Constipated in Calcutta While America Shits Cyclospora

I am constipated, and the Americans have diarrhoea, and because they are Americans it is explosive, how fitting, how cosmically, grotesquely, almost religiously fitting, like some perverse digestive eschatology where the empire of the free and the home of the brave cannot even keep its own effluvia contained within the porcelain boundaries of its superpowered bowels, no, it must spray, it must aerosolize, it must turn every bathroom stall from Maine to Miami into a Jackson Pollock of gastrointestinal hubris, and here I sit, in Calcutta, on a toilet that groans like a dying tuba, producing nothing, absolutely nothing, a man of fifty-one years, Bengali to the marrow, constipated not merely in the intestine but in the thoughts, in the actions, in the delivery, a classic procrastinator, a hoarder of mental faeces, and when I finally deliver, when the dam breaks and the bolus descends, it is bloated, oversized, a hard, unyielding bolus of everything I have eaten through my brain in the preceding days and weeks, and by the by, cyclospora from America says hi, that charming little protozoan souvenir, that microscopic ambassador of American agricultural exceptionalism, imported via raspberries or basil or whatever leafy green the Californians decided to irrigate with reclaimed sewage, and now it waltzes through their lower intestines like a tourist at the Victoria Memorial, photographing their villi, leaving its parasitic calling card, and I think, I really do think, that this is the perfect metaphor for the age, for this July of 2026, where OpenAI wants to give the US government a five percent equity stake, forty-two billion dollars of algorithmic patronage, as if democracy itself were a Series A round and Sam Altman were the venture capitalist of last resort, and I sit here, straining, while the Americans cannot stop shitting, cannot stop producing, cannot stop monetizing every last gastric rumble, their testosterone-tested troops, their Hegseth-mandated hormonal surveillance, as if virility were a military procurement issue, as if the Department of Defense needed to issue RFPs for manhood, and meanwhile the French have just legalized assisted dying, which is, I must say, terribly civilized of them, terribly gallic, a legislative shrug at the absurdity of prolonged existence, while I, here in Calcutta, cannot even achieve the small death of a satisfactory bowel movement, no, I am trapped in the purgatory of peristalsis, the samsara of the sphincter, and the AI agents are coming, or not coming, because Zuckerberg admits they are moving slower than expected, which is the most honest thing a billionaire has said since perhaps ever, and I think of my own agents, my own internal algorithms, my serotonin and dopamine doing their manic-depressive tango, now a waltz, now a mosh pit, now a funeral dirge played on a harmonium with a broken reed, and I wonder if Meta’s AI agents are also bipolar, if they too wake up some mornings convinced they can optimize the entire supply chain of human desire and by afternoon cannot even remember why they opened the terminal, why they exist, why anything exists, and the T. rex named Gus sold for fifty million dollars, fifty million American dollars for a pile of Cretaceous bones, and I think, I really do think, that this is the price of authenticity now, that we have reached a point where even extinction is a luxury good, where a dinosaur skeleton commands more than the annual GDP of several nations, and I, constipated, worthless, producing nothing of value, not even a bolus, not even a fossil, just this endless, serpentine, self-interrupting muttering, this mess of subordinate clauses and delayed main clauses and parenthetical asides that curl back on themselves like the intestines they metaphorically describe, and the Americans, oh the Americans, they have launched fresh strikes on Iran, Trump warning of ground troops, of widening attacks, of a quagmire that rhymes with Vietnam in the most depressing way possible, and I think of quagmires, of being stuck, of the intestinal quagmire I currently inhabit, and the metaphor holds, it really does hold, because empire is a digestive system, because expansion is ingestion and retreat is constipation and war is just explosive diarrhoea by other means, and the UK police have arrested a man for threatening to shoot Nigel Farage, which is almost funny, almost Pythonesque, the absurdity of British political violence, so polite, so understated, a threat rather than an act, a promise of future rudeness, and I think of my own threats, my own promises, my own endless internal negotiations with a body that refuses to cooperate, a mind that refuses to settle, a consciousness that treats itself as landscape, as architecture, as a room with too many doors and all of them locked from the outside, and the EU says China is trying to reshape the global order, which is, I suppose, what global orders are for, reshaping, like clay, like faeces, like the bolus I cannot produce, and I think of the Chinese, their quiet industry, their loud innovation, their Kling AI raising two point eight billion dollars for video generation, as if the world needed more synthetic images, more digital hallucinations, more pixels pretending to be reality, and I, here, in my bathroom in Calcutta, with the fan that does not work and the smell of phenyl and the distant honking of Ambassador taxis, I am supposed to compete with this, supposed to produce, supposed to be a node in the global knowledge economy, supposed to generate content, generate value, generate meaning, and instead I generate nothing, a void, a silence, a constipation of the soul that no amount of isabgol can cure, and the Americans test their troops for low testosterone, as if war were a gym membership, as if geopolitics required a blood panel, and I think of my own hormones, my own chemical weather, the cortisol and the oxytocin and the whatever-else-circulates in this fifty-one-year-old Bengali bloodstream, and I wonder if I would pass the Hegseth test, if my biological foundation is sufficient to sustain the fight, the fight against what, against whom, against the toilet bowl that stares back at me like Nietzsche’s abyss, except the abyss is full and I am empty, or perhaps the other way around, and the cyclospora, that American import, that parasitic free trade agreement, it says hi again, it waves its little cilia from across the ocean, it reminds me that even in constipation there is company, that even in the void there are voices, microscopic, unwanted, but present, and I think of Proust, of course I think of Proust, because what else does a constipated man think of but time lost and time regained and madeleines and memory as architecture and the whole elaborate, baroque, endlessly digressive machinery of involuntary recollection, except my madeleine is a stool softener and my Combray is this bathroom and my Swann is the cyclospora, and I am not being entirely fair to Proust, I know, but fairness is for people who can evacuate their bowels regularly, who can metabolize experience into something other than this bloated, oversized, hard bolus of prose, and the Americans, they have their own Proust, their own memory, their own nostalgia without sentimentality, except theirs comes with a side of drone strikes and testosterone tests and AI equity stakes, and I think, I really do think, that this is what it means to be modern, to be bipolar, to be manic and depressive in the same breath, to be constipated and diarrhoeal simultaneously, a Schrödinger’s gut, a quantum superposition of gastrointestinal states, and the weather in Calcutta is hot, of course it is hot, it is always hot, the humidity like a wet woolen shroud, and I sweat on the toilet, I perspire, I exude, I produce moisture if not motion, and I think of the Japanese workers swapping suits for shorts to save energy, which is sensible, which is practical, which is everything I am not, because I am still in my lungi, still in my vest, still in the costume of the defeated, the deflated, the crude and funny and extremely earnest realist who knows that the world is shit but cannot even produce his own, and the AI is coming for my job, my thoughts, my constipation, Meta says its agents are slower than expected but they are coming, they are always coming, like the monsoon, like death, like the bowel movement I have been waiting for since Tuesday, and I think of the UN launching an AI for Good Global Commission, which is sweet, which is touching, as if goodness were a commissionable offense, as if ethics could be agenda-itemed in Geneva, and I, here, in my bathroom, I am my own commission, my own governance structure, my own ethical review board, and I have denied myself permission to exist, to produce, to evacuate, and the cyclospora votes in favor, it is the only constituency that matters, the only stakeholder, the only shareholder in this failing enterprise of my gut, and I think of the Hong Kong woman who threw faeces onto an air conditioner, Suen Siu-fong, fifty-nine years old, convicted at Eastern Court, and I feel a kinship, a solidarity, a fraternity of the faecally frustrated, because at least she acted, at least she delivered, at least she had the courage of her convictions and the contents of her bowels, while I sit here, paralyzed, theorizing, philosophizing, etymologizing the word “constipation” from the Latin constipare, to press together, to crowd, to cram, and how fitting, how etymologically precise, that my thoughts are crowded, crammed, pressed together in a hard bolus of unexpressed cognition, and the Americans, they are not constipated, they are the opposite, they are evacuatory, they are expulsive, they are the empire of the loose stool, the republic of the runs, and their AI is also diarrhoeal, producing text, producing images, producing video, producing meaning faster than meaning can be metabolized, and I think of the Google data centers consuming forty-two million megawatt-hours, the electricity of New Zealand, the power of Denmark, all to train models that will tell you how to make a soufflé or write a cover letter or generate a picture of a cat wearing a hat, and I, here, in the dark, in the humidity, in the constipation, I am the resistance, I am the holdout, I am the man who refuses to produce, who hoards his bolus, who keeps his meaning trapped in the lower intestine of his consciousness, and the Americans cannot understand this, cannot fathom the beauty of retention, the aesthetics of the unexpressed, because they are a culture of release, of catharsis, of therapeutic vomiting, and I am Bengali, I am fifty-one, I am the product of centuries of colonial constipation, of the British leaving us with railways and bureaucracy and a peculiar relationship to our own bodies, and I sit on this toilet, this porcelain legacy, this throne of Empire, and I strain, I push, I peristalse, and nothing comes, nothing but this, this endless, recursive, self-reflective, grotesquely swollen monologue, this bipolar rant, this manic-depressive symphony in one movement, and the cyclospora, that American ambassador, that parasitic peace offering, it says hi one more time, it sends its regards from some American intestine, it reminds me that even in the deepest constipation there is always something trying to get out, something foreign, something unwanted, something that does not belong, and I think, I really do think, that this is the ending, this is the conclusion, this is the hauntingly disturbing image that is also incredibly riveting and funny: a fifty-one-year-old Bengali man, constipated, defeated, crude, funny, extremely earnest, sitting on a toilet in Calcutta, while somewhere in America a troop is being tested for low testosterone, an AI is being offered to the government as equity, a T. rex is being sold for fifty million dollars, and a woman named Suen Siu-fong is throwing her faeces at an air conditioner, and all of it, all of it, is connected, all of it is one great digestive system, one enormous gut, one cosmic peristalsis, and I am just a bolus, a hard, bloated, oversized bolus, waiting to drop.

P.S. — The cyclospora sends its love. It is learning to code. It has applied for a position at OpenAI. It believes in public-private partnerships. It voted for the testosterone test. It is, in its own small way, very American.