Terms and Conditions Applied

On being an introvert, a bad poet, and someone’s embarrassing child.

Me(Aleen) being Introvert at a forest far from no human being around on the mountains.

I was seven years old, standing completely still in front of 500 people. Not frozen with grace. Just frozen. My mother had prepared me well at home. At home, there are no bullies, no face-makers, no vocabulary-demons in the front row. At home, you deliver the best of what you can do.

But home is not a crowd. And I had never seen the face of a crowd before.

“How does it look? How it performs. How much bigger it is than you.”

So, I cried and fainted. And my mother said I had embarrassed her in front of everyone.

Here is the thing she didn’t know: she had given birth to an introvert.

It is possible.

You are an extrovert — great. Your child may not be. And if you are thinking of producing a five-star stage performance from an introvert in three days, I have news: three days is not enough. Three days is barely a warm-up. You need more, and at the very least, more than what you gave me.

I know this because I tried. I tried so hard once, during a school poem recitation, that I completely blanked and recited the poem straight from the English textbook. The one printed inside the book. The one given to every student in the class.

I was beaten by a friend, scolded by three girls, and my teachers were disappointed that I had “copied.”

Dude. It was in the textbook. How exactly did I copy someone else’s performance by reciting the state-issued curriculum? Seriously?

And then, of course, scolded again at home.

This is what it feels like to be pushed past your limit: you are taken to a mountain peak to watch the sunrise. Then you get there, and there are clouds everywhere. So you wait. And wait. And by the time the sun clears, it isn’t sunrise anymore. It is noon.

The sunrise only happens at the horizon. For the record, the seaside is best. Mountains are fine too, if there are no clouds. But nobody tells you this when they are dragging you up the slope.

And when the moment doesn’t happen the way they planned, they say: “Jump off the cliff. You will be safe. Just look down.”

“I AM FALLING.”

Looking down or up — same altitude, same vibe.

This is how extroverts push introverts into their nightmares. Not with cruelty, necessarily. Just with tremendous, confident, well-meaning wrongness.

Want to understand the difference? Lock an extrovert in a room with food, books, art supplies, low lighting, a comfy bed, and zero social interaction. They will feel like they are being choked. An introvert will call it a vacation.

Now — I know we are not all extremists. Between the two, there are the involved ones: 80% extrovert, 20% introvert, or flipped. Built when introverts and extroverts were invited into the same room and stayed too long. These are the partial creatures, the ones who function in both worlds on a case-by-case basis.

I am one of them now.

I can have ice cream with you, but I don’t want to talk in between. I will enjoy my coffee quietly, but I might reach across and try your chocolate shake. Am I worse? Possibly. But to survive in this society, the extremist position is rarely available to us anymore.

My mother learned this too late. She pushed. I didn’t move. She pushed again. I pushed back once and won.

She beat me up and said, “Baba, you are not like me. Be like me.”

And so here I am. An extrovert. Terms and conditions applied.

Hii. I am Aleen.

Please, join me in my room. I am known for my cuddles — but fair warning, I will eat 80% of your food. Consider it an initiation. That suffering will make you 10% of me.

Cheers.

Aah! Wait, I don’t share my cold coffee. uh-uh ^_^

My( Aleen) on Stage performance of story telling in one of the Open mic in Mumbai

(Originally performed as a 3-minute Hindi bit at an open mic.)