How much land does a man need?

How much land does a man require? That’s the question that our good, old English Literature (CBSE) book asked in standard 7. But I feel somehow the question has changed its meanings as we have grown up – its no more just the land needed to place the grave comfortably but “ MY PRIVATE SPACE” that people crave for.

As I was flipping through the pages of my text book, that being a yearly ritual for DU students a night before the main exams, I came across an interesting conversation between Bonnefoy and Ionesco (I did his ‘Rhinoceros’ this year) where Ionesco spoke about the need of solitude in today’s world. Reading his piece, it tickled me off thinking that in a way he was correct in assessing that the lack of solitude is one of the main problems of this age. Not ‘communal solitude’ which means isolation or alienation or estrangement from the world, but the solitude in which one is able to withdraw unto oneself so that a healthy analysis can be undertaken about our past actions, present circumstances and future decisions. For this everyone need sometime off for themselves { by the way everybody dread being ‘alone in a crowd’ yet desire it as the same time.} Have’nt we all at some point or the other in our lives wished to be left all alone? Switched off from every human contact and just stared at the distant sky searching for the entirety in our souls? Wished to silence the noise outside and listen to the music of the heart? Long solitary walks where no external force can disturb, silently sitting at the window pane watching the sorrow laden clouds unburdening themselves and then bright rainbows making the whole world pristine clear? Companionship is needed at all times, yet have we never desired to sit by the lakeside and see the sunset all by yourself… feeling as if everything, every beauty is present to soothe your senses alone, to make you believe you are the sole beneficiary of God’s benevolence? It is only at those times that one feels the presence of God by their side.

Again these above lines made me divert and think what has actually made the modern day man so recluse? Is it the societal pressure or the competition? Accepted that ‘survival of the fittest’ theory has never before found its true meaning as it has in the twenty- first century, but our elders too must have faced the same crux in their own ways. So why is it that only our generation has started demanding their “space” – not after life but for the very reason to live. I mean my parents never demanded it, and happily lived in a large joint family for their entire childhoods. Space never meant a luxury for them, but a thing of necessity. But me and my bro, each having our separate rooms, still crave for space and privacy. I wonder when this hunger for metaphoric - temporal space will satiate, and what all we will lose till then. For the time being, I am going to stay in my own, cocooned, Happy State of Solitude.

P.S. The title is taken from Leo Tolstoy's short story by the same title.