Lonely Hearts

The spiders have a field day. Its not hard to believe if you see the hazy hue on the walls. The newspapers are piling up everywhere. There is one pile of newspapers six-foot high in one corner the room waiting for the raddi-wala. The raddi-wala comes shouting "paper, paper, old paper" everyday, but the only the price is not right and so the 6-ft high pile remains. Unwashed clothes have spilled over from the laundery basket, as there is no one to pull up the maid for stretching her weekly off till the next Saturday. Then the kitchen is full of empty two-litre Kinley water bottles, what else do you expect when there is no one to cook up some delicious biryani.

This is not a description of a bachelor's house but of a single bedroom house. Its more like a cave with no ventilation or sunlight and the lights have to be on all the time, day or night. But then hasn't man evolved from the cave men to the present tech savvy self?

The point over here is that the occupants of this cave-house are only two people. And they are married but are on compulsory and forced bachelorhood for some time. And that's where the loneliness creeps in. Its not an ordinary loneliness but is about 500-miles long and two-months old. Not counting the number of rupees pumped in a vain attempt to bridge the loneliness with some amorous talk over the BSNL cell phone. The standby time in the cell phone gets exhausted within 12 hours because of the overload of chatter. The urge and desire to talk to her are not bound by the clock and the sun. It is only the urge that matters. You pick up the cell phone and just press the redial button when you can control it no more. And lo and behold, your better half has been thinking on the same lines and was about to lift the receiver to dial your number. Our thoughtwaves are tuned to the same wavelength. Then you miss those 5 o clock rings asking to find out what you had in the canteen.
The SMS inbox and outbox are crowded everyday and have to be deleted everyday because of the heavy volume. But all this does not help in any way but it creates more loneliness as it makes you acutely aware of your state of forced bachelorhood. Oh by the way, forced bachelorhood is self-made not by any external force which makes it all the more painful.

There is huge pile of photo albums which suddenly descend from the shelf and perch themselves on the bed. They are so lovingly and ever so slowly flipped through to have a look at the loved one in order to dispel the loneliness. There is a faint flicker of hopeless hope that maybe as you scan the snaps which have been frozen in time, the one you are pining for might just materialise in front of you. But that does not happen, our modern science is still after all still so ancient??!! As a see those pictures of the two of you kissing each other with the mountains as a background, the erotic senses are tingling but you have to suppress them. All those albums are soon sent back to the top shelf. Then the favourite books read by your cherie are opened but not read because unfortunately and in a cruel twist she reads in a language that is total greek to you.

Then there is the bread and butter part. You scan the food columns and the favourite eateries mentioned in the newspapers and try to savour some of the food in those places but they dont measure up to your taste palate. It is funny though, because these are the same places you frequented with, your partner in tow, and you were actually asking her to make some of those dishes at home. But now they are so bland, probably the loneliness is eating you up and the tastebuds have retreated into a shell. They might surface at a later date when the aroma of the lover and her lovingly prepared dishes beckon from the small cofeetable-cum-dining table. Not satisfied with those swanky restaurants, you try out the small dhabas and the mobile food carts. They don't measure up to the familiar taste but atleast they dont burn a hole in the pocket. That's some consolation to your loneliness.

Then there's the music. Before the loneliness descended on you, it used to be the soft and lilting devotional songs that woke you up. After you woke up the music would stop, because you hardly had any time to listen to the music, you hardly had time to talk with each other. Sometimes you spoke in silence, sometimes loudly. All the same, as you planted a goodbye kiss to her before you went and logged into the office computer, she would demurely say that there was not enough time to talk. Now there is no one to talk to and only the loneliness whispers in the mind's ears. The hard disk deep inside the brain is on a loop, playing its own medley again and again which does not lock the loneliness outside. So you switch on the music system which in this case is an assembly of a walkman, a bass and treble booster and some speakers. One of the speaker is kept on the mouth of an old plastic waterpot which enhances the bass.
All the cassettes which have been tied up and thrown into a bag by the better half are now crying out for attention. Tied up and thrown into a bag because she will not hear a single lyric or strain from the "worldy casettes" as she calls them. So their redemption only comes when she is not around. What an irony, the cassettes are redeemed, albeit temporarily but I am shackled by lonelinees. So there they are all the cassettes neatly lined up in the box and the plastic cover. So I am forced to think of the old Shammi Kapoor number: Kiss ko sunoo, eh bhhi hai, woh bhi hai. Then I calmly console all the cassettes and tell them, every cassette has his listening hour. So the hour before and immediately after the "Quiet Time" (Quiet Time is spent with the Bible and in prayer for an hour or so after waking up) is spent with some of the devotional songs. Then those casettes which will whip up my mind into a frenzy before I leave for work will be engaged by the walkman. Some of these include the heavy trance like "Sphongle" etc. Then to cool off, some of the World Music like "Cyber Tribe" will be played. Otherwise, the good ole classical musicians will be carressing their flutes and tablas with their nimble and fast fingers and hands to belt out some really soothing beats.

The only plus point in this lonely world is that there is more time for the Bible and more time to pray to the Lord Jesus Christ. Because when she is around, devotion time is rationed which is actually wrong but cannot be helped.