Home Alone

How many times have each one of us been left alone at home? Your parents/wife goes for a so called inevitable relative's or friend's family function leaving you unattended :-). What kind of feelings surround you when you are alone? Is it a time for a self introspection. Do you get a scary feeling of how life will be, in future, if all our dear ones leave us and we are left to fend for ourselves, rest of our life. Have you ever noticed your elderly acquaintances that you occasionally come across in a train or a market place trying to strike an endless conversation with you, with scant respect for your time. If you keenly retrospect, they would have been people who neither have the privelege of being surrounded by the dear ones at home nor have close friends, whom they can share their emotions with. Life in lonliness is not something that all of us can put up with. I personally have felt it many times alone at home. You start with the confusion of whether to make coffee at home or to go to a restaurant, to the choice of lunch for the afternoon. How long can you go on with reading or listening to music. The end result, you start looking for acquaintances to come across in the day, from the paper boy to the man who comes to collect clothes for ironing. Humans are social beings after all, who subconsciously long for love, affection and caring. A shiver ascends my spine when i read in newspapers of people being sentenced for life and may have to spend rest of their life in desolation in jail cells. But, i have heard of my friends who get into a mode of silence for a month in a year. They do not talk to anybody even at home for a month. They write down in a piece of paper, if they have to convey anything, and only if its very important. I have great reverence for such people and even think if such a practice will be possible for me. May be not. I have made resolutions on many days in the morning to talk very less for the day, both at home and at office. But unfortunately, they have turned out to be days when it would have been a riot talking and laughing. I need to seriously introspect my power of will and self control. Silence seems to be golden, may be for a few minutes, but if for ever, seems to be a torture.