Being Alone

where I talk about the terror and trauma and the liberation which comes from being alone

I love being alone. It is something I have grown into, from the time I found writing. For writing is lonely - there's a notebook, a pen, my thoughts. That's all.

A summer afternoon in Washington.

But it's also been a transition. From the days when I was a solitary child, tucked in a bed, reading a storybook alone, till the time I just glowed thinking of getting time with myself, to the exclusion of others altogether. It could be in the city which is my home, or on trips, on holidays; it is a transition which has taken a natural course.

I am just comfortable with myself. I do not incite myself to prove or to mean anything to anybody. To be in my own skin is to be both in my comfort zone as well as be a challenge to myself.

I have often wondered at how people psych themselves if they ever find themselves alone. It's just that most people don’t know what to do with themselves. We are used to the routine things which we do alone - get ready, go through the motions of exercise, rituals, victuals, drive our own car to office, et al. Even in office, jobs require teamwork, and there are systems to whose beat officialdom works. It is when we are alone, completely alone, that panic kicks in. Because we are not used to it. We don’t know what is the conversation we need to have with ourselves, how do we convince, whom do we cajole, what do we negotiate. When none of it all is required, we have no second beat to dance to. And we are lost.

In repose in a park in London

But possibly, because I've been alone for long stretches, even whilst staying in the family, I have grown comfortable with the rhythms of my desires and compulsions.

I have now lost count of the number of personal trips I have made alone, often appended to official trips. Washington, New Orleans, Puri, London, New York, Lucknow, Santa Fe, Venice. I have scoured these cities at a pace and in a way which I never could have done with anybody else. Swinging between hyperactivity and complete lassitude, I have not cared how I went about my discoveries. I merely listened to my heart, my legs, and my writing pen.

And then lingered for hours beside a lonely canal bereft of gondolas, my legs hanging just above the water as I wrote. Or walked and scoured memorials and museums as if there was no tomorrow - 40000 steps in a day, if I remember correctly, which would be equivalent to about 20 kilometres! Or I have sat in the verandah of a beach house, my legs on a balustrade and typed into my laptop for five or six hours straight, the sound of the waves like a staccato musical backdrop to my thoughts.

An evening in Venice

I can't say I was being my truer self when alone - how can I fully know, because the best or the worst of us is often when we are with people.

But what was happening was that I was reaching into places inside which were untrammelled, often undiscovered.

Nietzsche once said "The soul that has once been nourished on solitude knows also how to be alone in a crowd." And I have often wondered about that. Am I a better social being because I am also a better solitary person? There could be a meaning there somewhere. Because being alone centers me, makes me get reintroduced to essentials, beyond show and artifice and compromise. When I have nothing to prove, nothing to be judged on, nothing to show, there is a truth which floods my mind. And I come closer to myself.

Singing tree in New Orleans

I read somewhere - I think it was Gandhiji who said it - that in a gentle way we can all shake the world - but it all begins with being alone with our reflections on what we truly believe.

Cutie pies in Santa Fe

So I intersperse my outings. It's a joy being out with family or friends - to see the same thing through their excitement and eyes. To share the gorgeousness of something with someone you love is a benediction. But ever once in a while I think we discover that there is no companion as companionable as solitude.

We are not necessarily better off alone, but solitude is a teacher, in subliminal and subtle ways. We learn to tiptoe inside ourselves, and find the silent nook come alive.

Jai Jagannath temple in Puri

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