It's the balcony of the new house that the Rainlover is very proud of. Now spending at least 1-2 hours at dead night on that balcony, with beautiful music accompanying him, has become a daily routine for him. That night also wasn’t an exception. It was somewhere around 1.30 at night; the Rainlover was on his chair watching the quiet Delhi night, in slumber, in front of him. Just in front of his house, a small triangular park was resting in silence. The breeze was soothing and the trees of the park were responding with a smile by nodding their heads as the breeze was caressing them - as if expressing the happiness of silent and natural romance!

Suddenly, the Rainlover could see an all-white body emerging out of the darkness. It was an aged man with a white head, white kurta and white pajama - he reached a bench in the park, silently observed it for a while, cleaned it a bit with his palm and sat down. He was looking at his own feet. Though, his face wasn’t visible for that afar, yet the Rainlover could visualise the senior citizen's not-so-happy state of mind. The gentleman put his hand inside the pocket, brought out a cigarette packet from his pocket, brought out a cigarette from the packet, stood up, reached out for his pocket again, then the other pocket… sighed a bit… and sat down! He must've forgotten his lighter!

Being a smoker himself, the Rainlover could feel the agony the gentleman was going through with a helplessly unlighted cigarette in his hand! The Rainlover didn’t think twice, checked his own pockets and with a brief smile, took the stairs.

"I don’t smoke much… but…" the gentleman finished his unfinished sentence with a shy smile. The Rainlover said, "Happens." The gentleman took a puff in, let the smoke come out and sighed, "These days… health doesn’t permit. But you see, in those good old days, I've spent such intimate moments with my cigarettes that I haven’t spent even with my own people!" The Rainlover agreed again, "That's true…" The gentleman continued without any provocation or inspiration, "I was married for 2 years at your age… you must be 25-26.. right?" Then he answered himself, "Yes, I think so… are you married?" Before the Rainlover could manage an excuse to justify his single-hood or any alternate topic to get engaged into, the gentleman answered, "I don’t think you're married… then you mustn’t have come down to offer a lighter to this old fellow… if you were married, by this time you would have been…" then he started laughing heavily with at his own joke!

Looking at the empty street ahead, the man sighed again, "You know, I love my wife. Initially, when both of our parents forcefully got us married, I wasn’t happy. I used to feel irritated a lot. But she was different… her silence and patience had power, you know! She was so magnetic with her silence… and when she gave me Akash (son), I can't explain it to you… for the first time, I realised what love is!"

The gentleman needed some moments of his own, so the Rainlover didn’t ask anything. With another sigh, followed by a cute smile, the man said, "When Akriti (daughter) got married and Akash shifted to Bombay with his family, my wife became my whole world, you know! Only a retired man can appreciate the value of a life-partner!" Then he started coining his own words, "Life-partner! A partner for a life…. throughout the life… and then suddenly…" The Rainlover urged, "Suddenly??" The gentleman looked happy, yet lost - "Suddenly, young man, LIFE ENDS!"

The atmosphere, like the Rainlover, was clueless… the man was looking straight into the eyes of the Rainlover. The Rainlover couldn’t manage any word to break the uncomfortable silence, but the experienced fellow did - "She died last year - cancer!"

The Rainlover was looking at the burning cigarette butt on the grass… the man got up and sighed, "Today is our marriage anniversary!" He moved on, with a smile… after a while, the Rainlover got up and moved on!   

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side

Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by force of some inner tide

The words of Pink Floyd were setting fire in The Rainlover's mind. He wasn’t sure whether his vision was getting wider or was shrinking narrower. All he could make out of the breezy night that something uncanny is holding him with himself. He tried to explain it to his friends in a different note! He said, "it's actually confident loneliness!"

"Confident loneliness"! What's that? He explained, "Generally, loneliness pains. On general occasions, people reach out for others while they are alone, because they assume their loneliness to be unjustified, something that, may be, they don’t deserve." But "Confident loneliness"? The Rainlover asserted, "Well, it's a state of mind that resembles with solo mental paralysis…. In this case, the lonely person no longer reaches out for anyone anymore, because he finds his loneliness to be justified and well deserved! What more, it's very rewarding as well!"

Frankly asking, for all the 'been there seen that' people, what has loneliness to do with others? Why loneliness stands as a state of being which is marked with others' absence? Why do we always make it 'relative'? Why do we always tend to conclude that, one is lonely if there aren't people around him/her with whom he/she can share his/her intimate or 'sideway' feelings? The Rainlover personally feels it to be an 'error of judgement caused by over-simplifying psychological poral syndrome'!  

Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

Now there you are! Pink Floyd explains this 'Confident Loneliness' as a state to be 'Comfortably Numb'… but one wonders, because of 'God-knows-what-prompted-reason(s)' they put forward the childhood resemblance of the simple-complexity stating "When I was a chind, I had a fever"!

Well, this fever is stated differently by William Wordsworth. He reather glorified it -

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,  

    The earth, and every common sight,  

            To me did seem  

    Apparell'd in celestial light,  

The glory and the freshness of a dream.          

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—  

        Turn wheresoe'er I may,  

            By night or day,  

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Not only this, he goes on to say -

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,  

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,  

To me the meanest flower that blows can give  

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Now that's weird, isn't it. The Rainlover will always wonder, why such a profound truth about 'oneness' again and again is de-meaned by relativity! Why loneliness as a state of mind can't be singular? Why can't it be 'oneness'?

Are we so damn pluralists deep inside? Are we so democratically conjugate from heart that we almost always sucessfully end up adding sighs to oneness? Well, the Rainlover wants the learned souls to have a debate on it.

He never intends to say that plurarism is bad or associations are only safe-guards, but what he essentially wants to put forward is that - as 'I'm with my friends' brings gentle smile on our faces, what wrong 'I'm with myself' has done then? Is the reward on the latter case is of lower value? Well, frankly speaking, it's exactly the other way round. Creativity or achievement is mostly an impulsive reward… if that reward can come through others' association, it can very well come through oneness as well… and through ownness for sure!

All in all, the Rainlover firmly believes that pure sense of association with OTHERS with the right singular spirit is always welcome, but let's not reach out for others only because we're incomplete and lost inside! Let's not make our friends the Fill-Ups! And if we do that, which is very normal humane in nature, let's be humane enough and extend to guts to accept it, even before using it! Because, you know what, the same Pink Flod sing "Don't Leave Me Now" and "Wish You Were Here"… But thankfully, they extend their guts by saying -

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here...

The blog essentially is trying to portray the mental swings the Rainlover is going through currently… not meant to exhibit any un-called-for Gyaan. Taking it otherwise is readers' personal choice, the Rainlover would then be just an excuse for that!

God Bless You!

EnjoY~