Being alone is one thing and feeling lonely is an altogether another feeling.
But sometimes the divide between these two feelings, though thick, gets blurred due to our own actions. Once into this dangerous intersecting area, one must get to know this as early as possible and jump back to an area that is secured to be called at best.
Year 1999, was a very trying year for me. Away from home in this place which lacks the comfort of talking your heart out, as there is nobody to listen to you, and more so when people know you are hitting a rough patch, financially and then emotionally, you come to realize that you are alone. One can at best bottle up his feelings and throw it into a sea of wilderness and forget that there is even something called a heart in one's body. But there is a silver lining to this feeling - You somehow attain a certain balance in life and peace. After all, sooner or later, we all realize one day that life is most of the times about materialistic aspirations and then humanity is only a day to day affair where you do charity for Gods sake. Despite this few people will still be there who will stand with you through thick and thin. In my case it was only my wife. Parents in a distant place, I never wanted to bother them with my worries. What help would it provide rather than making my problems seem quadrupled than they were. As it is they were already double, one mine and the other shouldered by Huma, my wife. Life was passing away like a job which is done on a shift basis. Huma would set out in the mornings to her school and would be back by noon and then after an hour I would leave home to do tuition and would be back at eleven in the night. The intervening night would provide little solace as we would be busy with a two year old child, Kaleem. We both were like those assembly line units, which function in harmony yet are distinct in their individuality.
Despite all this my mind would wander into the vicious circle of despair and keep on trying to break the already eroding confidence in my abilities and myself at large. It had become a kind of habit to keep thinking about something which had no base and would always be ineffectual. I had to break this cast that was altering me into certain shapes that was not indigenous to me. In one word, I was getting lonely while I was alone. And this was the dangerous zone I was getting into.
Amongst these days, one day was different. That day I entered the bookshop that is quite famous in Jeddah, also because it is the only one that is there. Whatever the reason, I just entered it and went to the section where reading material was kept. I picked up books randomly and ran though some passages to get a feel of the content that they contained. Back in India, I had always visited the area where books were sold at throw away prices alongside streets and pavements on Sundays. I would sit there and run through the books pages flipping through the pages reading few lines and passages and take those books on rent, read them and return back the next Sunday and pay some more to the balance amount and take new ones. This was a cycle that was maintained for most part of my student life. Somehow this cycle broke when I came to Jeddah. I must say that it unnerved me no end as I this cycle had abruptly broken. Visiting this space was like coming home. I had entered back in my heaven. After spending an unknowing 3 hours in that bookshop, I picked up 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth, which was and is still a bestseller. I bought that voluminous book that ran into about 1349 pages and headed home. That night I started reading the book. There is no questioning of Vikram's talent in creating this epic book but for me it was those characters that stuck to me like glue. Every night I would read a couple of pages before going to bed as there was no free time other than that to sit back and have a continuous read. The book dealt with the life of the central character Lata, a 19 year old girl and the arduous task her mother Rupa has of finding a match, a suitable boy for her. The book, set in the 1950's dealt with Lata and 4 other families which are related to her. I do not remember when the book came to an end but the time when I came to the concluding pages, after reading for about three months, I had developed a kind of relationship with these characters. The last passage which describes Lata moving out of her hometown with her husband in a train, still lingers in my mind. It is a very moving image that had left me moist eyed because with Lata's finding a suitable boy, the book had come to an end. And I was again alone. But it is not the only affect the book had on me, because It had changed me in more than one way than I could had ever envisaged. I had broken the circle of loneliness that had seeped into my life. The book had provided me the companionship that I had so much longed for that I only realized it when the book came to an end. I was relieved that I did not go back to my own worries about which I could do nothing other than just think about them. I realized then that we all have worries about which we sometimes cannot do anything but then we can at least divert our minds from these worries.
That day I had broken the worst of the habits that I had developed, that is of thinking about something that would never change, never happen and something about which I could do nothing.
With that feeling I headed towards the bookshop to pick up another book to run the cycle uninterrupted. With changing times, my life changed for good and somewhere the worries of those times ceased to exist or rather gave way to new worries. But I had learned the trick that of keeping myself so busy that I did not have a single free moment that could turn into a lonely moment of my life. I broke that certain habit by creating a new one.
But sometimes the divide between these two feelings, though thick, gets blurred due to our own actions. Once into this dangerous intersecting area, one must get to know this as early as possible and jump back to an area that is secured to be called at best.
Year 1999, was a very trying year for me. Away from home in this place which lacks the comfort of talking your heart out, as there is nobody to listen to you, and more so when people know you are hitting a rough patch, financially and then emotionally, you come to realize that you are alone. One can at best bottle up his feelings and throw it into a sea of wilderness and forget that there is even something called a heart in one's body. But there is a silver lining to this feeling - You somehow attain a certain balance in life and peace. After all, sooner or later, we all realize one day that life is most of the times about materialistic aspirations and then humanity is only a day to day affair where you do charity for Gods sake. Despite this few people will still be there who will stand with you through thick and thin. In my case it was only my wife. Parents in a distant place, I never wanted to bother them with my worries. What help would it provide rather than making my problems seem quadrupled than they were. As it is they were already double, one mine and the other shouldered by Huma, my wife. Life was passing away like a job which is done on a shift basis. Huma would set out in the mornings to her school and would be back by noon and then after an hour I would leave home to do tuition and would be back at eleven in the night. The intervening night would provide little solace as we would be busy with a two year old child, Kaleem. We both were like those assembly line units, which function in harmony yet are distinct in their individuality.
Despite all this my mind would wander into the vicious circle of despair and keep on trying to break the already eroding confidence in my abilities and myself at large. It had become a kind of habit to keep thinking about something which had no base and would always be ineffectual. I had to break this cast that was altering me into certain shapes that was not indigenous to me. In one word, I was getting lonely while I was alone. And this was the dangerous zone I was getting into.
Amongst these days, one day was different. That day I entered the bookshop that is quite famous in Jeddah, also because it is the only one that is there. Whatever the reason, I just entered it and went to the section where reading material was kept. I picked up books randomly and ran though some passages to get a feel of the content that they contained. Back in India, I had always visited the area where books were sold at throw away prices alongside streets and pavements on Sundays. I would sit there and run through the books pages flipping through the pages reading few lines and passages and take those books on rent, read them and return back the next Sunday and pay some more to the balance amount and take new ones. This was a cycle that was maintained for most part of my student life. Somehow this cycle broke when I came to Jeddah. I must say that it unnerved me no end as I this cycle had abruptly broken. Visiting this space was like coming home. I had entered back in my heaven. After spending an unknowing 3 hours in that bookshop, I picked up 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth, which was and is still a bestseller. I bought that voluminous book that ran into about 1349 pages and headed home. That night I started reading the book. There is no questioning of Vikram's talent in creating this epic book but for me it was those characters that stuck to me like glue. Every night I would read a couple of pages before going to bed as there was no free time other than that to sit back and have a continuous read. The book dealt with the life of the central character Lata, a 19 year old girl and the arduous task her mother Rupa has of finding a match, a suitable boy for her. The book, set in the 1950's dealt with Lata and 4 other families which are related to her. I do not remember when the book came to an end but the time when I came to the concluding pages, after reading for about three months, I had developed a kind of relationship with these characters. The last passage which describes Lata moving out of her hometown with her husband in a train, still lingers in my mind. It is a very moving image that had left me moist eyed because with Lata's finding a suitable boy, the book had come to an end. And I was again alone. But it is not the only affect the book had on me, because It had changed me in more than one way than I could had ever envisaged. I had broken the circle of loneliness that had seeped into my life. The book had provided me the companionship that I had so much longed for that I only realized it when the book came to an end. I was relieved that I did not go back to my own worries about which I could do nothing other than just think about them. I realized then that we all have worries about which we sometimes cannot do anything but then we can at least divert our minds from these worries.
That day I had broken the worst of the habits that I had developed, that is of thinking about something that would never change, never happen and something about which I could do nothing.
With that feeling I headed towards the bookshop to pick up another book to run the cycle uninterrupted. With changing times, my life changed for good and somewhere the worries of those times ceased to exist or rather gave way to new worries. But I had learned the trick that of keeping myself so busy that I did not have a single free moment that could turn into a lonely moment of my life. I broke that certain habit by creating a new one.
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