Feline Musings

… I was single and very lonely. This doesn’t mean that people who are committed and engaged are not lonely. Loneliness, I realize today, is a very person-specific and circumstance-driven state of the mind and physical existence! As the poet says “Mehfil mai bhi kitne tanha the!”.

Coming back to my past state of singlehood, I was frequently contemplating on why I am single and why I am such a social outcast because I am not married. With the pertinent gaze of onlookers constantly inquiring in my single status and when and how I planned to get engaged, I was in quite a rebellious disposition.

I would oft try to find the answer to their questions by analysing my life scenario. I blamed it on destiny, on my unique temparement, on the frivolous emotions of men, and then I blamed it on my Independence; an Independence that scared men, and women too! Men because they didnt know how to dominate a woman who carried the banner of her financial and emotional Independence high; and women because they were afraid of the admiration and attraction that their men may feel for a woman who doesnt pester her man with her all-in-all dependency.

I am still an owner of a distinctive disposition, way of life and thinking and I am still fiercely independent. And though I am happily married now, I realize I am still quite alien in a world that fails to relate to women of education, standing, and most importantly independence. The struggle to make my own mark continues.

In a moment of deep reflection, I was going through notes that I had written way back to voice my loneliness and my unencrypted quest for a soulmate. The words are poignant and the pain is evident. I share those notes on this blog and as I transfer them from the clipboard to this public platform, I realize that the loneliness still lingers, in another garb, and yet I feel I am even more truimphant in the small daily battles that make up my life (our life as independent women).

“Beginning without an End …”

“There is a beginning but no end. For each day is a new beginning but without an end in sight. This is a story of evasion – the way I try to evade the new beginnings of each day and the way each beginning eludes its own end. It may have been the story of life, alas, only if it had an end! It is then actually a story of quest – the quest for a conclusion.

Sometimes in life we lay our own traps by taking the wrong decisions, by making erroneous moves; by stumbling upon paths, not yet tread. But what if life is a minefield from the very start? What if life doesn’t even give you the luxury of laying your own traps? What if you were born trapped?

Trapped by destiny, by the course of the zodiac under which you were born; Trapped by circumstances, of choices not made by you; Trapped by weakness, duty, responsibility, guilt, deception, threat, ambition, desire, and most strangely trapped by independence.

It is a paradox – Independence. So many times we break the shackles of dependency only to be fettered by loneliness. Loneliness is the price you must almost always pay for declaring freedom and standing strong and steadfast in front of the world. This loneliness is thrust upon you by the world to which you declare your independence. For this world seeks to control, to confine, to torment, to lay down the rules and to dominate the soul, the body, the heart and the mind.

When you decide to lay down your own rules, the world still lets you live on but damns you into the dark fiery hell of loneliness. And then the world savors the show – the show of the survival of your sanity, and your journey to find a route back into predefined ways of the world.

This is my quest – the quest for a way back – if one exists!”

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