Getting personal

I was talking to someone on the phone recently and they said that in all that they have read and so learned about me, they know nothing of my social life. They knew about my family, our kitten, the food I have eaten, the places I like going to, the shoes I buy, but nothing about what I do after work, when I am not home, out with friends, whatever. I never write about that part of my life, they say. And they speak verily, forsooth! Simply because I do not have a social life at the moment!

Why? You may ask and you deserve an answer, especially after I take you through so many very private compartments of my life and work with no self-consciousness or hesitation of any kind. It could be a very simple answer: I choose not to have one. Or it could be complicated: I choose not to have one because….Or, as is usually the case with everything human, it could be a nice albeit tangled mess of both, making the sorting out and the whys and wherefores more difficult to comprehend than just the usual very simple excuse of “I don’t have the time.”

For me, complicated works best. For some years, I did the social thing and was seen and heard and made quite a bit of at various dos in various parts of the world. I was at the jazz concert, at the opening of the new gallery, at the book launch, at the restaurant, at the film premiere….wherever there was a soupcon of culture and very little of the usual gossip circle except by invitation only. Then I found out about the joys of working via multitasking and was often cloistered with a computer, making money, getting bylines, thoroughly enjoying myself, even as I did the rounds of events and parties. But it was always discretionary, subject to mood swings, interest levels and free time. I also travelled to – for me - new cities, seeing San Francisco, exploring Santa Fe, wandering through Madrid, hopping around Beijing, racing around Tunbridge Wells in a pancake shaped sports car…it was a hoot and I relished every experience.

But then the reality of life caught up with me. I lived in Delhi for a while and learned to hate being social, seeing more artifice and faux friendships than my stomach could handle for too long. After a while, I stopped going anywhere after work, preferring the company of the cat, the computer, the TV and the few close friends who could enter my well-guarded sanctum with prior permission. It helped me drain the toxins of a bad time out of my system, and it gave me time to re-find my centre and get back into a comparatively serene state of being.

But then life overtook me again and I came back to Mumbai, went through two immeasurable losses – first my cat, then my mother – and turned completely hermit. Today I come to work, go home, write/edit/scramble and then cook/clean/scramble some more, depending on where I am and what needs to be done most urgently. While I am now feeling the need to go out with people my age and my degree of madness and just have an evening of laughter, fun, light-hearted flirtation and food that I have had no hand in making, I am hogtied by the responsibilities I myself have taken on as my own, with house, father and kitten being the least of the burden. There is more – a feeling of not doing enough to keep life happy and moving forward, a guilt at not being as good a housekeeper as I should, a knowledge that Mother would have done it not just differently, but better, and much more that may be silly, but clogs the mind, soul and get-up-and-go quite effectively.

Once I grow out of it, I may be brave enough to step out of the rut I have settled into. If I grow out of it, that is.