I am not trying to retrofit few pieces that I found on the way, but I just happened to know that I am never able to retain “friends”; it always has been like that. I must admit, that it never occurred naturally to me, like it happens to others, I was arguing about the importance and meaning of friendship at the most important stages of life that I have lived so far, when I should have instead just let it be, when I should have just seen what happens. Other times, I was almost desperate to call somebody my friend, but I again failed miserably, I didn’t know the rules, it was not easy for me to play-along, it was almost as if life around me was questioning me about my needs, the basic needs, which had succumbed to modern needs.

But I try to reason myself out of this, this isn’t one of those self-deceiving kinds, which we usually do to convince ourselves that we are right, but this is a more genuine one. I find that it is a combination of intrinsic need, the need to be alone most of the time, plus few choices that I made down  the road, that has pushed me  in a corner where I can’t stop longing for that feeling, neither can I resist the need to know that feeling. And now that we think we are too wise, more and more people we meet fall outside the circle-of-our-norms. We think it is better to be choosy, but it is true, it is better not to go out and watch a Karan Johar (Hindi films director) flick just because we haven’t been social enough all this while. One thing was always clear to me from the beginning— not to have too many acquaintances. I just cannot keep answering to everyone’s phone calls and reply to their scraps on Orkut (the reason why I stay away from social networking sites). People think I am rude, selfish, self-obsessed, but aren’t I allowed to just be myself? If that is what friendship means, I better stay away from it. But, I am a social animal, I sometimes feel the need for connecting, exploring myself more, more than my near and dear ones can help me in doing so. I feel the need to do more than just talking to people and feeling good about exchanging few jokes. I am more conscious about this now more than ever. I think that is the reason I have always felt kind of safe in the company of women, they expose me to myself in a way almost nobody else can, but then I move on, still struggling to know whether I know the meaning of that which I am not able to understand, the thing which is so simple that world almost takes it for granted—the same feeling I have been wary of, almost like a person who is careful of driving a vehicle because of recent road accident—that feeling which my mind says is not as important as doing better and good things in life, “you can’t have everything in life”, it says to me, and I accept that with a softness like a dog who shows a muted contented-ness when his master comes back home late at night and pats on his head.

I do feel the need to connect, and I do connect, but the connection doesn’t last enough, the kicks just don’t last enough, just the way I am not able to connect with my thoughts lots of times, and the obviousness of the choice that I have to make, makes me choose the battle inside me instead of the one begging to brew outside. There were times when I tried to change the person outside me, accepting the differences, but trying to teach, but I suddenly realized that I was trying to do the impossible (almost). I am not biased asking for things to be “natural”, I know things have to be worked out, but I always get more and more evidences that “working out” won’t work too. Doesn’t it happen too many times that we feel good talking to a person for the first time or so, but we lose interest subsequently? But there are few people, whom you would like to know more, try to learn, and try to learn the art to connect. Sustained connection has to endure and last past the seemingly insuperable obstacles that inevitably come in any process. When we first begin to study something, like piano, we start with a wave of enthusiasm and interest and we work at it. But, after that, comes a point in every [perceivable] process, where [the enthusiasm] runs down. We say to ourselves, “maybe I don’t want to play the piano”, “maybe I want to play the flute”, or maybe I want to sing. Often we get a whole new burst of energy when we start something else. That running down of the initial feeling of passion seems to be natural. It’s not because of any problem I (we) have. It happens in every situation and if you’re really going to be a pianist, you going to have to keep working when the automatic desire to work is no longer there.

So, after knowing that, people like me still seem to have trouble finding the right instrument, we loathe the fact of ending up being a bad musician only because the instrument was never going to produce that sound we were looking for—“I could have instead spent my time programming”, we say to ourselves. So, I think this is what works for me, why can’t I just do the “better”, instead of worrying about the unknown, which might leave a bad taste in my mouth in the end?–Heartless? Yes? I think the definitions are ‘suit-yourself’ anyways, I am not doing anything different—I enter myself, you enter you, I leave myself, you too leave yourself.

The intrinsic need for loneliness is as strong as the need for having company, which is why I feel I have overcompensated sometimes, and ended up with company that I could disengage myself with easily. “Am I your friend?”—I have been asked many times, that I have groped for just some words, so that I could escape the situation, and ask that question again to myself. I look around, I try to see the definitions of friendship that people tend to assume, but I feel I am complicating it too much, “I cannot possibly weigh the values standing outside, I just need to sit straight and there will be no back pains”—I again overcompensate by making it far more simpler. Neither can I resign myself to the obscurity in a whirlpool of strangers all around me. Ironically, I seem to need that element of “strangeness”, kind of acquaintanceship that doesn’t necessarily culminate into something that is held higher either in language or real sense. It would be something (if I can have it), which has that third corner, where we both can reside once in a while when we are bored of ourselves (huh?). Being estranged to ones self, and still being able to connect, now that would be some kick.

And then I move on, not feeling, winnowing emotions from utilities, killing that human element of life when we behave outside what is good and what is bad. I feel a pang of unsaid tense air inside me when I think that I don’t have that guy, that woman, who I want to talk to right now, but I can’t. It isn’t that easy, as human brain doesn’t unallocate the memories that happen to it, but I seem to be doing okay, still holding few, and trying to hold on to new. This time I am going to do things differently I have vowed to myself, I need them; my loneliness has given me the permission, it tells me I would still do fine, you are you and I am I.