Alienation

Seems too odd to have this as a come-back post, but then, this is it. Of late, I realized alienating people whom I have once held close is my favorite pastime. Sometimes intentionally, but often it’s unintended. And this is not a recent favorite; it has been so all through. That which grows on you, and you realize it when you’re neck deep in it! More like falling in love. You always ‘think’ it’s not that difficult to fall apart till you sense the need to hold on to it, because that’s all you probably have to live through other mad things.

Coming back to alienation, rather looking back at it – I realize there are so many people whom I have alienated. People who once mattered in my life, who made my days bright and nights insomniac, who accounted for my four-figure phone bills… I let them all go. One by one, but eventually all! No, I don’t repent; I just wonder…when did this all happen?

Elizabeth Bishop has been a favorite for a decade now, for she taught me early in life that the art of losing is not hard to master. Now when I look back, it really isn't.  I have lost my heart (and it felt good), lost love (or so I think, and it didn't feel so good), my first drawing book, crayons, my first cell phone in an auto rickshaw! The shadows on the wall that kept me company in summer afternoons…my room in the attic…my diary to fire…I have lost them all! And it didn't kill me, perhaps just made me stranger to myself.

Yes, I have lost cities too. One that I lived for, the other that I lived in! Both, one after another…till I realized both have become cities that I reside in (or visit to). And home has always been an illusion, so I keep that out of the alienation story.

Some characters of the alienation story left me, I left some. Some moved away, I moved away from some. The journey has been interesting, and I don’t repent any moment of it. But I do wonder, is this the way life is ought to be designed – move some characters to make way for new, leave some to love some? Why can’t we have it all?

But then again, if it would have been so…alienating people whom I have once held close would not have been my favorite pastime.

So be it!