Estranged- A portrait of loneliness
Photograph by Todd Diemer
I was on the 1 train to 116th St. Columbia University. A few minutes ago, I had collected my debit card from a barber shop on 92nd St. and Amsterdam where I had got my hair cut earlier in the afternoon. I had forgotten to pick up my card after swiping it. I almost marvelled at how clueless I was. I had been clueless many times before though. Though this is my preferred form of cluelessness. Pay for something, and then leave my means of payment with them as an added gesture of gratitude. I wasn’t even drunk this time.
I turned to my left. My eyes instantly skipped past the passengers in the immediate vicinity of my left field of vision. No one caught my glance. They were looking elsewhere. I went back to staring at the poster in front of me. I didn’t stare at the poster either. I stared through it. I didn’t register what its purpose was.
It struck me that the people in this subway compartment seemed to me like characters in a video game. They were present for no other purpose than to make up my world. For me to feel that I exist in a world populated by humans upon whom my actions have some abstract effect. It is an abstract effect. We are present in each other’s presence for a few minutes, and then we are not. They and I will probably not encounter each other ever again, and even if we do, I doubt we would register each other. Or care that we’ve encountered each other again.
Once more, I looked at the passengers fleetingly. They probably look at me when my eyes are averted. But we dare not look each other in the eye for more than an instant. I don’t want them to know I was looking at them. Why. Why is it that I am unwilling to have even a moment of connection with them. Why can’t I look them confidently in the eye and let them know that I have registered them. It’s not only because it may seem “creepy”. No, it’s something else.
I got off at the subway station on 116th, and started walking towards my apartment. It’s the same way when I’m walking on the street. There are bodies moving past me, along me, behind me, in front of me. They are going somewhere, and I’m going somewhere else. All I need to do, is not physically hurt them, or yell at them. Because that’s the only tangible effect I can have upon them. Barring these, I don’t care that the other is there, the other does not care that I am there. They have significance only in the moments I register their presence. And they stop having significance the moment my senses cannot register them.
At these instances, words like, “society”, “humanity” and “community”, seem stale to me. My connection with these human beings is abstract, and only rarely required, mostly in encounters of a transactional nature. As long as my individual goals are not hindered, it never occurs to me that I live within a society. I assume my privileges are solid enough for me to get by without individuals altering the way I want to get by. And as far as the word “humanity” is concerned. Intellectually, a spiritual process towards “being one with humanity”, isn’t too hard to grasp. It requires a few leaps of reasoning and imagination, and you’re there. But emotionally and intuitively, I am unable to live out this worldview. I cannot say that I am one with humanity simply because I do not inflict any sort of harm upon anyone. I cannot say I am one with humanity simply because I do not place judgement upon individuals’ values and morality. Because both these positions may imply that I’m simply indifferent to human beings. Humanity for me is an idea. Maybe it conjures up the image of the highest potentials within a human being. I may value and extol humanity. I often even feel nostalgic for humanity. But I am estranged from the human beings who harbour within them this humanity. It is this that evokes my despair- the desire to connect with humanity and the paradoxical reluctance to connect with human beings.
I walked into the lobby of my apartment. As I swiped my ID at the security desk, I noticed a group of people seated in a circle in the lounge area. It was the weekend when students moved into their apartments in the university residential buildings. The residential housing staff had organised a meeting in the lounge for the new residents to introduce themselves to each other. It is reasonable for the residents of an apartment to get to know each other. The apartment is in a way a community of students studying at the same college. I hadn’t attended the social events hosted by the residential staff the previous year. Here was an opportunity for me to try and form a relationship with the people I lived around. I walked towards the elevator, my gaze fixed on the group of students. I pressed the elevator button, got into the elevator, and went up to my apartment.
