Everything looks more beautiful in autumn, even the quiet moment you spend sitting near the window, sipping coffee on a hazy weekend afternoon, covered in all the sun the world can muster. Yes, even that, even sitting by yourself and doing nothing looks better. The aesthetic of loneliness is purely about the season one feels lonely in. When it is snowing, and even if it does not snow, the loneliness in winter is dark, it is dry and dreary, and of course, it is cold. In summer, the loneliness is loud and spent on expensive brunches and drinking during the day. In summer, we do not know that we are lonely; if we do, we do not pay attention to it as often. For spring and monsoon, the loneliness looks alike. You spend your days engulfed in the offerings of the world; it is all a bit too much, and it is tucked away in public moments, hidden, of course, but out in the open: in gardens and picnics and colour, or under the generous cover of the bus stop with a hot, paper cup of coffee in your hands, waiting for the rain to stop. Only in autumn does loneliness look gorgeous. It feels warm, and it looks golden, magical. It is in these months, and these months alone, that one can feel lonely and not get any guilt. The world around us burns in brown and red and orange, and it says, burn along, no one is watching, no one is watching.
Now, I do not mean to imply I am lonely. I have not felt loneliness since last autumn, but then, all of us feel it now and then. It does not mean we are lonely; it only means we have felt what everyone feels for a bit, and then we have gone about our business. It is moments of repose, of inactivity and inaction where I feel this, and I reckon, where all of us feel it. It is when we have a second to regroup our senses, and then, as we are entirely present with ourselves—an event rarer than one might think—we realise there is no one but us in this journey through time, that even if there are other people, they are lonely in the precise same way: in moments, sparingly, intermittently, and then, all at once.