To beat my temporary phase of loneliness, I chose to travel a bit. Not too far off but in my own city #mumbai . And this time I didn't take my beloved car along, coz it would have taken me to places I knew or the ones I could find on Google maps. This time, I wanted to get lost somewhere and find myself back. It was meant to be a journey of self hunting, more than just overcoming that feeling of empty spaces. So I decided to take random local BEST buses and travel until the last stop, no matter how far, and then head back using a different route.
To my surprise, I saw the Mumbai that I hadn't witnessed in my life so far. While I've been living in this city by birth, it has appeared to be a strange location to me, at times. I even walked few distances and asked the locals for directions, though I knew my way most of the time. These conversations were meant to only strike a dialogue with them and know a bit about their locality. The hot sun didn't seem to bother me much coz the emotional turmoil was adequate to deal with anyway. What I found somewhere hidden deep within though, was an inherent feeling of loneliness in every one I happen to speak to. A chai wala was alone in Mumbai, his family in the village and was planning to go to meet them but couldn't. A florist who lightens up people's faces with those beautiful flowers each day, lives alone too. When I got into a conversation with my cabbie, I realised how these people, in an attempt to make more money, go to Dubai and come back for random issues; and what lies beneath the surface of a rash taxi driver is a neat disciplined driver with an international licence who came back coz his village folks tried to get his daughter married forcefully.
I just indulged into a conversation with a photographer who had an awesome collection of Kashmir pictures on instagram and I was dumb struck. While I chose not to discuss even a bit on the country's most disputed "Kashmir issue", I couldn't escape the story of his brother who was killed in an attempt to search for a terrorist. However, his brother and the family were found innocent and given a clean chit later, the loss was inevitable and deep...very deep.
Surprisingly, this sinking feeling of being alone and wanting someone who would be there with you in all thick and thin, was mutual among all...just about every damn person I met or happened to talk to. And despite these empty spaces in the mind and lives, they were all smiles and living up as best as they could. Is the world so empty? Aren't we really together? Does this loneliness go off with time or do we just get trained enough to deal with it, to a level where we ourselves do not realise how vast these empty spaces grow deep within our souls and end us thinking of life as a mess...a nuclear war that is fought each day...until perpetuity.
My questions remain unanswered and I return thoughtful. I need to head to the Himalayas again...don't find bliss anywhere else.
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