Appreciating Aloneness

Its a Saturday evening and it has been raining in spells since last evening. As I contemplate a dinner of boiled corn and a small slab of Bournville,

with some sips of beer, I can’t help a small glow of satisfaction with the way things are. Really, slipping into a nightie at 7 pm, confident that the bell will not ring, feels more secure than many other experiences I have had in recent years.

There is nowhere else I would rather be, no partying heaven where legions of people are enjoying themselves more than me. This is where it feels best.

I lived alone from 2006 to 2008, then have been on my own from 2011 to the present. In a society where family is still prized above most things, I often have people ask me in a surprised, making-a-discovery kind of way, “So you live alone?” At such times, it always gives me great pleasure to reply, “No, I live with two cats.”

Anybody who lives alone, even those who consider this state of theirs to be a penance or a punishment, will identify with at least some of its benefits – the luxury of eating straight off a kitchen counter, the redundancy of a locked bathroom door, the arbitrary assigning of dinner menu to boiled corn and Bournville, or sorghum roti and sabji without any one else’s eyebrows or hackles being raised. To this its possible to add many other, finer touches. The music one hears, the cures one has discovered for insomnia, the sense of achievement to be gained from setting something right at home (without being reminded or nagged) or cleaning whole shelves, cupboards and rooms (without it being a festival). Every single dwelling reader of this blog could have his or her own recipes and recollections of the years they have been on their own.

So some could well have persuaded themselves by now that this is a manifesto for alone-ness, some New Age paean to the individual path to bliss. Not at all. The best memories of my life are still memories of family. A house overflowing with children, their friends, the house help and our pets – that would rank as my most satisfying space, even today. But after having made the decisions that have distanced me through divorce from two husbands, after grieving and celebrating and finally accepting my alone-ness, I have come to a space that seems somehow infused with an inner humour. I catch myself laughing at something the RJ is saying on the car radio, at something I overheard at office or the antics of my cats in their most active hour of the morning. It all seems good, all equal in value and enjoyment.

Perhaps that is it, then. What makes it possible to appreciate aloneness is having earned it, through long periods of confusion, torment and turmoil. I have hardly been the kind to be called ‘serene’ for much of my life. I still can’t qualify unequivocally for the label.

But I’m getting there.