Loneliness is the cry of your heart; solitude is the song of it Loneliness is when you philosophize that life has a price to pay and solitude is when you believe that life is priceless. When you are lonely, time is your enemy and in solitude, you have one true friend- yourself!

Mrs Ghosh led a quiet, secure life till the day her husband passed away by a massive heart-attack that left him dead within half-an hour and changed her life from being a well-settled, sixty year old lady to a nomadic.  On the insistence of her only son she had taken up residence with him in Mumbai, nudging for space in his married life, feeling like an intruder.

She found solace in being involved in her young grandson’s upbringing but often she would pack her bags and come back to the ancestral home in Calcutta, to settle her frayed nerves. Her relationship with her daughter-in-law was no exception to the rule and she often found herself embroiled in petty misunderstandings with her.

 Then it so happened one day that the son came home and announced about having been posted to New-York on a new project he was handling. The wife and grandson were excited but Mrs.Ghosh’s heart sank. She envisioned the life of a prisoner in a far-away land from where escape could only be a dream. She knew she could not undertake her frequent trips to Calcutta to rejuvenate herself from the drudgery of daily life and she was going to be trapped forever in the sky-scraper city, within the four walls of a house which did not particularly feel like home.

They left for New-York, one dark winter night and as she boarded the flight Mrs. Ghosh felt several tugs at her heart-strings that she ignored with a stoic-ness she didn’t think she was capable of. In New-York her life was lonely. She felt it when she sat down for her lunches alone, her son and daughter-in-law away at work and grandson busy with school. She was alone when she sat down to her quiet prayers in the morning wondering whether her God could see her lonely existence in this far-away land.( She thought her Hindu Gods were more aware of people back home than here). She was melancholic in the evenings when she could not hear the familiar sounds of the crowd on the streets or the music blaring from loud-speakers.

Two years she bore the loneliness. Then she could take it no more and announced her decision to come back to Calcutta to stay at her ancestral home forever. Her son tried to change her mind but this time her decision was firmly made. So in the peak of summer she returned.

Back at her ancestral home she started finding her footing again. Her withered soul started gaining strength and sending out new sprouts that began flowering and spreading cheer through her mind. She missed her son and grand-son and even her daughter-in-law in appropriate measure but she was not lonely. She spent her days singing to herself, sewing and stitching, cleaning up her two rooms, watching her favorite Bengali shows on television, occasionally indulging in sinful helpings of her favorite “khichudi” with a dollop of ghee on it, on lazy winter afternoons. She tended to her small garden of pots and plants on the verandah of her house. She was not lonely anymore. She understood.

She understood the difference. She knew how she was lonely then and how she was not anymore. Loneliness is the cry of your heart; solitude is the song of it. Loneliness is when you philosophize that life has a price to pay and solitude is when you believe that life is priceless. When you are lonely, time is your enemy and in solitude, you have one true friend- yourself! Mrs. Ghosh had found herself…she had befriended solitude!

!