Musings of a woman in love with solitude
I have always liked being alone. Throughout my childhood, teens and my adult life till date, I have known space as an extended part of just my energy. My presence that permeates my surroundings. Sometimes, I share it with nature. The moment where I just lie down on the grass and gentle sunshine warms my face, ants find their playground on my feet, the wind tries to balance the warmth of the scorching sun on that altitude and bitter empty cold of Himalayas, watching trees playing with each other and noticing the pulsating energy flowing through them, tiny birds flocking to them and forming a bigger group of friends — wind, trees and birds and I enjoy companionship together in that bubble of gentleness and tenderness.
The essence of life captured in such moments is beautiful. Where we as us, and nature as that doesn’t exist — we all melt into one big quiet, still, life-throbbing whole.
Over the years, I have understood that solitude can seem complex. Some people can’t go through it, some can’t digest it if someone else lives alone; but during the lockdown, the intense form of isolation wherein I hardly saw any faces, really made me believe that one can feel truly alive when one is totally alone, because that is the only time we aren’t in any kind of fear of how our actions, words and beliefs are perceived. Solitary moments are like the movie scenes that the director wants to try, but they turn out so authentic that it might offend intelligent people/arouse moments that people don’t fully understand — and people almost always look down upon things that they don’t understand and it makes them feel uncomfortable because it falls beyond their neat digestible labels that they use to go through life. Maybe right from our childhood, we’re conditioned to have an audience if we’re doing something nice; but maybe it would be interesting to see if someone sits isolated in a room for months and thinks “I am lovable/ I am kind/ I am funny/I am handsome”. It all gradually melts away. The time we spend by ourselves dissolves those labels a little bit. A tiny-winy bit.
In the last few months as Covid struck, isolation to a great degree was richly rewarding (not that I was living in a jungle cabin like a hermit, even though I wish that was the case but still) but as it got too much, it was accompanied a little bit by grief as well, and it looked unidentifiable when it came. It didn’t live up to the standard definition of grief or pain. It crept in occasionally at nights as I relapsed into my love-hate relationship with sleep, something I have been struggling over years. Then it started making its way into the body, and that’s when it started to reflect on a physical level as well. Or maybe it was the other way round — I felt pain because I wasn’t nourishing my body enough and then it started to really really demand my attention by being in pain and anxiety. I have always held onto extremities; holding onto things until it reaches the fine point when it is ready to snap in a second and maybe then there was a point that despite a lot of things dissolving into solitude, a lot of things also emerged.
Yes, sometimes the deep, gentle solitude is our only solace; but sometimes it starves us; and pushes us into this vast heaviness, which could get difficult to bear. Yes, sometimes it gets hard to endure, and it is a big gift to have something or someone to come back to.
I am honestly not sure why I spend so much time alone. For several years, I wanted to get Harry potter’s invisible cloak and hide myself from the world. There is a scene in Eternal sunshine of a Spotless mind where Clementine is asking Joel if she is ugly. The scene has Clementine narrating “Sometimes I think people don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don’t matter. So, I’m eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, “You can’t be ugly! Be pretty!” It’s weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too.”
That whole movie is spectacular but that scene in particular takes me back to my teens and early twenties when I felt so ugly. I wasn’t fair, wasn’t toned enough, wasn’t sharp-featured enough, wasn’t proportionate enough, didn’t have a good dressing sense, didn’t get waxed enough, didn’t go to beauty salons enough, didn’t get hair treatments etc. All of that is still true after all these years — infact some of these things have just increased in degree as I took to mountaineering.
Sometimes I go for weeks without a shower or washing my face, sometimes I don’t wash or comb my hair for weeks, keep wearing the same clothes for endless days — I still don’t feel pretty or anything — it took a while to really come around to it — I think it became a little less important over time. Sometimes still when I come across these absolutely gorgeous people out there, I keep staring shamelessly — the staring is all in adoration though. Almost as if I am thankful for coming across such beauty — even if it is sheer physical beauty (and no matter how twisted the person might be beyond their physical self). Some folks are really so pretty that one can’t really look away. I had spent some weeks in Himalayas this year, and every evening when I went out for the walk, I’d see these women with flawless skin and fancy clothes getting pictures clicked, and I’d wonder if I could ever in my life feel what it meant to be as gorgeous as they felt in that moment as I sat in my track pants and oversized jacket with chapped lips eating dimsums.
Even the most qualified shrink, in all likelihood, won’t tell someone about a person’s element — eventually that’s what remains as an essence. It is probably the right weighted amount of fire,water, air, earth (the right weighted amount is ofcourse different for everyone). That element has the free movement of wild air, grounded energy of earth, passion-illumination-warmth of fire, and gentle soothing movement of water. Maybe the weighted amount also keeps on wavering for each individual over different time periods.
Sometimes we go without discovering our element for years, sometimes we don’t know we have an element, sometimes we find it and don’t know that it is indeed our element, sometimes we find it briefly and then it vanishes forever — being all-elusive, sometimes we go on without having the will to discover it, sometimes we don’t want to discover it, sometimes it lays dormant and peeks in time and again for very brief moments — but those few moments when I did find it, I thanked it whole-heartedly for showing up. I never know when I’d meet it again or if at all. It makes up my space, and I feel pure gratitude for it.
Over the years, I have been blessed with some beings coming into my alone space. Besides my presence, someone else’s presence also permeates the surroundings. There is a place in Himalayan Ladakh which has a lot of Buddhist stupas. I have considered that place to be extremely sacred and visit it every time I am in Ladakh.
During my last visit in winter, when the temperatures went down to minus thirty degrees and the cold wind pierced through the five layers of clothes, I met this furry little dog who came out of nowhere. As I saw her from a distance, she seemed like hundred years old. I really wanted to hold her and started walking towards her. I slipped on a stone and that scared her and she started running away. In my head, I went like “My guardian angel. Please stop. Please stop. My guardian angel. Please stop. Where are you going? Please stop”. As I walked across a few manas, I found her staring at the expansive view that lay in front. I was cautious to not scare her, so I gently approached her and kept murmuring “you don’t have to be scared of me. You can trust me” and then I stooped down and held her. I almost had tears in my eyes — a mixture of cold and happiness. I whispered to her for a long time repeatedly “I love you”. Kept saying it until she started snuggling into my chest, which probably meant she did come around to accepting me around her. Dogs in the Himalayas are usually these giant beasts who aren’t excessively friendly and can really be nasty at times. More like wolves.
As I held her, the first thing I felt was her fierceness. There were no sloppy kisses, cuteness overloaded, wagging tails and none of that jazz. She was this independent, composed being who knew how majestic she was. She had that sense of self-content and did not seek validation or attention from the human around. She was beautiful, whole. She had an unwavering gaze at the distant mountain ranges — with her head held high, almost as if she was carrying the universe in her heart. As I started caressing her soft grey hair, I felt her super-warm center. She was tough and tender at the same time, and her presence owned the surroundings. She felt like an old soul with young eyes, a vintage heart which was beating gently in resonance with mine — and for a moment, I experienced what it meant to be with a spirit animal. As I held for some more time, she broke away from my chest — almost as if the shackles of my hands were too much to bear for even — no matter how gentle and tender — but shackles nevertheless. I could have given her all the love I had and she still wouldn’t have, even for a moment, belonged to me. I then let her go her own way undisturbed — mastering her life as her own, and not belonging to anyone but herself, and now I those unblemished moments with her seem so endearing — when we both howled and moaned at the same time — with our fierce hearts brimming with hope of a better world.
So now when I think of space, it instantly makes me think of the harmonic connection I share with the world, my element and oneness with all the beings; for a brief yet precious time.
