The idea of loneliness

I am scared of living alone. Not exactly scared. There's no danger to my life or anything. But still just the idea of spending days and days all by myself with Amul being away on his business tour is going to be very depressing. He's soon leaving for a 5 day tour which includes a weekend. And considering that i have no company other than amul in ahmedabad, its going to be pretty much difficult. I am sure, inspite of a population of 100 crores, a lot of us are lonely in one way or the other... or how would you explain the boom in the social networking sites.

People are addicted to sites like Orkut, Facebook, Myspace. I have so many friends who actually keep these sites on throughout the time they are in office, checking out their inbox every few minutes, only to feel depressed that no one's mailed them or left a message in last 10 minutes. And therefore they either start playing movie quizzes or some other online games on these sites and then prod others to do the same. And others (just as free as the sender) too indulge in these games and pass it on to others with their scores...

God!! Havent we got anything better to do?? But as one of my friend who lives down under says, 'Mos, try living alone and you will know how much these websites matter to you.' She sometimes hates the fact that Australia is ahead to the rest of the world in time and therefore has to wait till mid-noon to start receiving messages or mails from her friends in India and US. But then i had to point out to her that - 'look at the brighter side babe. Your inbox has some new fresh messages when you check them in the morning.' Coz probably US friends left messages for her when she was fast asleep.

But what sort of dependence is this? I am sure we all in one way or the other are dependent on the internet these days to fight loneliness. I keep checking out news website - just to ensure that i am not caught unawares by the delhi office. Devam keeps downloading music all the time and there's some music playing in the background all the time. I guess thats his way of dealing with loneliness. Even dad has this regular inflow of messages from his bhavnagari friends from all around the world. Forwards about how to live a content life or some quirky quotes or amazing moralistic stories. And he happily spends an hour replying and forwarding mails to his friends.

But these websites dont help kill loneliness even a wee bit. I wish i was like Amul and Mom. I can claim that this two people are totally non dependent on the internet. They are somehow always busy. They always have things to do. They always have people around them. They always have to find excuses to meet one bunch and handle the other bunch of people. And if all this is not enough, they have travel plans and even know what are they doing next month. God, only if i was so busy. Or only if i knew how to handle loneliness... for the time being, i am just waiting for Amul to come back, even before he leaves. How do you guys handle being alone???