Alone
In a sea of people, I am alone,
Lonely and in solitude, as I’d always known.
People around me talking and laughing,
But my ears hear only noise which seems like babbling.
Their mirth fills my ears but I still choose to ignore,
Passing off their talk as useless rancour.
I know in my heart, I am being anti-social,
But it seems like ignorance is perhaps blissful.
I don’t get sucked into people’s worlds,
Watch their lives, as it unfurls.
It’s a job, not my life which is already full of strife
I prefer to be alone, a loner all my life
Alone means being with your thoughts,
Alone means facing life head on, even its onslaughts
I love being alone, it’s never a pain
To pretend to like being with people, to have to feign
Vikram Lall comes of age in 1950s Kenya, at the same time that the colony is struggling towards independence. Against the unsettling backdrop of Mau Mau violence, Vic and his sister Deepa, the grandchildren of an Indian railroad worker, search for their place in a world sharply divided between Kenyans and the British. We follow Vic from a changing Africa in the fifties, to the hope of the sixties, and through the corruption and fear of the seventies and eighties. Hauntingly told in the voice of the now exiled Vic, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is an acute and bittersweet novel of identity and family, of lost love and abiding friendship, and of the insidious legacy of the British Empire.
It never gets old. From the time GG & BB were born till now, every time people hear I have twins, people ask me questions, most of which, when I think about it, are almost similar in nature. BB & GG turn 14 this year and I have been fielding these questions for just as long. So here’s a list of questions that I sometimes wish I have prepared answers for and just pass it to them when they ask!
Are they twins? (I used to get asked this a lot when they were younger, but I don’t get asked this question anymore because BB is taller than GG and so people assume she is the younger sister)
Ismail Boxwala made the worst mistake of his life one summer morning twenty years ago: he forgot his baby daughter in the back seat of his car. After his daughter’s tragic death, he struggles to continue living. A divorce, years of heavy drinking, and sex with strangers only leave him more alone and isolated.
