In this world of cheap thrills

Back in my ex-roommate’s hostel room, where I retire for the day, my roommate is busy with her regular guitar practice. She meticulously strums away, timing her practice precisely, following online guides and using apps to supplement the guitar lessons she attends diligently every week. It seems to require a lot of patience, this is what I remark. She smiles, and as an afterthought adds, there used to be 30 students in my class initially, now six months later the number has dropped to 5 or 6.

When I walk outside the room, the sound of her guitar is plaintively melodious, more so because the hostel wing is rather empty, and stretches on to an endless looking white expanse. In-semester, I used to sit inside my room, anxiously anticipating (what?); and listening to people talking, making plans which didn’t include me. Now without those voices and without the anxiety of loneliness, I can clearly notice the everyday loneliness of my ex-roommate, who I thought would be reluctant to share her space. I was surprised to find her happy and wanting me to spend more time in the room. I think it is her excessive meticulousness and her strong and inflexible preferences that puts off people. Her handwriting looks like she had practised the font to perfection; mine looks like a handwriting which had a potential to be more careful and uniform but is just not perfect because somebody appreciated the beautiful-looking strokes too early.

Once my roommate is chatting with a friend on fb and chuckles that she is just ‘chilling at home’ during her summer break after college. I was slightly puzzled at what she really found all that funny, and she had to explain that in two months someone could learn driving and get a licence (like she did). I had tried that a long time back and gave up too soon, hence despite my dad spending bucks on a driving class, I have no license. My roommate suggests I should get one asap because it would be difficult for me to get one in the US. I make a resolve to do so but with the fear that it won’t happen.

I think I get along with everybody else in my wing better than my roommate does. Of course, I am hardly as good as Bodh (who is nearly everyone’s friend) and in the amicability spectrum, I am much closer to my roommate than I am to Bodh. If sociability and amicability are desirable things, then I wonder where my roommate went wrong that she’s stuck in a fog of loneliness she cannot fathom. But then I think, I would rather spend a stupid wasted night, wake up late and be a fool for life than spend more time with her talking about guitar chords, our projects, scientific discoveries and so on. We have no common ground for friendship except single-room loneliness and estrangement from the rest of the hostel. I know that the loneliness haunts her as much as it does me, because she told me. And I remember telling her that people like to be with people who say things they like to hear, and in this world of cheap thrills you can only be friends with people if you can put up with meaningless conversations, movie nights and fierce dedication to mediocrity. You’re probably too intimidating for them, I remark.

Probably too intimidating for me too, I think now. I know no other skill than reading at reasonably fast speeds. This skill I cultivated meticulously in my childhood, unaware that I was really doing it. Reading was a quick fix to loneliness around me which has followed me everywhere I go. I think now, I should learn how to cook. Food is good, and it will be useful, and I can feel like a scientist who gets immediate rewards/results when experimenting with food.

Time for dinner, and what else is there to do anyway?