Reflections On Being Alone

Manojendu Choudhury

24 May 2007, 05:31

This gentleman, like a hackneyed rail-engine that trudges lonesomely down the track pulling its burden behind, is carrying the train of his past, alone. Is he communing with the foliage hanging from the elderly branches? Perhaps he shares the times bygone with the water, the vegetation, the calm and the birds’ chimes in this oasis amongst the hurly-burly of modern city life, where one is alone in a crowd.

Is he made to feel a misfit amidst our tech-savvy, laptop lugging, chat addict, SMS efficient generation? Do the trees too share the same feeling, of being tolerated but unwanted entities in the concrete jungle, whence on their demise they will be efficiently turned into pulp for mass consumption? Perhaps they are sharing their mutual empathy in the early morning light, with a sweet breeze refuelling their biological engines to see them through the day, until the communion the next morning.

Rumination over the past, built on one’s toil and sweat, is the most intoxicating vocation, especially when it is apparently out of joint with the inevitable present. Nostalgia is an essential ingredient of the romanticism emanating from this solitary walk: what is it about solitude that is so captivating?

Starting with the racing of millions of sperm cells to reach the ovary, humans are always seeking camaraderie and competition, in order to exist and thrive. In our socially animalistic set up where companionship provides the necessary security to individuals, it is indeed remarkable that we all need the balm of solitude, even if for the briefest of periods.

That inexplicable call which needs to be answered in solitude, the call that urges the individual to rise above the mundane, dreary existance of this four spacetime dimesnions, is heard by all and sundry.

Romance is the means to transcend into a higher plane exuding beauty, tranquility and bliss, devoid of malice. Here the body unshackled of its physical limitations flows freely like the innocent spirit of a child.

Innocence is easily desecrated in the cheek by jowl interactions of a crowd, hence instinctively release is sought in solitude. Perhaps, the aim is to seek companionship of the free flowing spirits in that unknown dimension whose existance is only glimpsed when the childlike innocent sense of wonderous perception dominates the rational persona.

This gentleman in his solitary walk, is perhaps communing with the spirits of the trees, floweres, birds and bees, in that ephemeral plane where one is truly free! Perhaps his solitude is an illusion to the rational eyes.

The above piece was inspired by a photograph titled Alone by amateur phographer Subroto Sen.

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