A book by Monish Muralidharan
2:47 AM.
You are not the only man awake. You never were.
A book by Monish Muralidharan
You are not the only man awake. You never were.
Where it started
A search box only finishes your sentence when a million men have typed it before you.
I typed that sentence at a dining table in a rented house, my family asleep behind two closed doors. I read strangers until the sky went grey. Near dawn I made one small promise. You are looking at it.
The shape of a life
The book follows a man through every role he is handed, and the night where all of them arrive at once.
Nineteen chapters
Short chapters. Real men. One everyday object per chapter that carries the whole idea, and one line you can keep. Drag through them.
The rule ends where a man decides it ends.
Keep one small deposit in your own name.
You were a man before the designation arrived. You will be a man after it goes.
However fast you run on the treadmill, the window shows the same view.
The number you refuse to say out loud is the only one that earns interest at night.
It begins, properly, the night somebody finally says "I don't know how to do this."
A man who turns himself down every day should at least know he was the sound.
He is at every event and in none of the photos, because he is always the one taking them.
Your child receives your home, never your sacrifice.
Count your hours honestly. Then spend them like prepaid.
Friendship after thirty is maintained by calendar, and the calendar has to be yours.
One honest call is worth fifty fine ones.
You do not have to work out alone what these thoughts mean. Tell someone how bad it has become.
It didn't get better the day he got stronger. It got better the day he said it.
Owning your part is not the same as carrying all of it.
He didn't rebuild his life. He rebuilt his morning.
Decide which circuit stays live through every power cut. Wire it in calm weather.
Failure is an outcome. Preparation is a practice. Four questions on paper before the next form.
Move the load from your chest to your back. You do not have to arrive anywhere for it to count.
Read a page
If you're reading this at 3 AM, I wrote it at 3 AM.
Same chair. Same silence. Same weight.
Keep reading. We're awake together now.
847 contacts.
He scrolled the whole alphabet and called no one.
Somewhere in that list was a friend who would have come. He just needed the message.
At 3 AM a man asked himself if he was the problem.
He was willing to look.
That is where every repair in this book began.
Written in the open
Who it's for
No mantra. What happened to me and to men like us, how we came back, and at the end of each chapter one small thing that helped. Take it or leave it. Short chapters, readable on a phone, in any order, on the nights when nothing else is readable.
He may never buy a book about being a man. He will read the one you put in his hand. The prologue does the talking you can't, the helplines are printed where he'll find them, and there is a page at the back written for you, on what to say and where your job ends.
Before the book is out
Leave your email and the prologue arrives as a PDF. When pre-orders open, you hear first.
One email now, one when the book is out. Nothing else, ever.
These lines are open all night, not only for emergencies. For men like us, on nights like this. If you are in immediate danger, call 112.