When You're Far from the Madding Crowd...Live Free, Die Hard

A bout of illness was what got me thinking about this. For years, almost ever since I earned enough to eke out rent for a tiny apartment, I dreamt of living alone. Finally, it was circumstance rather than freewill that necessitated a move to my own quarters. For a year, I only had to share a kitchen with roommates, and to my surprise, was quite glad to move back home, and to Madras, which I never thought I would leave again. On my last visit to my hometown, though, I found myself wondering if I would live there again. Now, I have five rooms all to myself, about two thousand kilometres away. And while the advantages are apparent, I wonder what changes the luxury has brought about in my personality.

Given the poise with which I climb the stairs and grace with which I go about my daily activities, I have often wondered what would happen if I were to break my neck while pirouetting down the stairs, and find myself not able to call for help. Some of my fears were brought to rest, though, when the paranoia of a friend and the power of cough syrup came together to cause my landlords and parents a panic attack. To put it in layman's language, a very unfortunate colleague was sent home to check on me, and when my drug-induced sleep proved too deep for the bell to have any effect, a phone call from my landlords to my parents ensured I was woken up by the secret landline...which resulted in my very unfortunate colleague receiving a barrage of abuse when I got through to his mobile.

But there's another side to living alone which hadn't quite struck me until recently. The time and the silence afforded to one by the absence of roommates ends up making one analyse things to a much larger extent. Close friends of mine know I've had more to analyse recently than is the norm, but the more thorough analysis of these more-than-the-norm number of things has had an impact on my personality, I find. To some degree, one becomes surer of oneself, and the things one wants. But, theorising has inclined what I had always believed to be a relatively androgynous mind to a higher proportion of femininity.

Contradictory, perhaps, but true. Writing my diary, recalling and dissecting events of the day, emotions passing through me, doubts and worries about various aspects of my life, have made me more of a philosopher-thinker than I was used to being. The epiphany struck me while I was writing my diary today. Through a process of analysis, I had arrived at the metaphoric oxymoron that my problem was I analysed too much, weighed words too heavily, interpreted stray phrases beyond their elasticity and split facts into answers to too many questions.

It is perhaps an advantage that living far from the madding crowd, one has conditions conducive to such epiphanies.

All said and done, though, the biggest advantage to living alone is...one can always be sure the toilet seat has not been left up.