Explorations into Solitude

Events have moved along fairly rapidly in the three months since I handed over my responsibilities at NSRCEL.  As I slogged away for long hours on winding down at the Centre I conjured up grand visions of how I would spend the twelve months of sabbatical that were to follow.  I even wrote this post on my flight of fantasy.   http://sgchalayil.blogspot.in/2015/11/anticipating-wandering-life.html

Pessimism however sounded warning bells all the while.  It reminded me of the many times that my plans had come unstuck in my fairly long life.  It pointed out to me the somewhat precarious position that I was in because of my advancing age and that of the many people in my immediate family.

While some of those fears about the health of older members of my family have materialised, the real surprise has been the nearly clinical depression that leaving NSRCEL seems to have cast me into. 

At one level I am glad that there are no more emails screaming for attention piling up in my inbox.  No more meeting requests that I am struggling to schedule however much I may not look forward to meeting some of those individuals.  No more fine balancing of the political consequences that I had to do in the name of growing the Centre.

Depression it is, I think, going by the many symptoms.  I do not fancy meeting people any more.  The heart screams to be left alone, aching for solitude even as the head says that there is no reason to crave for it. 

Worse, perhaps, says the head, that it is a dangerous sign for someone who will not find too many people wanting to engage anyway, given that at 57 I am older than nearly 90% of the Indian population.  Stated differently, if age is a determinant of common interests, nearly nine out of ten people that I run into in a statistically random sample are unlikely to have anything to talk about in common with me after polite pleasantries have been exchanged!

At the end of some internal struggle I have decided that it is time to come to take the craving bull by the horn.  I have accepted solitude as a way of life. 

It is not the kind of solitude that the yogis of India seek in the caves of the Himalayas.  It is not the kind of solitude that led Napoleon to make the famous statement, Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba, an often quoted palindrome.  Nor is my solitude about to inspire poetry as enduring  as the solitude of Alexander Selkirk did:

I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone,

And much less am I likely to pine like Selkirk is said to have:

Society, Friendship, and Love
Divinely bestow’d upon man,
O, had I the wings of a dove
How soon would I taste you again!

But I am well on the way to what I see is the inevitable denouement as I can only grow older with every passing day.  That the world around me will inexorably shrink as various layers of family move on, seeking their own lives and destinies, until my sons who are the youngest among them all, grow wings and fly off to build their own homes, leaving Lakshmi and me in an empty nest.

In preparation for that ever shrinking world I have worked out the following formula.  I intend to divide the rest of my academic life across three silos and nothing more.  Family, immediate and proximate, comes first.  A quick reckoning places those numbers at seven and eighteen respectively.  A little bit of religion – I wish I could say spiritualism, but that would be a pretentious lie - to remind myself that there is a larger purpose beyond all this, even though I may be too puny to aspire for that purpose.  And whatever time remains will be spent reading, teaching and hopefully some writing and whatever minimal socializing is required to “remain in business”.

As for the world beyond those silos, I would hope not to be a curmudgeon in the unlikely event that anyone seeks me out, as long as it does not come in the way of my three priorities.  But going by my unremarkable social life to-date I would treat that as no more than a grandfather clause in my new “social contract”.

Nanni….Namaskaaram…

PS:  I initially thought of giving this post the title My Experiments with Solitude.  For two reasons I decided in favour of the present title.  First, it sounds a bit like the Mahatma's Autobiography.  I did not wish to insult the memory of that great soul by giving such a title to this piffling post.  Second, I am not yet into those realms of deep solitude that such a title might suggest.