It would seem to any observer that India, with its teeming, burgeoning 1.4 billion people is a packed and inter-connected collective, where the sheer density of the population can leave no one untouched, with neither time, space nor choice to be lonely. And yet, the truth is that in spite of crowds and crowds everywhere, loneliness is a growing epidemic, especially across the vast sprawl of urban India.

Loneliness is a feeling of isolation, of lack of company, of being alone even in the midst of activity and people all around. In the West, it has long been recognised as a genuine problem and is even described as a pandemic, which by now is of such proportions that it needs medical treatment since it can lead to depression and a host of other health problems.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that one in four older people experience social isolation and between five and 15% of adolescents experience loneliness globally. A problem of this magnitude is, the WHO says, “a pressing albeit underappreciated global health problem,” whose impact is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day! For a long time, there was hardly any serious study of loneliness in India. However, in 2017-18, the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India, using a survey base of 72,000 adults, concluded that 20.5% of those aged 45 or above suffered from loneliness, and for 13.3% the problem was severe. The Agewell Foundation, in a 2021 report, highlighted that there was a significant rise in the number of Indians suffering from loneliness.

There are many reasons why this could be true. The steady break-up of the joint family system which, for all its hierarchical tyrannies, offered a kinship and support system, has left millions isolated in the suburban anonymity of India. People living in building complexes, or residential colonies, don’t know who their neighbour is, or have little in common with them. In the metropolises, where people from all parts of India congregate to earn a living, life can be a lonely drudgery, where apart from work, there is little in terms of community activity or camaraderie. The ubiquitous presence of the internet and social media often leaves individuals in an insulated cocoon, where at one level they are connected to the world, and at another, alone with the computer and the TV screen, with little tangible or comforting connections with the outside world.

Ironically, the flip side of this coin is that the sheer number of people all around leaves a person craving for solitude. Loneliness and solitude are two entirely different things. In the first you seek company; in the second, you cannot prevent its unwanted intrusion. Loneliness is a negative state of mind; solitude is a positive desire for time to be alone. If the first is a problem that needs greater attention and even medical intervention, the second is a search that is increasingly becoming elusive.

Everyone, especially creative people, needs time to be just left to themselves, to think, unwind, observe, explore and recharge their intellectual and physical batteries. But the world, with its meddlesome numerical cacophony, is constantly encroaching on our turf. During the height of communism in Poland, when collective and manipulated hysteria in support of the communist ideology refused to let anyone out of its iron-clad embrace, a leading Polish poet, simply wrote: ‘Workers of this world, leave me alone!’

It is this feeling that Ghalib too expresses: Rahiye ab aisi jagah chal kar jahan koi na ho, hum sukhan koi na ho aur hum zubaan koi na ho (Let me go and live somewhere where none else is there; no one to speak with, and no one who knows my language’.) And the poet Rajendra Awasthi lyrically echoes the same sentiment: Bheed mein bhi rehta hoon veerane ke sahare, jaise koi mandir kisi gaon ke kinare (Even amidst the crowds I live on the basis of my solitude, just like a temple standing aloof beyond the village’).

But for the moment, both the growing problem of loneliness, and the difficult search for solitude, have been engulfed by the inauguration of the Ram temple, and the national happiness of one more milestone in the evolution of democratic India: Our Republic Day.

Happy Republic Day!

Pavan K Varma is author, diplomat, and former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). Just Like That is a weekly column where Varma shares nuggets from the world of history, culture, literature, and personal reminiscences with HT Premium readers. The views expressed are personal