I was fourteen years old when I moved into a new school. In a nutshell- It was Hard. That was the first time I realized that a person can actually be made to feel lonely. There were new words added in my personal dictionary- Isolation, Ostracism , Abandonment.
One random day I chose to walk through the Chapel to find my "peace". As I passed by I heard the Chapel Piano being played ; the chords rising in the air. It sounded as though Ludovico Einaudi had himself arrived, displaying his unparalleled skills in our Chapel. I stepped in and found the room empty, except for the musical prodigy letting her fingers explore the keys. She turned to look at me as I smiled.
"You play really well"
She smiled back. She must have been about three to four years younger than me. I understood from her inability to respond to my compliment that she did not catch what I was saying. I gestured with my thumbs up, pointing one finger at the piano. Her smile widened and she rose to her feet and said:
"Gamsahabnida Noona" (which meant ' thank you, elder sister' in Korean ). "Um. I dhank yo Noona. You sit? I piano."
I took my place waiting for her to continue. She played for a while as I watched her engrossed in her own melody. All of a sudden I realized it was not the music she was paying attention to. She stared deep into the distance, watching the trees sway and birds fly by, a wistful smile stretching across her flawless countenance. She was playing the song of her home-town, I could tell. I wondered why would her parents do this to her. She is not even in her teens and yet been sent far away from home in this lonely place. My loneliness was quite minuscule in front of hers. She was trying to communicate something to me, through her music. She was trying to tell me and the world that She Exists.
Recently I watched a movie called - 'The Lunch Box'. It was not a commercial success but got high accolades from the critiques. The plot is quite simple- A house-wife who wakes up every morning to prepare lunch for her husband and sends it across to his office. However the lunch-box she prepares starts to reach the wrong person. The two protagonists then start to communicate through messages written in paper and sent in that lunch-box, every afternoon, eventually falling in love with each other.
However, there are many elements in the story that caught my attention. How each character in the story is struggling with their sense of existence. To start with, the house wife in the story wakes up each morning with only one wish in her mind- to make her husband realize that she exists. Her life is centered around her struggles to get her husbands's attention. The man who gets the lunch-box in the place of her husband is around sixty years of age, an officer in the accounts department, in the verge of retirement. He is a widower, bitterly consumed in the loneliness of his life, where even the little, innocent children in his neighborhood pretend as though he does not exist. Then we speak of the house-wife's mother, who post the death of her husband tells her daughter how lonely she has been all her life even in the presence of her husband all these years. The lady who lives a floor above the house-wife in the story, tells her about how her husband has been in coma for almost two decades. She cleans him up every day, speaks to him, lives every second of her life trying to keep him alive, yet he does not know that she exists. The story even pushes forth the reality faced by a trainee working under the retired accounts officer who was orphaned young. The trainee requests the officer whether he could attend his wedding as someone from his side of the family, as he has none. The pain in the statement reflecting the depth of his reality- his need to make himself feel that someone exists for him.
As a word of advice when I moved to the new city for my higher studies, while people told me - "You are away from home now; keep your guards up."- what they actually meant was, 'You are alone and there is no one for you. This world is not meant for trusting people.' A good friend of mine recently told me- "Everyone around you is your enemy" - implication- 'People are fake. The sooner you accept it, the better.' I am still in the midst of figuring out these debatable statements. As I watch the people around me, I realize that no matter how self-assured a person says she or he is, deep inside all are fighting to keep up with their power of existence. Maybe it is not that everyone around you is your worst enemy. Maybe it is just that everyone around you is their Own Best Friend, fighting hard to do their best despite the inevitable insecurities engulfing them. Everyone...fighting the same war. Unfortunately barely anyone understands that this is not a competition with each other. Hence eventually everyone feels like they are alone. The goal is not to win. It is to survive. To exist despite the never-ending war.
When I was growing up, I was taught that loneliness is only a perception. No one can actually be made to feel lonely. After watching this movie however, the first line that came to my head is- 'If you think you are lonely...well.. you are not alone." All I could think of is how many such people exist around us who laugh in a crowd and subside into the darkness of their reality the moment they are alone. How many people around us are actually in a crowd and yet feel like no matter how loud they scream, their voice will echo back as though they are in an empty room- the way the chords of the piano echoed in the empty Chapel.
One random day I chose to walk through the Chapel to find my "peace". As I passed by I heard the Chapel Piano being played ; the chords rising in the air. It sounded as though Ludovico Einaudi had himself arrived, displaying his unparalleled skills in our Chapel. I stepped in and found the room empty, except for the musical prodigy letting her fingers explore the keys. She turned to look at me as I smiled.
"You play really well"
She smiled back. She must have been about three to four years younger than me. I understood from her inability to respond to my compliment that she did not catch what I was saying. I gestured with my thumbs up, pointing one finger at the piano. Her smile widened and she rose to her feet and said:
"Gamsahabnida Noona" (which meant ' thank you, elder sister' in Korean ). "Um. I dhank yo Noona. You sit? I piano."
I took my place waiting for her to continue. She played for a while as I watched her engrossed in her own melody. All of a sudden I realized it was not the music she was paying attention to. She stared deep into the distance, watching the trees sway and birds fly by, a wistful smile stretching across her flawless countenance. She was playing the song of her home-town, I could tell. I wondered why would her parents do this to her. She is not even in her teens and yet been sent far away from home in this lonely place. My loneliness was quite minuscule in front of hers. She was trying to communicate something to me, through her music. She was trying to tell me and the world that She Exists.
Recently I watched a movie called - 'The Lunch Box'. It was not a commercial success but got high accolades from the critiques. The plot is quite simple- A house-wife who wakes up every morning to prepare lunch for her husband and sends it across to his office. However the lunch-box she prepares starts to reach the wrong person. The two protagonists then start to communicate through messages written in paper and sent in that lunch-box, every afternoon, eventually falling in love with each other.
However, there are many elements in the story that caught my attention. How each character in the story is struggling with their sense of existence. To start with, the house wife in the story wakes up each morning with only one wish in her mind- to make her husband realize that she exists. Her life is centered around her struggles to get her husbands's attention. The man who gets the lunch-box in the place of her husband is around sixty years of age, an officer in the accounts department, in the verge of retirement. He is a widower, bitterly consumed in the loneliness of his life, where even the little, innocent children in his neighborhood pretend as though he does not exist. Then we speak of the house-wife's mother, who post the death of her husband tells her daughter how lonely she has been all her life even in the presence of her husband all these years. The lady who lives a floor above the house-wife in the story, tells her about how her husband has been in coma for almost two decades. She cleans him up every day, speaks to him, lives every second of her life trying to keep him alive, yet he does not know that she exists. The story even pushes forth the reality faced by a trainee working under the retired accounts officer who was orphaned young. The trainee requests the officer whether he could attend his wedding as someone from his side of the family, as he has none. The pain in the statement reflecting the depth of his reality- his need to make himself feel that someone exists for him.
As a word of advice when I moved to the new city for my higher studies, while people told me - "You are away from home now; keep your guards up."- what they actually meant was, 'You are alone and there is no one for you. This world is not meant for trusting people.' A good friend of mine recently told me- "Everyone around you is your enemy" - implication- 'People are fake. The sooner you accept it, the better.' I am still in the midst of figuring out these debatable statements. As I watch the people around me, I realize that no matter how self-assured a person says she or he is, deep inside all are fighting to keep up with their power of existence. Maybe it is not that everyone around you is your worst enemy. Maybe it is just that everyone around you is their Own Best Friend, fighting hard to do their best despite the inevitable insecurities engulfing them. Everyone...fighting the same war. Unfortunately barely anyone understands that this is not a competition with each other. Hence eventually everyone feels like they are alone. The goal is not to win. It is to survive. To exist despite the never-ending war.
When I was growing up, I was taught that loneliness is only a perception. No one can actually be made to feel lonely. After watching this movie however, the first line that came to my head is- 'If you think you are lonely...well.. you are not alone." All I could think of is how many such people exist around us who laugh in a crowd and subside into the darkness of their reality the moment they are alone. How many people around us are actually in a crowd and yet feel like no matter how loud they scream, their voice will echo back as though they are in an empty room- the way the chords of the piano echoed in the empty Chapel.
