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| Author Ravinder Singh |
With India standing among three of the world's fastest-growing populations of single people, one-person households are catching on. The Internet, fat salaries and a new differentiation between being alone and lonely, are making privacy the most-desired commodity, says Anuradha Varma.
Cynics will have to look beyond bachelors 'desperate' for company and 'cranky' spinsters to go tch tch at. Singletons living alone are not just pretending to be happy, they really are. In fact, today, living alone may actually be the most desired state, believes American professor of sociology and author of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, Eric Klinenberg.
More people live alone today than at any other point in history, he says, and it's the rise of economic independence that's making it easier to buy the most coveted commodity of modern living - privacy.
According to market research firm Euromonitor, India stands among three of the world's fastest-growing populations of single people (together with China and Brazil). In the decade-long research he has conducted among 300 people who live alone, an interesting revelation has been one surrounding loneliness. "Living alone doesn't mean a less-social life. In fact, married couples with domestic responsibilities tend to get pulled out of the public realm. Singletons end up spending more time with friends, enjoying evenings at bars, and are even more likely to volunteer. They have control over their time and space," he says in an email interview from New York.
Bindu Sharma, an entrepreneur who lives alone in an apartment in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar, could prove Klinenberg right. The single life suits her better, she admits. "When you live alone, you are free. If you crave a Chinese meal one night, you don't have to check if your housemate is in the mood. Friends make up my support system, and my soulmate is my New York-based sister, who I speak with daily. I'm on Skype for several hours a day, keeping in touch with friends."
That's probably what Klinenberg means when he says the Internet opens single-person households to information, ideas and relationships.
Thirty-year-old author of Can Love Happen Twice?, Ravinder Singh shuttles between Hyderabad, Delhi and Chandigarh (where his mother lives), and spends several hours each day chatting with his readers online, and checking his personal profile. "There's always an interesting post to read. Otherwise, I'm checking up on old friends." Staying connected makes living alone a social experience. And being virtually social may put you out there in the real world. "According to the best study from The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, heavy users of the Internet and smartphones are more likely to spend time with friends and strangers, face-to-face. Today, the Internet is enhancing people's social lives, connecting them to scenes that were out of reach a while ago. It's giving people more control over their lives, not less," explains Klinenberg.
Delhi-based counsellor Gauri Dange, who often counsels young men in their 30s, says, "Parents eager to see them married, hope a counsellor can 'brainwash' them. Some of the men have witnessed their friends struggling in new marriages, or with a child, and want to break away from the family. It's a perfectly legitimate choice. They seem quite happy too, pointing out that their lives are complete and actualised on other fronts."
While experts say the trend is likely to catch on further among India's young professional classes that enjoy high-salaried jobs, cultural values could prevent it from becoming a norm. With only three per cent of all Indian households having one resident, compared to 28 per cent in the US and 47 per cent in Sweden, we are nowhere close to the West. Sarah Lamb, professor of anthropology at Boston's Brandeis University and author of Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad, quotes one of her Bengali graduate students from Kolkata, to offer an example: "If living by oneself was that easy and acceptable hereabouts, then other things we take for granted - like the imperative on getting married, or on looking after our parents when they are older - would fall apart quite soon. Voluntarily living by oneself outside one's family home, when it's not required professionally, indicates to my mother (and to me, now that I think about it) an adoption of a lifestyle different from what we think of as the Indian or Bengali way of life."
The successful home-alone tip Nobody likes to walk into an empty home. Build a support structure, take up classes, don't slip into a workaholic lifestyle, make time for exercise, and mental relation by catching a play or film. - Anjali Chhabria, psychiatrist
Heavy users of the Internet and smartphones, like single-household member and Delhi-based writer Ravinder Singh, are more likely to spend time with friends and strangers, face-to-face, reveals research.
Cynics will have to look beyond bachelors 'desperate' for company and 'cranky' spinsters to go tch tch at. Singletons living alone are not just pretending to be happy, they really are. In fact, today, living alone may actually be the most desired state, believes American professor of sociology and author of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, Eric Klinenberg.
More people live alone today than at any other point in history, he says, and it's the rise of economic independence that's making it easier to buy the most coveted commodity of modern living - privacy.
According to market research firm Euromonitor, India stands among three of the world's fastest-growing populations of single people (together with China and Brazil). In the decade-long research he has conducted among 300 people who live alone, an interesting revelation has been one surrounding loneliness. "Living alone doesn't mean a less-social life. In fact, married couples with domestic responsibilities tend to get pulled out of the public realm. Singletons end up spending more time with friends, enjoying evenings at bars, and are even more likely to volunteer. They have control over their time and space," he says in an email interview from New York.
Bindu Sharma, an entrepreneur who lives alone in an apartment in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar, could prove Klinenberg right. The single life suits her better, she admits. "When you live alone, you are free. If you crave a Chinese meal one night, you don't have to check if your housemate is in the mood. Friends make up my support system, and my soulmate is my New York-based sister, who I speak with daily. I'm on Skype for several hours a day, keeping in touch with friends."
That's probably what Klinenberg means when he says the Internet opens single-person households to information, ideas and relationships.
Thirty-year-old author of Can Love Happen Twice?, Ravinder Singh shuttles between Hyderabad, Delhi and Chandigarh (where his mother lives), and spends several hours each day chatting with his readers online, and checking his personal profile. "There's always an interesting post to read. Otherwise, I'm checking up on old friends." Staying connected makes living alone a social experience. And being virtually social may put you out there in the real world. "According to the best study from The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, heavy users of the Internet and smartphones are more likely to spend time with friends and strangers, face-to-face. Today, the Internet is enhancing people's social lives, connecting them to scenes that were out of reach a while ago. It's giving people more control over their lives, not less," explains Klinenberg.
Delhi-based counsellor Gauri Dange, who often counsels young men in their 30s, says, "Parents eager to see them married, hope a counsellor can 'brainwash' them. Some of the men have witnessed their friends struggling in new marriages, or with a child, and want to break away from the family. It's a perfectly legitimate choice. They seem quite happy too, pointing out that their lives are complete and actualised on other fronts."
While experts say the trend is likely to catch on further among India's young professional classes that enjoy high-salaried jobs, cultural values could prevent it from becoming a norm. With only three per cent of all Indian households having one resident, compared to 28 per cent in the US and 47 per cent in Sweden, we are nowhere close to the West. Sarah Lamb, professor of anthropology at Boston's Brandeis University and author of Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan Families in India and Abroad, quotes one of her Bengali graduate students from Kolkata, to offer an example: "If living by oneself was that easy and acceptable hereabouts, then other things we take for granted - like the imperative on getting married, or on looking after our parents when they are older - would fall apart quite soon. Voluntarily living by oneself outside one's family home, when it's not required professionally, indicates to my mother (and to me, now that I think about it) an adoption of a lifestyle different from what we think of as the Indian or Bengali way of life."
The successful home-alone tip Nobody likes to walk into an empty home. Build a support structure, take up classes, don't slip into a workaholic lifestyle, make time for exercise, and mental relation by catching a play or film. - Anjali Chhabria, psychiatrist
Heavy users of the Internet and smartphones, like single-household member and Delhi-based writer Ravinder Singh, are more likely to spend time with friends and strangers, face-to-face, reveals research.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/people/Indias-most-desirable-Going-back-to-an-empty-home/articleshow/12044273.cms
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