Notes on the Quiet Extinction: TAship, and Smog

Before winter comes to Dhaka, there is always a sensation of itching in the throat, even before the smog appears in the air. The smog shows up like an unwelcome visitor, making the early October mornings grey and powdery, but this year, the cold has not brought about the cinematic sadness that I normally seek out. I don't romanticize the late-night drive back home across the overpass; all I have is the exhaust from the CNG vehicles, a severe allergy affecting my sinuses, and Linger by The Cranberries playing through my headphones without actually reaching anywhere in my heart. The pain that normally inspires a draft, that well-known, deeply upsetting urge to reflect on one's childhood background or to turn urban loneliness into written words, has simply disappeared.

I currently have a job. I am seated at a desk, having a red pen and a pile of economics scripts, all buried beneath the administrative work of a department that requires me to mark 160 different versions of the same problem set. The situation is odd and has a dulling effect on the soul: it involves spending hours imposing academic discipline while at the same time my mind ends up entirely empty. Acting as a teaching assistant proves to be a highly effective way of wiping out the imagination. Each time a line of poetry tries to appear in my mind it is immediately erased by a marking guide or an email concerning the distribution of quiz grades. Previously, I believed my notepad to be a place of refuge; more recently, it seems no different from just another surface that has to be cleaned.

In the background, the rest of my life goes on humming like an overloaded generator. I have to keep track of the UN Millennium Fellowship deliverables, organize the SDG frameworks, and deal with an endless queue of social interactions that demand an exhausting degree of masking. As I walk down the corridors of the campus, I have to make the right eye contact, cope with the sensory overload caused by the fluorescent lighting and the overlapping chatter, and carry out the basic level of competence expected of an adult who claims to have everything under control. No one tells you how much physical energy it takes to keep ASD and social anxiety contained within a professional title. When I finally get back to my room, my nervous system feels as if it has lost World War III and has no energy left in a soldier.

Yet there remains a quiet sense of guilt about getting the paycheck, the need to feel "forever grateful" for reaching the milestone of getting your first job, for the credibility it brings, and for the status, even though the work is undermining the very thing that originally made me feel alive.

I am preparing this, no, it's not since the creative drought has ended, but as a record of the period when creativity was lacking. Winter is the time when the city should slow down enough for us to breathe, even though the air quality is poor. At the moment, I am getting used to the pace of the semester: I am marking the macroeconomics, drinking the hot tea, taking my allergy medication, and waiting for the noise to subside so that the first proper line of the season can come back. Should I start writing essays?