# Acting on Impulse The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which shouldn't have mattered but somehow did. Tuesdays had always felt like the day when nothing of consequence happened—the day after Monday's false promises and before Wednesday's second wind. Yet here it was, cream-colored and official-looking, my name written in an elegant hand that made my stomach turn. I held it for nearly an hour without opening it. The envelope sat on my kitchen table while I made tea, reorganized a shelf I'd organized three weeks prior, and stared out the window at Mrs. Das watering her petunias across the lane. She moved with the kind of deliberation that comes from having done the same thing every morning for forty years. I envied her that—the certainty of repetition. When I finally tore open the envelope, my hands were trembling in a way I couldn't explain. Dear Mira, it began, and already I knew this was about him. About that time. About the year I'd spent trying to forget, which is to say the year I'd spent doing nothing but remember. The letter was from Aniruddha's mother. His mother, of all people. She wrote that he was returning to Kolkata after fifteen years abroad—fifteen years in which he'd become a different person, successful beyond what anyone in our neighborhood could have imagined. He'd built something in London, something important, and now he was coming home. Not to stay, she was careful to note. Just a visit. A month, perhaps. The monsoon season. I thought you should know, she wrote, as if I were merely a point of information to be filed away, catalogued, prepared for. I read the letter three times. Each time, I wanted to crumple it. Each time, I found myself smoothing it flat again. That night, I dreamed of monsoons—the kind we used to sit in during that year, under the eaves of the old library, our shoulders touching because the bench was small and we didn't care. The rain had sounded like applause then. Like the world was celebrating something we hadn't fully named. By Wednesday, I'd made my decision. I would go to the airport. This was impulse, pure and unfiltered—the kind of decision that usually led to regret. But I'd spent fifteen years being careful, being sensible, being the sort of person who reorganized shelves and went to bed at reasonable hours. The kind of person who didn't chase ghosts through terminal two. I told no one. I took a day off work, citing a doctor's appointment—a small lie that felt large in my mouth. I wore the blue dress, the one I'd kept without quite knowing why, tucked in the back of my wardrobe like a secret. I did my hair the way I used to, before marriage, before the quietness that had become my life. The airport was chaos—the beautiful, honest chaos of arrivals. People held signs with names written in desperate handwriting. Families clustered together like schools of fish, moving in unison toward gates and exits. I stood near the coffee counter, too visible to hide, too hidden to be found. When I saw him, I almost didn't recognize him. Of course I recognized him. His walk was the same—that particular way of moving, as if he were slightly surprised to find himself in his own body. His hair had grown thinner, just beginning to gray at the temples. There was a scar above his left eyebrow that hadn't been there before. He looked tired. Not weary from travel, but tired in a way that suggested he'd been carrying something heavy for a long time. Our eyes met for perhaps three seconds. In that interval, I watched his face shift—confusion, then recognition, then something I couldn't quite parse. Regret, maybe. Or relief. Or the kind of complicated emotion that arises when you see someone who knew you when you were younger, when everything still felt possible. He started to walk toward me. I turned and left. I walked through the terminal with my head down, past the restaurants and duty-free shops, past families embracing and lovers reuniting. I kept walking until I found a quiet corner near the bathrooms, where I sat on a bench and let myself shake. What had I expected? What had I hoped would happen? I didn't have an answer. I had only impulse—that terrible, exhilarating impulse that had driven me to the airport in the first place, and now drove me away from him. The same impulse that had made me fall in love with him fifteen years ago, when we were young enough to believe love was enough. I took a taxi home. Mrs. Das was still in her garden, now in the golden light of late afternoon. She looked up as I passed, and I wondered if she could see it on my face—the proof that I'd done something reckless. That night, I burned the letter. But I kept the envelope, even after the paper was ash. I kept it in the same place in my wardrobe where I'd kept the blue dress, in that small pocket of space devoted to things I couldn't throw away. The monsoon came early that year. I sat under the eaves one evening, listening to the rain, and thought about choices—not the choices we make deliberately, with careful deliberation, but the ones we make in three seconds, driven by something we don't fully understand. I thought about Aniruddha, about what he might have said if I'd let him speak. But I also thought about myself, about the woman who had impulse still alive in her, buried but not dead. That was worth something. That was everything. The rain fell like applause, and for the first time in fifteen years, I clapped back.

February 10, 2020 5 min read By Sushanta Paul

Energy detonates through the body—from fingertips to toes—in a surge of raw impulse, a fierce insistence that mind and flesh obey its command. In such moments, man stands defenseless. How can a mere impulse wield such dominion that reason scatters like dust, that the body surrenders? Yet here is the paradox: desire exists, yes, but man incurs no punishment for refusing it. The opposite, in fact—restraint itself becomes a kind of grace. And still impulses arrive with terrible strength, not as gentle thoughts or feelings that drift slowly upward to consciousness, but as tsunamis rising from still waters, crashing upon the shore with such fury and force that only the most immovable, most formidable structures can endure their assault.

Impulses spring neither from rage nor malice, nor from kindness nor joy. They are neutral—unmarked by morality. It is man's response to the impulse that births anger, cruelty, compassion, delight, and all that follows. Impulses have the power to burrow into human consciousness and yield their harvest—bitter or sweet—long after the initial surge has passed. Memory becomes a teacher: it reminds us how we once resisted desire, and in remembering, we build walls against future temptation. But memory is also a grave-digger, forever dragging the soul downward. The crucial thing is how a man answers the sensation. He has the capacity to react with wisdom and health, to feel the impulse, acknowledge it, and let it dissolve into nothing. But therein lies another danger: like the ocean, an impulse can also wreak devastation. If a man surrenders to it, the impulse transforms into an immortal pest, an endless, annoying fly whose sole purpose is to buzz eternally in his ear. The memory of that surrender becomes etched upon the retina of his mind, materializing unbidden at the worst possible moments, goading him once more toward the same unhealthy response. To yield to impulse—whether through desire or aversion—is to descend a spiral. And each surrender only strengthens the impulse's grip, tightening its hold on the human being.

There are memories that lodge themselves in the mind—absurd sensations from a particular summer day in adolescence—and they remain, always accessible, always ready to surface in the eye of consciousness, even when the impulse left no devastation, no trace of regret. On that summer day, I walked down the notoriously steep hill of Chittagong, the city of my childhood. Somewhere far below, a small white dog appeared—furry, mischievous, almost demonic.

# The Impulse The dog eagerly pulled his master along the sidewalk up the steep hill. The closer I drew to it, the more vividly I could observe this disfigured creature—not physically disfigured, but mentally! The infernally ugly dog barked and barked; the house seemed to vibrate with the sound. The moment it passed me, I was seized by a powerful urge to kick the dog—hard, as hard as I could manage. In that instant, a vivid image materialized before my eyes: the small, white, furry creature sailing through the air, spinning like something from a cartoon, until it disappeared like a star winking out on the horizon. Dear reader, do not lose heart. Despite the violence of this impulse, I managed to resist it. I did not unleash a devastating kick to that dog’s belly, though the desire burned in me with terrible force. Yet the memory of that moment remains sharp even now, precisely because I *did* feel the impulse—I simply did not act on it. For hours and days afterward, I was tormented by a different fear: the fear of having experienced, at all, the impulse to harm something as innocent as a living being. Truly, I lacked the capacity to reconcile myself with this impulse in any healthy way. Does the reader now crave more lurid confessions of the author’s human failings? Very well. It was an utterly ordinary, tedious day in the ninth grade. We sat in the home economics room, ostensibly to develop our culinary prowess through the preparation of gourmet delights—instant macaroni, pre-made meatballs, that sort of thing. On this fateful day, as fate would have it, the ordinary teacher had fallen ill. In his place came the school librarian, a man we called “Plato”—an older gentleman with gray hair, a character of singular eccentricity and equally singular taste in dress. Plato was an impressive figure who commanded our attention through his eloquent speech and formal manner. The lesson began, though what we actually prepared has since grown hazy in memory, obscured by details more urgent and troubling. In my next clear memory, I stand before a cutting board, a sharp knife in my hand, ready to slice vegetables. And then—suddenly—the mind is struck by an overwhelming impulse. The desire crystallizes, primal and undeniable: take the knife, advance toward the substitute teacher, and strike. My entire body flooded with dread and revulsion. Like a man seized by shock, I went rigid, paralyzed. An unpleasant sensation coursed down my spine—self-fear, self-loathing, multiplying by the second. And in that second, which felt like an eternity, something inside me collapsed. Out of sheer terror, I set the knife carefully on the cutting board, then rose and walked—quickly, deliberately—out of the home economics room and into the nearest bathroom. With the help of a mirror, I stared myself right in the face, my tears ran uncontrollably to my cheeks, the body was automatically moved from the sink to the toilet seat. Shaking and filled with fear and anxiety, I spit out several times before I first schooled and went home to my parents.

Let’s assume it was a class picnic or something like it. Since then, I have a strong phobia for knives, truly I was unable to relate to the impulse healthily. Admittedly, I cannot currently relate objectively to thoughts and impulses in certain states of mind, but slowly the defensive positions of the mind are strengthened as a result of not responding to the majority of impulses I am afflicted with, and those impulses which I cannot resist do not allow body or mind to cling to. This process reduces suffering, whose extended arm assists the environment with positivity. May man never rest one day from developing himself and improving his own situation, may man identify, and then take the steps he needs to teach his subconscious not to respond to sensations that arise. Only in this way can man begin to approach life without suffering.

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