I sat by the Mississippi river, my eyes feasting on the changing hues of autumn and my senses enraptured by the cold autumn wind. Out-of-nowhere came a wave of melancholic memories and washed me back to half-a-decade ago when I used to sit alone at the traffic crossing of Rabindra Sadan bleeding doggerels on my little notebook. I remember how the lights of the oncoming traffic on one of the central roadways of Calcutta blinded me. I remember the stares, the smirks cast upon me by judgmental pedestrians. But most of all, I remember how deafeningly silent, unfathomably hollow and terribly lonely it felt even amidst the jostling cacophony of the city.
It awes me how loneliness never left me. Loneliness clawed at me then just as it gnaws at me today. Only, perhaps the blow has dampened over time. It awes me how I travelled thousands of miles to a whole different country to experience loneliness all over again-layered and intense. My heart always restless with the feeling of losing everything, even though in reality I never had any home emotionally all my life, and even though I have never known how to make peace with the demons that evoke the emotional turmoils in me. I find it quite tragic that even though my rational mind knows that I will never find the love, warmth, thoughtfulness and peace that I have always yearned for, the other side of my mind keeps searching for it over and over. This weaker side of me keeps chasing friends, extended family, lovers, acquaintances, probably just anyone and everyone to fill the void in me. Nobody rescues nobody. When you suffer, you suffer alone. It all probably sinks in and settles after a while, only the question is- when?
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