Prose

For the last few days I was too much
preoccupied with my work, in fact obsessed would be a better word,
yesterday I took out some free time for myself and let my soul and mind
free to think and do anything that it likes. Suddenly a silly idea
struck my civilized mind – I asked my mom to give me a brass plate
(pitoler thālā in Bengali) and poured some milk and water on it. Then
plucked a pink rose and some Calencho flowers and some leaves of bamboo,
petunia and Calencho from plants in my garden and spread them on that
milk and toyed with them to make various designs, took snaps of those
designs in my mobile camera and uploaded the album in Facebook (if you
wish to see them just click my name ARKO CHAKRABORTY in the Facebook
search engine and view my profile, the album is shared with everyone).


The designs were nice, not because I created
them, but because they were always there, I just discovered them and
felt happy. I didn’t create anything, I just figured out what was
apparently absent but always present. Some might say I wasted my time, I
should have been far more practical and completed my work. But I felt
that I spent my time for something good, for something pleasant, it was
worth it. The happiness which it gave me is beyond explanation. It gave
me a new boost to fight harder, to strive further and move ahead faster.


As we get more and more civilized we create
more and more rules, norms, deviation from which would be pointed out as
backwardness or lack of civilization. As we confront and abide by more
and more rules, we repeatedly restrict ourselves and hold back our
personalities within limited configurations.


So, in fact, we mechanize ourselves.


We think only what we are allowed to, speak
and hear only what’s prescribed. So while we think we are unbounding
ourselves we actually get bounded; while we think we are expanding our
capabilities, we actually stop growing; while we think we are speedily
developing our cognitive abilities, we actually cease to feel anything;
while we think we are globalizing and interacting with others all over
the world, we are actually making ourselves lonelier.


Right from childhood we are taught to be
programmed and expected to function. Nevertheless
somewhere-somehow-someday-someone inside us protests. We refuse to
behave like pre-programmed robots. Somehow we realize that each one of
us is lonely and we strongly desire to change.


This desire might have had its roots in the
primitive uncivilized man’s need for cooperation, need for togetherness
with one’s kind. Individualization was never the aim of Man. He always
realized the utility of staying in a group, he always found ‘many’ to be
more advantageous than ‘one’. So, it might well be in our genes that we
strongly wish to live in a matrix of relationships (preferably
acceptable).


Looking at all this from this respect
portrays the fact that perhaps Man is afraid of loneliness, it corrodes
us from inside, hence its not appreciable.


But there is another side also.


It is in loneliness that we can hear our
inner voice. It is in loneliness that we realize who we are, what we are
here for, what we ought to be, what we are to do. It is in loneliness
that we give due recognition to the self instead of loosing it in the
crowd. Only when we realize and feel its presence do we get connected to
it. This self may be named as the SOUL, the TRUTH, or GOD or CONSCIENCE
or DIVINITY or anything else.


Then does loneliness diminish our potential
or does it increase our self-esteem, does it hinder our growth or does
it boost our development by shredding off some needless burden, does it
really corrode us or does it bleach us clean? No one has the answer, yet
we all have the answer, it just depends on how we see it, whether we
use it to our advantage or we loose hope and consider it a curse.


But before we consider all that, do we really
give it a thought as to whether there exists anything called
loneliness? Being outside the matrix of relationships, being aloof from
some petty enjoyment, being forsaken and forgotten by some –is this what
we call loneliness?


The world and its affairs, the mind and its
thoughts, the self and its realizations, and above all the Unknown, are
just a few things which would not give us even a moment to feel lonely,
if we are really interested to unravel each of them. Books, internet,
music, talents, one’s own self and many many other things and thoughts
would keep anyone so much busy and occupied that one can never really
feel lonely. Quenching loneliness with the company of other persons is
not the only solution, even if it is at all, it is temporal.


We are lonely if we think we are, we can
blame the world and its civilization for it, but there is so much both
inside and outside us, that await us, that await our recognition, that
we can never really feel lonely.


Our journey of Life should be from incompleteness to completeness. Loneliness has no room here.