ALONE IN THE CROWD: OVERCOMINGONELINESS OF URBANIVING

In a city high-rise, sitting in the balcony on the 25th floor, sipping tea, youook out into the horizon, cityights glimmering in the distance, cars fading away as they rush across the highway. You are surrounded by silence though you can hear the faint noises of the horns honking on the road. Youook across at the building angularly adjoining yours and see shadows move across thearge expansive windows. You wonder what they would be doing—their conversations, their actions, the scuttling and scurrying movements. You can feel the melancholy, theonesomeness. You reflect how it was neverike this before. As people navigate their way towards growth and success, they find themselves ‘busy’ and others around them ‘unavailable’. This urban existence with its multidimensional challenges hased to an upsurge in the experience ofoneliness and taking stock is a matter of pertinent significance. This book explores the spaces from which the problem of urbanoneliness arises. It portrays in detail the facets of ourives which are contributing towards the emergence of this scenario. In Alone in the Crowd, the authors go beyond highlighting the existence of the problem to enlisting ways in which this pandemic, in the midst of the current pandemic, can be tackled. Encouraging readers to concurrently focus on the need toive mindfully, this book also highlights keyearnings from the pandemic.