Loneliness brings along with it a friend

Image: postsecret.blogspot.com
Every single expat in Qatar is lonely. You can see it on their faces. Loneliness fills the air here.
But every expat here has a friend for life. A friend that will never ditch. A friend that will love uncondtionally. A friend who will hear you through anything.
No points for guessing who the friend is.
It's themselves. They're their own best friends.
How did they find this friend? Loneliness brought the friend along. It had to. Loneliness didn't have a choice.
Ear-pieces (handsfree for mobile phones) here sell left right and centre. No points for guessing why either.
It's so that people, while walking on the roads, or taking a ride in the cabs, or driving, or eating in restaurants, don't look like idiots talking when no one's sitting beside or in front of them.
So everyone, after wearing their undies, plugs in the handsfree in the morning. The handsfree only comes off at night when they're just about to sleep.
People here, 70 percent of which are foreigners, are lonely. They saw two roads in front of them. One, was a journey filled with a lot of fun, moments or happiness and sadness, ups and downs, friends and family. The other one, the second one, was a boring, terribly monotonous, friendless, lonely, slow, easy journey, but a journey filled with money. All of them chose the second road.
In the process, left behind all their friends, their own country, their own homes, their families, their life, and adapted to this one very conveniently, saying, "I want my family to have a decent lifestyle. So what if I have to stay away from them for it." That's the usual Indian answer.
The western expats though have brought along their wives, who crib all day long, and are probably contemplating a divorce because they married such losers who dragged them here. Their kids though chose to stay back in UK or America and carry on with their lives.
But gradually the 'losers' (arguable, hence in quotes) got so used to the easy, competition-less, uncontroversial, relaxed, getting-paid-to-do-fuck-all life, that they now can't ever go back to their own or any other fast-paced country to work. Because they'd fall flat on their faces.
And loneliness became an integral part of their lives. Something, now, they can't live without. It's the only thing that's theirs. It brought them closer to them. They found out who they really were.
To quote a funny instance, a new GM in a reputed company here had joined from UK. He once entered office early to see one of his staff members sitting on the computer and talking out loud while typing in the accounts or whatever. The GM, a little scared, asked him, "What the fuck are you doing? Who're you talking to?"
The man very casually stood up and answered, "Talking? Who's talking?"
The GM obviously thinking he's just landed into a madhouse walked away to his cabin. About a couple of months later, the same man walked to the GM's room to get some signatures. The GM was shouting, cursing, hurling abuses. So the man thought there must be someone inside. he stood outside for half an hour and no one came out. He eventually knocked and went inside. There the GM was, sitting on his leather chair, all alone.
The man gifted him a handsfree the next day. Till today, they never take the handfree off. Both of them.
When I bought my cellphone yesterday, i thought for a second if I should buy a handsfree too. But I decided against it. Coz I am not ashamed to be my own best friend. I always was, I always will be, whether I am in India, Qatar, America or any other part of the world.
For it's loneliness which brings along with it a friend. It has to. It doesn't have a choice.