People think I’m never alone. They’re right—and they’re wrong.

People think I’m never alone. They’re right—and they’re wrong.

I am rarely by myself in rooms. There is almost always a circle, sometimes a semicircle, often a leaning-in. Conversations gather around me before I’ve finished my drink. Compliments arrive warmly wrapped, generously offered. Hands rest on arms. Laughter lingers longer than planned. Someone says they loved what I wore. Someone else says they read what I wrote. Another mentions a restaurant, a book, a column, a line that stayed with them. There is affection here. There is sincerity. There is nothing false or hollow about it.

And yet—inside me, something is very, very quiet. I am surrounded, but I am not accompanied.

This is not a grievance. It is not a grievance against people, or attention, or affection. It is an observation, long-held, finally named. I am not antisocial. I am not bitter. I am not above anyone, aloof or allergic to company. I like people. I admire their earnestness, their curiosity, their courage in approaching someone they think they know because they have read them, watched them, followed their work. I know how generous that reaching-out is.

And that generosity is precisely what makes this complicated.

Because charisma, I have learned, is not a gift. It is labour.

From early on, I was taught—lovingly, insistently—that when asked, I must offer. Sing, my father would say, and I would sing. Not one song, not two, but ten. Recite, my teachers suggested—Sanskrit verses, Hindi poetry, English speeches—and I obliged. Present at the exhibition. Debate at the assembly. Speak clearly. Stand straight. Perform well. I was the youngest of three children, and my father worried I might grow spoiled. So I learned to be useful instead. I learned that saying yes smoothed rooms. That enthusiasm earned approval. That silence could be mistaken for sulk, and withdrawal for ingratitude.

People decided what I should do, and I did it. With sincerity. With discipline. With a willingness that hardened into habit. Over time, being responsive turned into being responsible—not just for my words, but for the weather of the room. For keeping conversation buoyant. For ensuring no one left unseen.

At dinner parties now, the script repeats itself with affectionate predictability. Someone comments on my clothes. Someone mentions my writing. Someone thanks me for a piece that arrived at the right moment in their life. These are not casual remarks. They are gifts. They come with care. These people are readers, champions, patrons of my creative life. I know what it costs to show up like that.

So I listen. I nod. I smile. I receive. And slowly, invisibly, something inside me begins to burn.

Because I did not write for compliments. I wrote to empty myself. To take what crowded my head and press it gently into language so I could release it and move on—to the next question, the next silence, the next sentence forming quietly somewhere else. Writing, for me, is not exhibition. It is evacuation. And yet here I am, asked to re-enter what I have already set down, to hold it again, to perform gratitude for something that was never meant to stay with me.

Attention, I have learned, is not neutral. It extracts.

People take energy when they meet me. They take stories, validation, access, glamour, wisdom, warmth. Sometimes they take courage—borrowed, briefly, from mine. And I give it. I give it because they come with sincerity. Because they are kind. Because they are generous with admiration. Because refusing would feel cruel.

But giving does not always replenish.

Very few people ask how I am and wait for the answer. It is often a question shaped like courtesy, not curiosity. A door opened and closed in the same breath. And I don’t blame them. I respond the way one responds to inquiries about weather: fine, busy, good. We move on.

My loneliness is not loud. It does not announce itself. It does not howl or dramatise. It sits quietly inside me, like a second pulse beneath the first. It arrives during conversations and lingers after them. It follows me home. It settles when the door closes and the room finally exhales.

There is enormous relief when plans are cancelled. A private, almost shameful happiness. A sudden lightness in the chest. I never announce this relief. I reassure, reschedule, say next time. But inside, something loosens. I have been returned to myself.

Because aloneness is not the same as loneliness.

When I am alone, I am restored. I write. I read. I sing—not to perform, not to please, but to hear my own voice echo back without judgement. I write poems no one may ever read. I daydream. I let thoughts wander without translating them into charm or coherence. Solitude is the only place where I do not have to edit myself into being palatable.

Being alone is not rejection. It is recovery.

The moment I step into the elevator that takes me home, I know it in my body before I know it in my mind. The faint lavender of the cleaning supplies. The soft, almost sweet warmth of freshly laundered linen drifting from somewhere unseen. The quiet hum of ascent. These scents—mundane, domestic, dependable—thrill me. They tell me I am leaving performance behind. They announce comfort. They signal safety. They are my private applause.

This is what rest smells like.

What exhausts me is not people—it is performance. The constant calibration. The alertness. The listening while preparing to respond. The effort of animating space. The guilt that arrives if I leave a room early. I imagine the stories others might tell themselves: bored, arrogant, too important. I want to make sure I’ve touched every life, made every person feel acknowledged. And so I stay. And stay. And stay.

This is not generosity. It is conditioning.

People are drawn to me, but not always for me. Often, I am a mirror. A mentor. A moment. Something they pass through on their way to becoming. I have made peace with this—mostly. But there is an ache in being interesting without being indispensable. In being admired but not held. In being invited, consumed, celebrated—and then left alone with the residue of everyone else’s need.

Visibility is a strange thing. You can be seen everywhere and still feel unseen where it matters. You can be desired socially and unmet emotionally. You can host rooms and still crave one quiet chair where nothing is required of you.

As I place my memoir into the world—as Tell My Mother I Like Boys prepares to leave my hands and belong to others—I find myself naming this truth out loud for the first time. Not as confession. Not as complaint. Simply as context.

Did I choose this life, or did my temperament, talent, and timing choose it for me? I don’t know anymore. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps some people are built to host energy, not hoard it. Perhaps some lives look full from the outside but require more silence than applause to survive.

I am not asking for less love. I am asking for less performance.

And maybe that is not a request at all—just a recognition. That being a loner is not failure, or retreat, or ingratitude. It is self-knowledge. It is knowing where one refuels. It is understanding that rest is not emptiness, and silence is not absence.

Because the truest companionship I know is the one I keep with myself, when the elevator doors close, when the air smells of lavender and clean cotton, when the world finally stops leaning in—and lets me be.