Loneliness, scourge of our times

Not even a year ago a highflying Delhi bureaucrat — elegant, tall and fearsome — wore her nose in the air. Brisk in her crisp cottons and monosyllabic in her answers, she was never without a halo of authority that cleared paths before her.

Last week I saw her slumped in the lounge of the India International Centre, frumpy in brown, lingering over tea and a cheese straw for over an hour, alone. Other bureaucrats (ex or current) passed by, ignoring her.

She is a picture of loneliness, and a more obvious victim of this malady of our times. But countless others, increasingly distanced from those at home, at work and in society, are less apparent victims.

We measure people by their IQ (intelligence quotient) and sometimes by their EQ (emotional quotient). Perhaps  it’s time to look at their LQ: loneliness quotient. I am not talking about the people on the street muttering to themselves. It’s people like you and me, young, old or middle-aged. Poor, rich or middle class.

Loneliness is as old as emotion itself. However, in the new millennium, with the race to get ahead more frenzied and the competition even more deadly with envy in the driver’s seat, there is more of it.

If you are not on board the spinning carrousel you are out: the-somebody-suddenly-become-nobody. Of course, those on top of corporate or bureaucratic ladders (or even celluloid stars) were already isolated and probably lonely at the top — cronies and sycophants form a moat around them — before a fall from grace.

You often come across them repeating stories of their past. But nobody listens to them, even at home. The malaise of loneliness is probably the most devastating within the family.

We have not quite gone the Japanese way where the gap between generations has become so wide that there are companies that rent actors who play children or grandchildren for elderly people desperate for some family warmth. Alienation has set in to such an extent that some Japanese couples hire people to play guests at their weddings.

We are a long way from this. Yet I wouldn’t be surprised if PR companies began compiling lists for weddings or anniversaries. Take a look at our weddings: often close family and old friends are outnumbered by ‘contacts’ and those from networking sorties. As for generational gaps: iPods, cellphones, the Internet and blaring music have become barriers that separate young from old.

For GenNow a façade of bravado is increasingly being used to hide the voids within. A 20-something niece who lives in Mumbai tells me that many of her friends now do this.

“They have become experts in putting up facades to show how happy they are. Some of them feel lonely in their marriages, while others are not doing well. A friend compliments himself, saying so and so said I have lost so much weight…they feel isolated inside and are desperate for attention.” 

The absence of a meaningful relationship makes them clutch at the straws of trivial comment. This is all the more acute today when the worth of a person (even self-worth) is gauged by appearances (and the brands one sports) than the warmth of a relationship. 

Loneliness within a marriage, or in a crowd, is another feature of our times.  Intimacy is getting to be in short supply, especially with competing spouses.

And in our 24/7 globalised world, where Blackberries and emails don’t allow you to pause, silences between couples is getting to be deafening.

A friend, whose husband is a globe-trotter most of the time, or glued to his Blackberry when he is not, had a long battle with loneliness. “I couldn’t talk to my solitaires could I? So, now I travel on my own, both in India and abroad.” She has filled her life causes.

And then there are the gods to keep you company, if everything else fails. I will never forget the image of the wife of well-known film director who spent hours washing and cleaning myriad deities in her puja room every day. It took care of empty time till lunch. 

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com