All Alone, All Along

A vision that, for long, would frequent my thoughts momentarily and sometimes even disturbingly was of a small vacant room facing a rather wide-opened window. Drenched in the bluish-orange glow of the twilight, I would often be sitting languishingly within, ruminating such loneliness as born out of the the loss of one so loved (not necessarily caused by death), all the while looking out of the window. A vision, both of sight and insight, of such macro scope the window facilitated that it would hardly commensurate its size. Like a projection screen it would play out the time stained memories, all pieced together into a whole, like a film strip; except that no conscious chronology streamed its flow. I can glimpse through my experiences - revisit those shadowy corners of pain and misery and those brighter spots of happiness, only without being lost in the ever spewing cobweb of present realities. I forever attempt to gain a full view of my lived existence, but it never afforded the complete view of the ever emerging horizon. I don’t know if I should say that the vision renders me impassive to all electric influx of realities in my mind, or if it does accelerate such influx with rousing clarity. The radiant orange afterglow often reminds me of the orange serenity of the monks. Sitting by the window in the bus I wondered at the infinite expressions that innumerous faces wore. The deafening silence that the warm orange glow permeated abstracted all motions and life out of these faces; rendering them like the stolid baked earthen masks bearing suspended emotions - of a bawdy laughter, an ugly pain, a stilted arrogance, a garish pleasure, a hungry cry, a distant fear, a mawkish love and so many more to pin down. This ‘he’, that ‘she’, those ‘they’ were just faces, just strangers I did or didn’t know. I am all alone, and had been so all along. Those fleeting momentary indulgences of company, love, trust, bonding may obscure our vision, but can one deny our inherent lone earthly existence by our innate want of company? Can one deny those rare spasmodic recognitions when you find yourself standing alone amidst an expansive sea of strangers who jostle past you? Who can deny of never being consumed by that piercing fear of loneliness, the agonising ache that comes with the cognizance of there being no one to fall back on, despite the familiar faces around? The ‘he’ I miss, the ‘she’ I cherish, the ‘we’ that I belonged to; all seemed displaced, a mere delusion. In my opinion, ‘Individual’ is by far the most under rated word.