Time, Loneliness, and Being Alone

I turned 27 all by myself in a hotel room In Bombay, India.  It was, quite possibly, the lowest point in my life.

I was travelling a lot for my job back then (Viscotek days).  I was on the road so much, both domestic and international, that I felt I was losing my sense of identity.  I was newly single after my third, long term, failed relationship.  I had lost touch with my friends.  I hadn’t seen my own family in some time.  In those days, I travelled with only two items of personal value to me:  a wind-up traveling alarm clock that my American grandfather had used when he used to travel a lot on the road for his own job in the 1950’s and 60’s and a wind-up Swiss watch (see below) that was an engagement gift from my French grandmother to my French grandfather.  I remember writing a poem that night about time, my dead grandfathers with whom I felt connected, and those time pieces.  Alas, this was before the blog, so I cannot lay my hands upon that poem these days.  

Earlier that day, I had tried my usual trick of walking around the area near my hotel, looking to enjoy the local culture and to take some fun risks in eating out.  I’ve always been proud of my fearlessness in this regard.  This time, though, I failed.  I remember feeling assaulted by the press of street urchins who mobbed me, trying to sell me trinkets.  I don’t mean physically assaulted, but psychically assaulted.  I simply couldn’t take the press of people: the numbers and the intensity of it all.  My whiteness marked me as a tourist and I, at first, smiled and engaged in banter over the price of a hand carved elephant that one street kid was trying to sell me.  

I, maybe, had made it two blocks when I fled back to the hotel and ate there in solitude, feeling inept and incapable.  The mass of people othering me so hard made me feel so alone; to this day I can tap into that feeling.  

To celebrate my birthday, I went to the hotel bar and met a British ex-pat.  As the only two white, single men there, we struck up a conversation.  I contemplated telling him it was my birthday but I worried it would seem a ploy for him to pay for my drinks so I said nothing.  I don’t remember much, but I do remembered when I tried to steer the conversation in a serious direction, he said “The West has the concept of happiness all wrong – look at the street people here: they have nothing, yet they are the happiest people I have ever met.”  Rather than continue to make a real connection to a thoughtful person, I ran away again – back to my hotel room.

There, in the room, I stared at the two time pieces from my grandfathers, both of whom has passed away by then, and I thought “If I died right now, no one would miss me for weeks  - maybe months”.  

As I lay there, my mind flashed back to my arrival in India a few days earlier.  Not in modern Bombay but the ancient city of New Delhi.  During a life-altering taxicab ride from the airport to a throwback hotel from the days of British occupation (during which I learned that the horn of a car can be used as an actual navigational tool), a street beggar (a boy of maybe 12 years?  Who knows?) banged on my window while the taxi has trapped in traffic (I had been eagerly looking outward at the exotic sites).  He casually held out one hand for money as his other hand held his distended hernia out for my inspection and my pity.  I was so shocked, I shrank back into my seat and felt that my whole world had been turned upside down.  The kid laughed and the taxi cab driver used the horn to make a hole and darted forward, two wheels up on the sidewalk...

With that thought, I fell asleep, ending my 26th year on this planet.