No one writes to the colonel

There was a time when I had ample time to read and books were the optimum medium for peeking into the treasures of the outside world. My mind had a voracious appetite for exotic wonders; that was how I came across his writings. I must confess that I didn’t take an instant liking to his style, the way I took to Kundera. Nevertheless, in my small contemporary world, the people who mattered were big fans of his, so I had no other option but to read his works. We used to read only fiction at that time and the District Library was the only source of world famous literary works. In our circle, the rule was, “If you manage to lay your hands on a Marquez, read it.” I read “Love in the time of cholera” expecting a love story. I didn’t know much about him at that time, but I had heard of the book which was a bestseller worldwide. As time went by, I read a few more of his books, although his memoirs are still in a half read phase in my bookshelf. I have forgotten most of his works, but the appealing titles, the plots, the sea side settings, banana trees and tropical weather still linger in my memory.

Nowadays, I am busy making a living far away from home; let alone reading; I have no time for just about anything. Most of my friends with whom I used to discuss the stories of the literary world are also suffering a similar fate. Technology has kept our acquaintances intact; thanks to the internet, social networks, e-mail or cell phone, everyone is just a click or touch away. But that old fragrance of times spent with friends, gossiping about books, movies, in fact anything under the sun is missing as we are all so very busy.

Just the other day, as I was having some precious “free” time, I looked at my call history and noticed that no one has been calling or texting me for a long time. I cross checked my mails, facebook, etc…….it was true, no one was saying “hi”.

Now a days I have built a habit of checking the junk mails too, there was nothing in the spam box also.

“No one is writing to the colonel”, I murmured.

Then, I felt lonely and sad. The story is the same for most of us – the so-called “modern man”. We live in densely populated cities, work in busy offices, have a hectic social life, but even so, we live a lonely life, away from something that we connected with so deeply. This distance can be measured by time (we are never far away from the happy memories of our childhood and the “wonder years” of growing up) and place (not for everyone, but many of us are away from our roots). All these thoughts lead to a sense of eternal loneliness. “A hundred years of solitude”, I mused.

This thought precipitated a bout of verbal diarrhoea of titles of books by this author……

“Living to tell a tale”, “Chronicle of a death foretold”, “Memoirs of my melancholy whore”….

At that moment, I saw one name trending in all news items – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I was aware of his illness and could appreciate why this name was trending.

May be it was a telepathy, maybe it was a psychosomatic connection  or a mere co incidence but when I got the news of his demise I told enough is enough –I should blot the event down no matter however busy I may be.