That Lonely Feeling

WHO has recognised loneliness as a public health crisis and is trying to devise a way to measure the condition that affects a quarter of the world population

- ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY

ARIJEET MANDAL’S struggle with loneliness began at the age of 10. He would often wonder why he felt sad when everyone around him was happy. “Back then, I did not know how to describe how I was feeling,” he says. Mandal lost his sibling at age 13 and his mother the following year. “I did not see efforts from my family to process the grief. Three months after my mother’s death, people were too busy trying to get my father remarried. My faith in the institution of family and marriage collapsed,” he says. Though Mandal moved to Kolkata in 2007 and has since become an assistant professor of film studies at the Jadavpur University, he continues to feel lonely. “I am a Dalit man. Most of my friends and colleagues are from upper caste and upper-middle-class. I feel that I am all alone,” he says.

Though seldom talked about in the society, the feeling of loneliness that Mandal has lived with most of his life is experienced by almost a quarter of the world’s population, suggests “The Global State of Social Connections”, the largest worldwide study on loneliness conducted in 2023 by US-based technology firm Meta, and analytics and advisory company Gallup. In India, the study found that as high as 30 per cent of the respondents reported to feeling lonely.