a solitary soldier

11.00 p.m- Ahmadabad-India.

  

Here I was, in a restaurant, with all the smiling faces around me but no one with me!!  

I was slowly being taught about one of the toughest time for human kind which is to be alone in an unknown place among unknown people of unknown language and longing for a companion to hang on while all others around were celebrating their time. And I was on it.

As I neither knew Hindi nor Guajarati, I had feared even to open my mouth. But some way I managed to buy my dinner, thanks to the picture in the menu card! 

Yeah!! My dosa was going tasteless by then, as I felt nausea not in my belly but in my heart!! I badly needed somebody to talk, as my heart was begging to bid a good bye to the loneliest day.

I started calling my dad, as my eyes were about to start raining due to the clouded heart. 

To the perfect coincidence, he was having dinner which meant that I had to manage myself not to share him what I needed to, as it might ruin not only his dinner but also his whole night.

Though I was trying to cut short my words to cover up my sad status, he still felt the sadness in his poor son’s voice which must have hurt him a lot. I bid good night not to burden his heart. But I still could not ease the pain in my heart. Probably I did not know how to express what I was felling right then, as I could not control my heart from stumbling.

I was just wondering about my whereabouts as I lost my way to the office guest house. I was also not sure about the way back to my guest house, but I started walking blindly like a river which flows on the way wherever the canal leads!! 

Given my languages and situations, I didn’t dare to talk even with an auto driver about the way which I had to prefer to reach the guest house. My mind was telling that I had to stop walking in that way and reach my guest house. 

But “Ahh! Who cares?” tells my heart frustrated by the solitary. I wondered that I could breathe normally if I stopped walking then.

I would depict the shivering cold as 'dew drops making love with air in the atmosphere if I was a poet, but it looked then everything was being overshadowed by the pain caused by the loneliness. In fact I felt in myself as if my body was a bit warm!!

Finally I had determined to wander there even if it led to a no man land, to reduce the loneliness cancer spreading in my heart. 

As i started walking on the road, nobody was seen there as if the road itself was suffering of what I had been through!! 

Slowly I started to share the special day with nobody but with me, as I jumped into the walking. Walking on the roads of “navarangpura”, I found me and the nature, two lonely riders of life.

Each second of that moment and day, my soul was dissolving solely in loneliness. This mental cancer was spreading through and growing in my heart.  Since the start of that day, I laughed at myself, cried with myself, fought with myself and now I even started sharing this with myself on this lonely road. The frustration was riding top on my mind. 

Yeah, it was the inimitable day which featured the pongal in Tamil nadu, the kite festival in Gujarat, the lohri in Haryana (I knew it from ashok who was all the way from haryana). A lot to celebrate in a single day but unfortunately I didn’t have a single person to celebrate with!

The off day is always a half day!! I got up in the noon and my room literally looked like a jail (even in jail sometimes you have a jail mate!!). I could not find anybody around there, as my roommate must had left for dating. Of course the house had a TV, only looked like making some noise as I didn’t know hindi. 

As minutes passed by, I felt strange by the loneliness that just started to suffocate me. All of sudden blankness was all around me. First time in my life I felt terrific pain in my heart even though majority of the time I had been felt this thing since my childhood. It actually told me the more you grow, the better and bad you feel about things. I could hear my heart telling that I was missing somebody.

Though I was trying listen to the bests of Enrique, still my heart was not at all ready to get satisfied with that.

God, I did not know the meaning of being all alone there. The loneliness started questioning about my being.  It was like why I have to feel all of this stuff right through my life?

Who is there for me?

Don’t I deserve any relationship to feel the love?

Don’t I have even a single person close to me to share myself?

Why I am doing this all alone??

Yeah obviously I had my mobile phone with me. But I could not pick up a single person to tell what I had been going through. My mind was telling me how disastrous my life is.

Leave alone about thinking for sharing these feelings!!  To be honest I hesitated to tell anybody (if I got anybody there at that time) that I had been suffering from this loneliness. Because I deeply feared that my people would definitely chuckle at me hearing this. 

I believed that it could not mean any difference to them, since it was not about any stardom but about a next door boy's poor story.

Suddenly I lost all the faith in me about this life. I did not dare to guess about where this life is goanna lead me. 

Unable to bear up with the thoughts, I came out of the room and stood in balcony to watch the kites. 

The colorful kites flying up so high to reach up the sky. Bright day with lot of cheerful spirits had added some colors to the kite festival. Children betting up each other on their kites. 

Pigeons, romancing each other around the corner of the building. In fact they were cuddling each other as if the next day is never gonna exist for them.

I started wondering why I (the so called six sense human being) could not make any love in this stage of my life, when this so called five sense pigeons could make a hell lot of love.

I was guessing where I had misread this life to end up this way. In fact what has made me to feel this lonely in my life?

 Why my heart is looking for some love from others rather than loving itself!!

I was wondering whether I was alone in this battle!! When is goanna over this lonely life which has started way back in my childhood days?

I could even remember the line said by mother Teresa "The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved".

I could not get any hint of answers for these questions. I went in my room and shut the door to get out of this thought. But i  was  actually moving closer to a lot of loneliness.

I thought spending time in a public place and enjoying the sunset would make me better. So I started out but to the worse it further made me worse like the pigeons. My stream of thoughts started to flow again instead of sighting the sunset.

It was looked like an unanswerable question that what to expect from my people. I did not know how to make them feel good about me. Because I had no idea what is the meaning for the word friendship, love, and support in my people's dictionary. 

 God, I wish I knew the meaning for all those said words.

But I was slowly told by mind that why would not it be this sixth sense is the answer for all the doubts I have?

Because If only this human being had not got this sixth sense which makes us think a lot unlike those pigeons,everybody would have found their love and support like those same pigeons.

It must be the sixth sense which drives this human being not to feel their fullest love, as we think that we can live even without the unconditional love but definitely not without some external meaningless things such as status, culture and some bloody own theories. I wondered whether god had created human alone or with the above said things which I feel as utterly against to this nature.

This extra sense doesn‘t allow us to empathy others, as we are standing in a comfortable place. I could not understand how come people could able to show a great love for the five sense animal such as "dog" but not to the fellow human being. 

This sixth sense only whispers us to let our loved ones suffering in loneliness, So that we can show them how busy we are in this life.

This senseless sense gives us the license to criticize anybody whom we don’t like, regardless of anything, as if we are just a perfect human being. I could not understand that why we are so concentrated on somebody's wrong behavior rather than their lovable good things. 

This idiotic sense only makes person to become so conservative in expressing feelings. Because only we think that what we are doing is always right, what culture we are following is always correct. We believe that whom we are admiring is always right in showing the path to our life. But what they are giving us is not necessarily be always right, I thought. 

Is it that bad to express your feelings to somebody and for somebody? Now if the culture’s answer is yes for this, then why the hell god has made people for each other here!!

Why my people are so hesitating in expressing their love. is not this sixth sense ruining us by making us doing so? How come my people still don’t understand each other even after 2 decades?

God, why couldn’t I find any feelings which are as raw as the nature?

God, the least question is why I didn’t take a birth like those pigeons at least to exchange some real love without any difference, any ego, and any status in mind!! 

Why did not I take a birth like those pigeons, so that I would have not had this fucking sixth sense which always thinks about this society which has nothing other than a stupid culture and its bullshit rules which are blindly followed by my people!!

Why did not I become those non living kites not to feel this loneliness in my life! 

It was the first time in my life I felt badly for being a human being.

How come we could lose all this basic human feelings for the sake of the way we are being driven and rules which were written by some coward animals?

I could remember following lyrics from the foreigner’s song: 

“In my life there's been heartache and pain
  I don't know if I can face it again
  Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
  To change this lonely life

  I wanna know what love is
  I want you to show me
  I wanna feel what love is
  I know you can show me”

I knew that thinking all these stuffs won’t make any difference in being here other than hurting me more.

But I didn’t’t know how to react and I was just trying to pass all those terrific seconds wishing i never had been born.

     The mind was losing the limit of bearing the pain any more by thinking of all those stuff. The mind was dying to remember all the struggled moments of my life lately as if I have not got enough pain at that moment. Time passed by towards dinner as my thought process racing out of my mind. Hunger joined hand with loneliness to torture me.

     With the terrible suffering, I just wanted to walk all through the night in the abandoned road which had been accompanied only by the mild winter. 

     Even though this whole lonely walk made me remember all the pain again and again, it still got me out to feel the real me and the reality. I have cried inside me many times before for living such a miserable life. But this one definitely seemed different. I just wanted to be the story of “INTO THE WILD” (movie by sean penn). It almost suits my story.

      As the time went by, this cool winter air and this loneliness walk just started soothing me somehow. But if I didn’t’t stop walking, then I might risk losing of auto rickshaws as the clock was about to embrace midnight. But as usual, smile was my reply to show the auto driver that I had understood of his talking, which was not actually the case. Often I told him the word MANIKBAUG (place where my guest house is) to stay in his conversation.

      Though the day left me with a lot of unanswered questions, still I got one answer from her. The answer is “it is my life”. No matter what, you have to live this life out. So better be prepared to do it with yourself by yourself than crying out in this deserted land where no one can hear you unless you are loved. 

 With love

 muruga.pon

P.S. This is me recording my moments into the notes here. If I am not wrong, I know i am not alone here battling this war. Having said this, I am always there to hear if you have any locked feelings to share. Thanks a lot for sharing mine one here, as I always believed that feelings are to be shared.  Thanks to my editor who is adding some extra life to my unlocked stories.