In my time as a student of literature I have had many people, both dead and alive, support my arguments. For instance, yesterday, I found out that both Peter Brooks and Michel Foucault had written about metaphor and metonymy and convinientia, supporting the argument of the final chapter of my thesis. It feels good.

However, in my life, ever since graduating from college, I have had very few people tell me that I am going the right way. Kalpetta did not tell me that I am going the right way, but he did tell me how to make the way at least a little less painful. Then came Vinoy Thomas, in a book that my reader-uncle told me was very meh, saying that he has been spending a lot of money on things that are merely perfunctory. Such as movies, food, books, going out, and other such endeavours. I felt, after a long time, that ‘Ah! Here’s a person who tells me that it is okay to be decadent.’

I first met decadence as decadence when I came across Robert Musil sometime in 2018. It might have been 2019, but it hardly matters. The point is that after reading Georges Perec (I think it was Life: A User’s Manual) I somehow chanced on Musil. I met him through The Man Without Qualities and a review of it said that the novel was about the descent of German society during the world wars. I understood this first as the extravagant life of the aristocrats, but later I understood it as a spiritual decline. This was not simply a decadence in term of wealth but of spirit.

After Musil came Vijayan’s Thalamurakal. I am unsure, again, whether it was before or after Musil. Vijayan had this phrase in the novel that still haunts me. vidya ahanthayayum, vittam papavumayi maaruka, which translates as ‘knowledge turning into pride and wealth into sin.’ I have always felt after reading the phrase that this is a place that I will end up in. It is easy to end up in that place.

Yesterday I was eating a sandwhich made of sauteed, creamy mushrooms layered between two halfs of a buttery croissant with wet, flaky interiors and a crisp, brown skin. It had a single leaf of young lettuce protecting the croissant from the mushrooms and a thread of cheese sauce and cilantro draped over the croissant. After a few messy bites with the scales of croissant flying into my lap as I bit in through the crisp skin, I reached a place where I had saucy, creamy, a little limp mushrooms contained in a damp, squishy layer of wheat-coloured dough. Each bite went through the layers one by one and at once, and I could feel my teeth ploughing through the layers of dough, meeting the ivory-coloured sauce which coated my tongue, and the slices of mushroom, cooked just enough, meeting my wisdom teeth for a moment before they were macerated and their fleshiness changed into the sameness of the sandwhich.

It was decadent. Pleasureful. I was sinning heavily in the cafe. The senses extended their reach into my innards, and I felt, after a long time, visceral pleasure.

As soon as I felt the decadence descend on me, I became aware of sinning and had to retract all feelers into myself. I wanted to confess, but where? I wanted to ask for forgiveness, but to whom? Time? That the bounties of time be not reversed onto me? I do not know. I assume all sorts of decadence would follow this form. Excessive pleasure before the fall. A pleasure as complete as the price of sin. Slow but sure. Where do we pay for the sins? Why do I feel guilty? Why are all pleasures so pleasureful and all sorrows so sorrowful? Is there a middle path where pleasures are simply unadulterated pleasures?