Title: Alone, Among Others Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands slightly apart, as if the world continues without noticing them. Their voice is quiet, deliberate, carrying the weight of long-held thoughts.)
Monologue:
It isn't the silence that frightens me.
It's the noise.
The proof that life continues everywhere—
laughter spilling from rooms I never enter,
voices calling names that are not mine.
I am surrounded, yet untouched.
Seen, yet never truly known.
They ask how I am, and I answer correctly.
Not honestly—correctly.
Because honesty would take too long,
and no one stays long enough to hear it.
I used to believe loneliness was a failure—
that if I tried harder, spoke louder, became more agreeable,
I would be chosen.
But isolation is not always abandonment.
Sometimes it is the quiet result
of being too aware.
(Pauses, eyes lowered.)
To be human is to be separate.
Each of us locked inside our own thoughts,
translating feeling into words that never quite fit.
We touch hands, share beds, exchange promises—
yet no one truly steps inside another's mind.
And still… we reach.
Despite the risk. Despite the disappointment.
Because even brief understanding
is worth a lifetime of solitude.
A single moment of being seen
can sustain a soul for years.
(Softly.)
I am alone—
but I am not empty.
I observe. I endure. I feel deeply,
even when no one notices.
If this is the human condition,
then let it be said
that I stayed open
in a world that so often closes itself.
(The speaker remains still, neither rescued nor resigned, simply present.)