Brave Lonely World

Love and loneliness are sisters who lead complex, chaotic, entangled lives

- Arundhati Ghosh

ONCE upon a time, there lived two little girls. The younger one had a bright, happy disposition with a very temperamental nature. Her emotions were always on a roller coaster and she felt her joys and sorrows with equal intensity. The older one was quieter, and more withdrawn, and she often sat still for many hours in one place. People kept their distance from her; the rumour was that she brought bad luck. The younger little girl was a delight to behold; she roamed the world with great enthusiasm, at all odd hours, like the queen that she imagined herself to be. Boisterous and charming, she gathered company wherever she went-she chatted, she sang, she danced on the roads. Never once did she ask her elder sister to join her in her adventures. However, the dutiful elder sister followed her wherever she went, like a shadow. But she kept her distance because she knew the younger one did not enjoy her presence at all. She trailed along because she feared her little sister's naive trust in strangers. She worried something ominous was always waiting around the corner. She also knew that when things went badly and the little one tripped and fell over the betrayal of her faith in someone, a whole nightmare began to unravel with her violent expressions of grief and heart-wrenching outbursts. That’s when the elder sister swooped in with her arms open like wings, embraced her, and protected her from further damage. Slowly, as the little one recovered and went back to her glory in the sun, the elder sister returned to the shadows. And like that, the two little sisters lived, with each other, without each other.