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Sometimes, eavesdropping can be quite enlightening. The other evening, at a diplomatic do, two smart young men, fixtures on the Delhi social circuit, were discussing one of the country's top business tycoons. One of them had spotted this gentleman at a party in Mumbai, standing all by himself: nobody approached him, and he did not approach anyone. “It must be lonely at the top.Who can he talk to? He must think everybody wants something from him…” His friend nodded sagely, adding, “Well, I for one would never go up to him. These super richies only want to meet their own kind.”

Could he be right? See the huddle that the chosen few, or the current A-list types whose faces are their passports to almost anywhere, go into at social gatherings— the sorts for whom Davos is actually becoming déjà vu, passe. There’s a kind of invisible laksman rekha keeping others out, a subtle but perceptible closing of ranks that elbows out even the merely rich. Even people one may have known clambering their way up corporate or social ladders — those with whom one may have even shared the same rung of that ladder for a while and known intimately are prone to look through you once they have gone past those pearly gates of the privileged and famous.

But I can't help this niggling thought: was the tycoon really waiting for somebody to come up and chat, somebody with whom he could just have a normal conversation — even about the weather, or Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna? The other day I spotted one of the world's richest men, Azim Premji, in the lounge of the India International Centre in New Delhi. It was the hallowed hour — teatime — at the watering hole of the capital’s culturati and superannuated bureaucrats. The snow-haired billionaire appeared to be with a young associate, and in between crunching facts and numbers he kept looking round the room, trying to catch a friendly eye, exchange a look or a smile. The others present would surreptitiously glance at him, in between bites of their lemon tarts and sips of Darjeeling tea.

Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar once told me that CEOs of companies are amongst the loneliest of people — whether in Europe or in India. They can't trust anybody, often not even their spouses. Celebrities on the other hand are always being encroached upon.But then their fans only get to meet the masks they wear. Film stars have an advantage: their narcissism keeps them company, but only when they are up there. Once out of the limelight, they gradually become invisible, even their looking glass mocks them. And such loneliness is killing.

Loneliness does not respect hierarchies. It is a malaise that afflicts us all. The usual buffers — joint families, sense of community, ideals, idealism, faith, dosti, yes even passion — are no longer in place the way they used to be. When the prevailing mantra is ‘I'm so busy’, the number of lonely people is bound to increase. As would the intensity of the loneliness. Take marriage, even in what's so quaintly called a “love marriage”: it does not take too long for a couple to become strangers, especially when one of them is on the fast track. “I can’t talk to my diamond bracelet can I?” complained a friend wallowing in loneliness, whose husband had given her everything but his attention and companionship.

High-rises, gated residences, the disappearing nukkads and bonhomie of the street mohallahs have not helped. While working on an article on loneliness some years ago, I came across elderly people marooned in these multi-storied apartments, isolated from their friends and quasi-quarantined by their children and grandchildren who had no time for them, nor inclination. Particularly heartrending was a Delhi widower who ate all his meals alone in his bedroom, never joining his three sons and their families who lived in the same large home.

The media this week was inundated by stories about the death of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, one of our most endearing film directors. But in the miles of newsprint one paragraph stood out. In an article, Mrinal Sen wrote that Mukherjee lived alone, with mirrors on every wall of his rooms. These mirrors had made Sen uncomfortable when he went to see his old friend. And when he mentioned this to him, the late director suggested they step “outside to see the sunset… Then, he broke the silence that had set in between us. ‘One more day has gone by.’That was the measure of his loneliness.”

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com