the world of the living, it appears that everyone is aware of and comfortable with the idea of spirit samurai roaming freely amongst them, and even follows Soul Society politics and wars as if they were a sport of some kind. No one is surprised anymore at Ichigo's absences (except the hapless reader). "Where's Ichigo? Oh, he must be off on Soul Society business as usual. I hear they're in the middle of a war." At the end of the chapter, Captain Kyoraku steps out from the shadows like an oracle come to give bad auguries, and approaches Ichigo's friends, those who were not blessed with magical powers. Then everyone takes turns telling Kyoraku who he is. "You're the captian of the eighth squad." "I remember someone calling out for you during the war with Aizen." "Your stats add up to 530." Kyoraku, always the first to get to the nub of things, tells them in a grave tone, eyepatch dangerously black, "I have to tell you... about you and Ichigo... parting ways." A cliffhanger of unimaginable proportions. Oh, I can't wait to find out what this means.
--
It suddenly occurred to me that weekday mornings were not at all bad during the FIITJEE days. They were beatific, even. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning should have been more painful than it really was. I suppose I've always been an early riser, partly because I dread more than almost anything becoming lazy in my own eyes. Laziness is something for which I have rather a low tolerance. Anyway, the mornings were very pleasant, especially in the summer, when the sun would already have begun rising. India is most unpleasant in the summer, but the mornings offer one a glimpse into a short-lived world where everything is all right. I'm usually contemptuous of birds and their blank stares, and usually even less inclined to such rhapsodizing, but the birds were very pleasant to listen to. Since I don't speak their language, for all I know, they were singing a dirge in preparation for their own imminent deaths under the harsh sun later in the day. There was also tea in the morning. Tea is a classy thing to drink. I make it a point to drink a cup of green tea every day, since it gives the impression that I am a sage Zen master, or someone otherwise qualified to tell you how to live your life.
Where it all went wrong those days was within those cheap plaster-of-Paris walls which kept out sound as well as rice paper did. Even there, there were occasional moments of respite and intellectual joy, such as on the roof during the morning break (lunch break, too, in the first year), and in the corridors between classes, where dreams were often recounted, very different from the ones that would later be shattered on a certain April day, which was to be the culmination of everyone's efforts up until then. Almost everyone's. And now as we veterans of that system of anti-intellectualism sit back in our deckchairs (or armchairs, for those of us averse to sunny weather), watching a whole new generation (in a manner of speaking) of young people racing to the top of a hill on the other side of which are only ruins, we experience what is known as "Schadenfreude".
I don't feel emotion. I don't know what it is. I do like the melody of certain words put in a certain order, so it must be that.
--
It suddenly occurred to me that weekday mornings were not at all bad during the FIITJEE days. They were beatific, even. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning should have been more painful than it really was. I suppose I've always been an early riser, partly because I dread more than almost anything becoming lazy in my own eyes. Laziness is something for which I have rather a low tolerance. Anyway, the mornings were very pleasant, especially in the summer, when the sun would already have begun rising. India is most unpleasant in the summer, but the mornings offer one a glimpse into a short-lived world where everything is all right. I'm usually contemptuous of birds and their blank stares, and usually even less inclined to such rhapsodizing, but the birds were very pleasant to listen to. Since I don't speak their language, for all I know, they were singing a dirge in preparation for their own imminent deaths under the harsh sun later in the day. There was also tea in the morning. Tea is a classy thing to drink. I make it a point to drink a cup of green tea every day, since it gives the impression that I am a sage Zen master, or someone otherwise qualified to tell you how to live your life.
Where it all went wrong those days was within those cheap plaster-of-Paris walls which kept out sound as well as rice paper did. Even there, there were occasional moments of respite and intellectual joy, such as on the roof during the morning break (lunch break, too, in the first year), and in the corridors between classes, where dreams were often recounted, very different from the ones that would later be shattered on a certain April day, which was to be the culmination of everyone's efforts up until then. Almost everyone's. And now as we veterans of that system of anti-intellectualism sit back in our deckchairs (or armchairs, for those of us averse to sunny weather), watching a whole new generation (in a manner of speaking) of young people racing to the top of a hill on the other side of which are only ruins, we experience what is known as "Schadenfreude".
I don't feel emotion. I don't know what it is. I do like the melody of certain words put in a certain order, so it must be that.
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