Mr Lonely

“Lonely I'm Mr. Lonely . . .”

This is what I find myself singing to nowadays. Before you click the X button on this page let me tell you it’s the Bobby Vinton version and not the Akon cover. Two reasons for this- 1) I can’t sing like a chipmunk 2) I’m lonely, which some people, who know about such things, would say is a direct consequence of point number one.

However instead of brooding on the matter (which I might add I am especially good at, so good that matters of brooding which take most people days to brood comprehensively, I finish in a couple of hours enabling me to pick up the next broodable matter on queue ahead of schedule) I have decided to document my thoughts on the same.

Before you assume that this article is in relation to my egg laying ability, regarding which I cannot comment having not given it an honest try, I shall get back to the matter at hand.

I know what you are thinking. At least I think I know what you are thinking. (I make no pretense of my rudimentary telepathic ability) You think I merely spend too much time by myself. You think I just have too much time to kill.

Your thinking would not be entirely incorrect. I have in fact so much time to kill that I don’t just kill it, rather stab it in a few places here and there, poison it lightly, hold its head underwater for a little while, just stopping short of actually killing it, so that I can get back to murdering it later when I get really bored.

But that’s not entirely it. Most people confuse loneliness with solitude but really the difference is I-pods and oranges. To make the distinction clearer lets go back to school days. Most of us remember that excruciatingly dull ballad “The Solitary Reaper” by William Wordsworth. As evident from all the singing in the Scottish highlands, the pretty girl is relatively content in her solitude whereas the onlooker (Mr. Lonely) is dealing with his loneliness by leering, quite voyeuristically, at the attractive reaper. Although it is possible that Mr. Lonely might be the owner of the local distillery and is inspecting the reaping of the grain for the next batch of Scotch Whisky but that might be reading a bit too much into it.

Solitude is what you have when you take an extended walk in the nearby park or take a long drive down the interstate highway. Loneliness is what you get when you sit by yourself in you room days on end staring into your laptop screen without human contact. Eventually you chance upon some sites with the tagline “We put the online in Lonliness (sic).” But lets not get into that.

The most frustrating part of living alone is the lack of conversation. You could try talking to yourself but you almost always know what the other you is going to say, very much like an old married couple i.e. an old married couple that can’t stand the sight of each other. The other you rolls your eyes before you even finish what you have to say and you end up wishing that you’d never taken yourself out for a coffee in the first place, twenty years ago.

Inevitably, in my case, it results in me giving myself the silent treatment.

People also say that you get to learn more about yourself by being alone. What I have to say to that is that if I wanted to learn more about myself I’d stalk my own facebook profile clicking on my hideous album photos and reading my annoying status updates. Nonetheless I do learn that being by myself for days together takes me through periods of being grumpy, sleepy, dopey, nietzsche-y, bitchy, itchy and scratchy (which is also, coincidentally, the intended original cast of “The Seven Dwarves”). All right, the last few may be attributed to poor hygiene but that’s what loneliness will do to you.

So how does one cope?

Clearly the most obvious solution is to find some company and some companionship but if I were any good at that I wouldn’t be searching for synonyms for loneliness on thesaurus.com, now would I?

So dropping that bright idea, we have to find means of living with it, which isn’t easy, somewhat like living with a roommate who finishes all the booze. You can’t explain to him the inconvenience it causes you because then he would explain the inconvenience it causes him buying all the booze every time. Nevertheless I maintain that such a roommate is better than no roommate.

Since being alone in a quiet room is not easy, I decide to take myself out to lunch followed by movie. The immense effort involved in this exercise is unfortunately not appreciated by the outside world especially waiters and multiplex ticket booth clerks. Proof of which is as follows:

(Excerpt taken from “The Life and Times of Me”)

‘One ticket please for the matinee show.’

‘Sorry sir. Couldn’t hear you. Did you say one ticket?’ asks the clerk, speaking into the mike system. I can’t figure out why, talking as we are with each other, at a distance of less than one meter separated by a layer of thin glass.

‘Yeah. Just one ticket,’ I mumble, barely audible in contrast, whilst smiling awkwardly at the teenager standing in the queue beside me. She looks at me disdainfully.

‘Confirming once again sir. You want one ticket for the matinee show. That’ll be 180 bucks for one ticket.’ he says this time louder incase the octogenarian grandmother at the other end of the floor didn’t catch it the first time.

I pray for his sake that the glass separating us is shatterproof. I search for a blunt object but the lack of a one anywhere close by forces me to slip him the cash and pocket the solitary ticket.

The movie doesn’t start for another hour so I set off to the nearby pizza restaurant for a quick bite. I order a large slice of pepperoni pizza and plop down on the nearest table to catch a few overs of the ongoing test match between India and South Africa.

‘Sir would you mind moving to that table over there.’

I look up to see a young waiter pointing towards a longish slab of wood attached at right angles to the corner of the room. Below it is a row of bar stools.

‘Why can’t I sit here?’ I ask.

‘These tables are meant for families or couples. Those are the specially reserved seats for our individual customers.’ he says.

I want to tell him that I can’t get a view of the T.V. from there and I hadn’t eaten facing the corner of a room since about 15 years ago when I raised significant questions regarding the edibility of my mothers spinach casserole. Instead I make a long face and trudge to the corner of the room, not unlike 15 years ago.

I finish my slice of pizza and enter the movie hall. Just as I think my day couldn’t get any worse, I remember that my thinking hasn’t done me any good in a long while and I should put a stop to it altogether.

My seat is placed conveniently between two young couples. As I’m about to sit myself down between two fair maidens, the male and female constituents of the two couples switch seats and I now have two burly men at my either side. This saddens me, for reasons other than what you think. What kind of society do we live in, where only because a man comes to watch a movie by himself, he is immediately judged to be a desperate freak? Might not be completely wrong in this case (spot-on rather) but that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve decided to take my chances indoors.

It goes fine until one day the TV starts acting up. I must say I’m not a fan of these set-top boxes. They result in a total of 2 remotes in your hand (3 if you include the DVD player). I press enough buttons at work.

This forces me to open up my work laptop. Not one to finish overdue work before extended time I close it the next minute.

I switch on my personal laptop- endearingly christened “Lappy”. (Another by-product of loneliness is the appearance of imaginary pets in the form of inanimate objects). Three choices confront me – Internet chatting, Social networking and Tweeting. Suddenly loneliness is not such a bad thing. I close Lappy, who looks at me with sad light emitting diode eyes. I turn away and play the next song on my I-pod.

“All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?”