Lonely… Not Alone! writes Sajid Khan

No man is an island. So goes the saying. People also say, Hum sab maati ke putle hai. Translated, it means all men are mud puppets. Thank God! If the former was untrue, we’d all be Madh Islands! Chalo, on that nosedive joke, either I should stop writing today’s column or you should stop reading it instantly. For the sake of sanity… Okay, you want to continue? No problems. Kuch cheezein aapko samajh mein nahi aayengi. But don’t worry, main samjhata hoon, samjhata hoon...

I believe the average human is lonely. Irrespective of who they are with — be it family, friends or colleagues. Don’t get me wrong. Why do we make friends? And who is a friend? Is a friend someone who will... 
a)  Stop you from doing something wrong that might land you in jail? 
b) Be with you, knowing what you are doing is wrong and go to jail together? 
c) Get you out of jail? 
Perhaps, as a friend, you are a, b or c which is exactly what you expect from your friends. 
We often mistake our colleagues to be our friends. But in an office scenario, would a colleague/best friend... 
a) Quit if you were quitting? 
b) Protest if you’re protesting? 
c) Stop you from doing both? 
d) Will he/she still keep in touch with you on a regular basis after you leave the job? 

As the owner of the newspaper stand in Brooklyn, New York once said, “Life moves on, Time stays. And Playboy sells!” True, very true. Life does move on. Perhaps, we don’t.

I meet so many couples who tell me they are friends first, lovers later which brings me again to the much argued theory — Should friends be lovers? And is it really possible for lovers to be friends? 

Friends share secrets whereas lovers only keep secrets. From each other. Well, not all of them. I could name a few but then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. When a man cheats in a relationship and his girlfriend/spouse asks him to confess the truth, assuring him that she will understand because she’s his friend first, will he be honest? 

Most men aren’t and their relationships survive. With both the parties — gharwali and baharwali. Whereas there are four or five men in the world who do confess, in good faith that they are confessing to a friend first and a lover second. Automatically, he then realises that the lover who he thought was a friend first is now only an enemy. 

I’m sorry if I have miscalculated the number of men who would confess. It’s actually two or three, not even four or five. Some women also cheat but they are intelligent enough not to confess, except with the BFF, who in most cases is another woman, only to realise a few weeks or months later that the BFF is not really a friend. Moral of the story: The ultimate secret is the one which you take with you to the grave. Not the one which will put you there.

To sum it up, I feel that most of the times, we may not be alone but definitely lonely. My whole conviction rests upon the belief that loneliness far from being a rare and curious phenomenon is the central and inevitable FACT of human existence.