One morning, 22 years ago (I was a cub reporter then) I entered the office to see a scribble on my soft board -- 'Sensitivity is beautiful, but the moment it becomes a liability it is unattractive!' Of course, my editor (who was the scribbler) was referring to my passive-aggressive behaviour that was causing friction, but the line stayed with me.When we are younger, our sensitivity is all encompassing and we are seldom able to look beyond it. It takes a while to realise that when we claim to be sensitive, we are only being so to our own feelings. The truly sensitive people are ones who can put aside their own sensitivities to accommodate others.But I'm digressing here. The point is that at 22, I was completely tuned in to all the emotional vibes around me and everything could affect me very deeply. It seemed like a great thing then because as a writer/journalist I could pick up and retain those emotional signals to reproduce them in my pieces. That's how I managed to chronicle special instances in people's lives with innocent curiosity, affection and respect.However, as I grow older I find myself feeling lesser and lesser for many things that would have affected me earlier. I keep wondering if I had numbed from inside. Desensitised. Now that's paranoia that I can't take. The fear of being desensitised is a dominant fear in me (second only to getting Alzheimer's). I don't know what I would do if I didn't cry in a film or was not moved by street children singing the National Anthem.But like I said earlier there have been phases (at times for over six months) when I have felt nothing towards anything. It has taken fear, anxiousness and at times stronger measures like self-loathing to snap out of it.One such phase happened a few years ago. No reassurances helped me. I could sense something dying inside of me and I didn't know how to revive it. Of course I was camouflaging it very well to the world outside!And then a strong voice singing the first note pierced right through my soul. It was Abida Parveen's. I heard her song `Mose bol na bol meri sun ya na sun' and it was enough to make me weep for the next 15 minutes. I know it sounds dramatic and maybe funny too and the same song may not connect today as intensely but that day it did.The truth is that it's not uncommon of us to get desensitized owing to the over burdening of our senses or the pace of our lives where we are too caught up to even realise that we have not `felt' in a long time. And even when some of us realise it, we don't know how to go back to `feeling'!But I think, like computers, each of us has a reboot mechanism, which can be triggered by something ordinary, something mundane or something pure. We just need to run into it. Absorb it.

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