Solitude is a funny concept.
From whatever little I've seen of life around me, I believe the list of candidates opting for this concept can be divided into two categories -
- those who willingly choose to take to it, and,
- those who are forced to take to it.
I believe I'm suspended somewhere in between these two polarities.
Somewhere in the ruddiest corner of my mind, I may crave company - occasionally.
But, through and through, I'm a loner.
Not because I'm forced to be but I choose to be. The concerned 'mishap' did not take place in the present, but somewhere way back in the past.
I look around this room full of steel tables and old plastic chairs, and i see faces whose pretentious grins never seem to fade. Amongst these faces are some who are lost in the beauty of the charade- lost because they choose not to grin.
I sit across a girl who is busy smiling down at her blop of disgraceful dinner as her friend goes on about glitches in paper correction. There is a faint little lady sitting on my right- her smile is almost painful, for you know she has no interest in her neighbor's agonizing innuendos.But, slowly as the lights go out, the croaky voices fade out in the dark.
The night is stormy outside- the rain is pelting down on our tired heads as we walk back to Auschwitz. From a distance you can see huddled heads under the shade of an umbrella but you miss out on those who walk back alone without one over their heads.
I was caught wondering how people care so less. You wonder if tomorrow you're found dead in your room, with a razor that has unabashedly cut the veins of your hands, which were once throbbing with life - would anyone care?
The phone across the hall never seems to ring. You catch yourself staring at it and at the empty cell you are sitting in.
You tell yourself if it doesn't ring tonight, you shall let go - but do you, ever?
We're all clad in striped rags - carrying load for our masters down the pitch black stairways.
Margha lost her ability to hear for she mis-delivered a package to the wrong department. Her cell mates looked on in silence but none offered a word of kindness.
Tonight when she lays her empty self to rest, she would stop to wonder, "Is that how less they care?"
7.30 and the knell is heard.
We rush to the corridor holding buckets of water to clean our sinful selves.
I look around in wonder to see how similar walks around the clock bind us together- then in an instant I'm reminded of how alone every one is in this camp of circling death.
Maybe this is what Foucault was aiming at - sanity and insanity are relative terms.
I may be insane to the world. A recluse, perhaps.
But, what I deem as sanity is true to me. And only to me.
Even today the phone doesn't ring. The clock strikes 11. Then 12. Then 1 - and before you know it, the guards are beating against the gates. Gutturals of abuses are hurled at your futile wait and you close your eyes in the hope of never waking up to the hell that surrounds you.
But, you do wake up. Every morning. Every day.
The only difference being, you're never tired of telling yourself,
" Alone is the last place I want to be"
