Yet another Durga Puja.....

One more Durga Puja passing down my life just like the 20 previous ones which passed away leaving no mark or memory. One more lonely , solitary brooding festival. Although I am not a religious person or follow any religion in particular , but still that doesn't stop me from enjoying the artistic beauty of the pandals and the lighting and the sculptures. I have always believed that art forms are meant for and are best appreciated in company with a group of people who will share your point of view rather than in solitude. I sometimes really wonder as to what in this world is meant for enjoying in isolation. I really don't think any. The beautiful equations of Gauge Theory or the Einstein's Equations are also best understood and appreciated when discussed instead of ruminated in isolation.

These festivals over these 20 years have grown to become objects of tremendous hatred and frustration and irritation. They only remind me of all the joys in life that the rest of the world enjoys and I have been missing out on for all my life. Given that over the recent years my personal life has gone from bad to worse and I have realized some of my fundamental inabilities , I don't think there is any chance that these festivals like the Durga Puja will mean the amount of joy and celebration it means to the rest of the world.

All I know is that , I hate these festivals to the bottom of my core since they act glaring reminders of all things in my life that I have tried to get but have brutally failed.A reminder of all my failures and deepest of frustrations.

But then its a perennial conflict within me which I have never been able to resolve. Should science in particular be pursued in isolation and only interacted when one gets stuck or is it best followed in company. I have generally tried adopted following a middle path in this respect. When I am learning a new concept then I keep discussing with the more experienced on a regular basis and then I confine myself to total isolation when I am trying to individualize the subject. The process when I am trying to analyse some subtle aspect and might get an insight. But after I have got an insight of mine then I again go back to the discussion mode to test my analysis on others.

It is the conflict of the individualism with the macrocosm that becomes the fountain head of creativity.Its in the attempts to emerge from isolation to the public that the inchoate ideas get ossified into new insights.

But then somewhere down the lane in my life I lost my social life and personal life. I was left alone in my pursuits , interests and passions. Perhaps all this went a long way into motivating me into research and poetry and fine arts. Things that start coming naturally when one spends evenings alone by the window year after year. Abject loneliness has come to settle as the fundamental fabric of my life.

I used to watch my friends go out in the evenings to play , but somehow no one ever felt like calling me. I wonder what was wrong or so different about me when I was very young that my peer group had already deserted me! {Now things are more or less understandable....but then? } But then I did try to venture out on my own and try to mingle with the others and start playing cricket or football with them. But somehow I always felt like an alien and I couldn't continue playing in a particular group for long. I had to soon come back home into my own world where I was the reason of all that happened and I was the thing on which everything showed its effects.

This lack of play group in childhood aggravated a big "problem" in my life as I grew up. Contrary to what I had expected I got more and more alienated and sequestered into my own world. It pushed my interests in science further since somehow I felt "undisturbed" but then I was unknowingly feeding a snake in my life that has blandished its fangs over the last 2.5 years. I was slowly developing a clear demarcation between "Academic" and "Non-Academic" aspects of life.

As I grew up and especially when I came to college I realized that no one had in his/her life such a strong demarcation between what is "Academic" and "Non-Academic" as I had. But this demarcation never showed its brutal face till I seriously fell in love. Till I fell in love , this demarcation was always acting in my favour except that social alienation was something that I have anyway gotten used to since my early childhood.

Only when I seriously fell in love that I realized a whole lot of ugly things about myself and also about the tremendous introvert that I had already grown to me. My mother { who is a doctor } believes that if I were to be taken to a psychologist then I would surely pass the tests to be labelled psychologically ill and an introvert.

Its only when I fell in love that I realized how much in great conflict was the concept of love with my natural introverted-ness. To add to this I already had the "problem" of tremendous conflict between my "individual" and the "world outside" and the strong demarcation that I have developed since my childhood about what is "Academic" and what is "Non-Academic".

It goes without saying that the relationship failed and it crashed brutally.

I am not sure what would happen if I ever I fall in love with a lady like me but then since till now my attempts to build relationships have always been with people who are not very much like me , all have failed. I have somehow been trying to convince myself that building relationships is somehow a very special talent that I haven't been born with.....some how I have to find ways at every step of my life to somehow circumvent the pressing problem of loneliness and isolation. Its a tremendous psychological stress at times and it takes a lot of effort to be able to recover out of these bouts of depression caused by loneliness.

Of course these are psychological states and problems that neither can be shared nor can be told to anyone nor will anyone understand if I tell this to someone.I have given up hopes to meet a person who will be able to penetrate into my life and provide a permanent resolution of the abject loneliness.

Given that somehow I seem to repel everyone with whom I try to have the slightest amount of non-academic interactions , I am sure that the probability of finding such a person is infinitesimal.


In retrospect I see a total blur..I really don't know why or when this problem of introverted-ness and the severe conflict with individualism started and exactly when and why I started doing a strong demarcation between the academic and the non-academic.....I really don't understand as to what led to the what...Was it my gradual interest into research and science that pulled me out of the world and isolated me and begot me this terrible loneliness or is it the other way round ? Has my continuous search for academic success led me to be subjected to total isolation ? Perhaps it has to do with my low intelligence level . Given the meagre levels my intelligence , perhaps the only way one can optimize the path to professional success is by getting into a state of total isolation.

Perhaps now that all possible damage has been done its best that I no more try to understand the roots of the current situation.

And its a long time I have stopped relying on my blood relations and family for any kind of psychological support or support during emotional stresses.I don't feel that they either understand the depth of the situation nor do they seem to understand that as one grows up it becomes very tough to keep academic work segregated from emotional disbalances and loneliness in personal life.

The current situation is very simple...As the academic and professional pressures are mounting up exponentially , the bouts of depression induced from abject loneliness is become more and more frequent and more and more painful. Quite a few times over the last week I have felt like going to over to someone and vent out all my troubles and cry aloud. The tremendous need to find a shoulder on which I can rest my head for sometime and perhaps find a new inspiration or encouragement to get on with the huge amount of work at hand. But of course it takes only a split second before that the simple and cruel realization dawns on me ::



There is no such "someone" and I am totally alone.



The only source of energy and encouragement and inspiration is me and myself. I have to find all the energy I need from within my ownself unlike other people who have company to hang around with and relax or may be a stable romantic relationship to fall back upon when things get dark. I have only one world to rely on for everything....the inner world where I am the Creator , the Destroyer and the Preserver...where I am the Ghost , the Father and the Son.

In these times of total isolation when the realization dawn that the world has totally deserted me and in times of non-technical trouble I start feeling the total absence of a shoulder and someone.....in such times perhaps I understand the meaning of the Sanskrit phrase

"Ahan Brahmasmi" { I am Bramha }

History tells that the sage who first proclaimed this was stoned to death for blasphemy.Hundreds of years later , I a mere mortal being when subjected to hopeless frustration and utter loneliness and total isolation , feel the truth of what that sage said.