#IntrovertDiaries

When I was in class 2, a teacher wrote in red ink on my report card: “Too quiet. Needs to participate more.”

It made no sense to me. I was doing what they told us.
Keep quiet in class.
So I kept quiet, in class, in the playground, in assembly, even during birthday parties when kids yelled while clapping. Somewhere along the way, I started keeping quiet in my head too.

That instruction, Keep quiet, stuck like a permanent rule.
Like don’t talk to strangers.
Like close the fridge fast.
Like press the lift button only once.

And so, by the time I hit high school, I was fluent in silence. Small talk felt like solving a quadratic equation with 5 variables. Group conversations were mostly noise to me. Whenever someone cracked a joke and looked at me expectantly, I smiled like I understood. Because asking them to repeat it felt like asking them to explain the joke, which always kills it.

Talking to people started to feel like I was constantly trying not to interrupt a party I wasn’t invited to.

I wasn’t sad. Just tired. Talking took work.
I preferred windows. And spiral notebooks. And the back benches of public buses.
Places where I could listen without needing to speak.

The only time I felt at ease was when someone talked without expecting a reply. Like my uncle, who once explained the stock market for two hours while I just nodded. Or my neighbour aunty who narrated entire episodes of her favourite serial while watering the tulsi. With them, silence wasn’t a gap, it was space.

Sometimes people mistake it for arrogance.
“Are you showing attitude?”
No. I’m just thinking about how to reply without sounding weird.

But sometimes, silence works like camouflage. You’re there, but not too there. Teachers forget to ask you questions. Friends leave you out of the drama. Even life doesn’t interrupt too often. And in between all that quiet, you start observing things that most people miss.

Like how some people laugh with their hands.
Or how there’s always one ceiling fan that rotates slower than the rest.
Or how the vending machine at the metro takes exactly seven seconds to drop a packet of chips.

I’ve grown up now.
But the report card hasn’t changed.
Only now, it’s not a teacher marking me.
It’s people asking, “Why are you so quiet?”
I don’t have a good answer.
Maybe I just took school too seriously.
Maybe I still do.