It was during a pause between sets—those necessary intervals where one pretends to be timing one’s rest, but is in fact reconsidering all of one’s life choices—or—a place where one pretends to escape the vanity of the world only to find it thriving in every mirror—that I turned to my personal trainer with a question intended, at first, to pass the time. “How would you describe yourself, mate?” I asked, expecting perhaps a string of words like “disciplined,” “motivated,” or some jargon involving “core strength” or “macros.”

But instead, he gave me a look not unlike that of a man preparing to unveil a private gospel. With the poise of a monk and the irreverence of a sailor, he said, “I’m a two eggs in the morning, two pegs in the afternoon, and stick it between two legs in the night kinda person, buddy.”

Now, there are moments in life when a statement, however crude or curious, strikes one not merely as amusing but as strangely… emblematic. I laughed, of course—how could one not? But as the laughter subsided, I found myself troubled not by the indecency of the remark (which was considerable), but by its unsettling clarity.

For in that offhand summation lay, I daresay, the distilled liturgy of a certain sort of man. The two eggs—a symbol of nourishing simplicity, the primal satisfaction of routine, the body’s unspoken covenant with the frying pan. The two pegs—not fence posts, mind you, but pegs of whisky: the gentleman’s evening benediction, both a punctuation mark to the day and a slow unravelling of the self. And finally, the third act of this rather elemental opera—the impulse that has launched ships, levelled cities, filled nurseries, and emptied bank accounts: the unrelenting pursuit of the carnal.

In three parts, the day is drawn: sustenance, intoxication, and instinct. How strangely economical! One might imagine that after thousands of years of civilisation, invention, and enlightenment, man might have become a more elaborate creature—but no. Beneath the smart watches, the philosophical podcasts, the tailored suits and quinoa bowls, he is still this: breakfast, booze, and bed.

Now, this is not to say that all men live by this code. There are saints among us (I am told), and contemplatives who rise with the dawn to ponder metaphysics and drink herbal tea. But if we are honest—brutally, comically honest—most of us hover somewhere between the treadmill and the tavern, dreaming of breakfast, bracing for work, and occasionally believing ourselves poets of passion after the second peg.

What fascinated me most was not merely the humour of his reply, but its unblushing transparency. He did not dress it in excuses or apologies. It was not the boast of a libertine nor the confession of a penitent—it was simply fact, as obvious and immutable as gravity. And perhaps that, too, is something men share: the quiet conviction that if one has eaten well, drunk just enough, and not died of loneliness, one has somehow managed to meet the day on its terms.

Of course, one could dissect this further. One could ask whether such a life is sufficient, whether it feeds the soul as well as the stomach, whether it is a liturgy or merely a litany. But in that moment, standing amid weights and sweat and fluorescent light, it felt almost divine in its absurdity. And I thought to myself—as men throughout history have done when hearing some rough truth put plainly—Well, he’s not wrong.

Now, I confess, I laughed with the unguarded delight of a schoolboy overhearing something vaguely improper at a dinner table. And as the echo of my mirth bounced off the dumbbells and protein shakes around us, I found myself reflecting: is this not, in some absurdly honest way, the anthem of manhood—a sort of primal haiku for the modern male?

And perhaps, for better or worse, that is what it means to be a man: not a grand ideal, but a humble rhythm—two eggs, two pegs, and the rest is pure fucking biology.

Rahul’s grandmother slipped quietly from this world on the evening of the 6th of June, in the year 2009. By ordinary telling, she died. But to say merely that would be to omit what truly occurred. For she did not vanish alone into that good night. Her husband, having walked beside her through the long passageways of life—through youth and ageing, through childbearing and loss, through the commonplaces that lace the days of the married—found himself, within hours, a solitary figure in a house now grown cavernous with absence.

On Saturday, he sat in a corner, rigid and still, like some ancient statue whose purpose has been lost to time. On Sunday, his sorrow found voice; he wept openly and without shame, as a child might cry for its mother. “She should not have gone,” he kept repeating, again and again, as though he could call her back by the sheer ache of his longing. By Monday, the refrain had not changed. His eyes wandered, dazed; his voice trembled with disbelief—as though he had not yet learned how to be a man alone. And by that very evening, he too was gone. But those who beheld him in death did not see the grimace of struggle or the clench of agony. No. His countenance, they said, bore the strange and sublime stillness of a man who had at last come home.

It is a common saying among the sentimental that one can die of a broken heart. But it is not only sentiment. Medical science, that ever-unfolding ledger of what the body can bear, has shown that such a thing is no mere poetic conceit. There exists a condition—Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, they call it—where the heart, upon suffering intense grief, weakens and distorts in a manner mimicking a heart attack. The brain, flooded with the chemistry of despair, alters its messages to the heart, disrupting rhythm and function. The immune system too is impaired; inflammation takes root; appetite and sleep are fractured. In short, the whole person—mind, body, spirit—staggers under the blow. It is, in essence, not only a death of the heart, but a death by the heart.

Yet the question must be asked: Is it not fitting that those who have lived in union should long to depart in union? What greater evidence to love than the soul that refuses to tarry long where its other half has gone? We are told in sacred Scripture that “the two shall become one flesh”—and perhaps, when one part is torn away, the other simply cannot remain. Love, rightly understood, is not a fleeting sentiment or a pleasant arrangement of companionship. It is a joining, a knitting together of spirits so deep that even death is not always able to unravel it.

I confess, after the shock had passed, I felt a strange loveliness rise within me. It was not a soft comfort, but something closer to awe. These two, bound by decades of joint breath and burden, had crossed the threshold together. If ever there was a picture of true unity—of soul mates, in the deepest and most reverent sense—this was it.

And then came the quieter, more unsettling question. Can such a love be found today? In a time when love is often bartered like a commodity, when affection is fleeting and fidelity is mocked as naïve, where does one even begin to seek a love that survives not only time, but death? I do not mean merely romantic fondness, which burns brightly and fades quickly. I mean the love that weathers all things, believes all things, endures to the end. The kind that turns even the grave into a rendezvous.

Perhaps such love is rare now not because it no longer exists, but because we no longer believe it possible. Our culture, awash in distraction and irony, recoils from the vulnerability love demands. But somewhere, quietly, in the hearts of the faithful and the brave, it still burns. Not loudly, not showily—but with the steady flame of eternity.

And should one be so graced as to find it, let them not clutch it selfishly, but rather live in it as one would live near the sea—with reverence, wonder, and readiness to be changed by its depths.