Living with loneliness without any love, care or affection, something within you dies every single day.

In the eight series, I write on how loneliness affects the lives of single men in India. While we may celebrate our bachelorhood, one should also realize that loneliness takes its toll, especially on our emotional well being.We become less human, we get devoid of human emotions.

There are many Indian men who are now living a life of extreme loneliness.There is no one by our side, we have lost touch with our relatives, hopes of marriage have long gone, we have good friends but they are busy attending to their own families.At this stage of our lives there is no one by ourside.

I know what many of us are going through. Unlike single Indian women we don't go around advertising our situation. In India, men accept their pain and suffering silently.

We often ask:what wrong did we do to deserve this life? We find no answer. May be we have accepted our fates and compromised with it.

We wake up early and realize that there is no one by outside.We have our breakfast alone wondering if there would be any possibility in the near future where we would be sharing our dinning table with that special person.We go to work and listen to our colleagues discussing matters related to their families. When we see family photos of someone, something suddenly hits us and we realize what we are missing.

We come home to any empty house (I have been doing that for the last 16 years now. First as an undergraduate student , then as a first time employee, later on as a PG student and now a professional assimilated in the workforce). No one greets us at the entrance of our homes, no wife, no child. There is no one with whom we can share our problems, no one with we will be having dinner.Sundays, public holidays and festivals have stopped being of an importance to us.

We ask ourselves?Are we dying everyday? To some extent, the answer is yes.We have stopped being emotional, we have stopped living in fantasy and stopped keeping hopes.Other thean our professional achievements and credentials, we don't have any cherished moments. In a society filled with lies, cheat, deceit and rampant abuse of the judicial system , we have become hyper vigilant. Interactions with the opposite gender fills our minds with doubts and paranoia. We have made fences and walls around us to such an extent that making a meaningful relationship with someone is difficult.In my case, I have not been touched for the last 15 years. The lack of physical human contact is enough to make me inhuman or to put it better words, dehumanizing.

No matter how much suffering we keep in our hearts, our stoicism gets reflected in our eyes and face.We die, we die every single day. It is just that we don't register this minuscule percentage of our death.

This is not just my story but the story of many men like men, men who are orphans and men who have left their dysfunctional families for good.Men who are single because of their destiny. This is the reality of our lives.

BHAVEEN SHETH