The city became a mythical land, even at its grimiest, and I, a time-travelling adventurer
Illustration/Uday Mohite
A treat I love to give myself, is to go out for a drink alone.
I’m not averse to company. I enjoy the conviviality of going out with people. I love to cook for others, to throw parties and go to parties.
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But there is something delicious, something luxurious about sitting by myself with a book and a drink that’s a glamorous shade of pink flirting with a plum or pomelo. It’s a surprise holiday in the middle of the work week.
It was thrilling to me even as a child. The siesta silence of Sunday afternoons was a kind of voluptuous solitude, a desert island with perfect weather and trees full of forbidden fruit. When I first moved to Bombay as an adult, I loved taking random buses to the end of the route, roaming around in unfamiliar parts alone. The city became a mythical land, even at its grimiest, and I, a time-travelling adventurer.
Perhaps doing things on one’s own feels glamorous because it’s so out-of-syllabus from our upbringing, which is about how we must learn to be with and for others. We always do things with family or school groups. We share rooms with siblings. As a true Indian, you are supposed to choose the drab option. Good tablemats for guests; for yourself, the ugly ones Sandhya masi gave, now frayed and discoloured by dozens of spilled dals. For you the torn t-shirt and the underwear with holes; best dresses and good chaddis—even if they remain unseen-for others.
Taking yourself out is very different from the idea of “pamper yourself because you deserve it”. In that world view the default is suffering, fun an exception. A puritanical surrender to the workaholic god of capitalism who will see how much you can bear before you prove that you’re worth it, that spa date or red lipstick.
Wearing something nice and doing something enjoyable, yun hi, by yourself is a prayer in praise of pleasure and a liberating belief that it is quite a natural part of life. Through this pleasure is a road to a certain confidence.
Though the reluctance to solitary activity cuts across gender, women do find it a little harder to go out by themselves. On the one hand there is the fear of unwanted advances. On the other, the fear of seeming pathetic. Only, when you begin to do things on your own, you realise that the world is not as predatory as women are constantly told it is, to keep them in line. That you are capable of gauging what will be safe and comfortable for you. And that the occasional unwanted advance will not make you collapse. You will brush it off quite easily and the brush-off will in fact be accepted. As you no longer deny yourself the pleasure of a film or concert because you’re alone, pleasure ceases to be a thing only available with others. Then company is more pleasurable too, because you aren’t choosing it simply for fear of being alone.
When I first began taking myself out, I was usually the only solo person, definitely the only such woman around. Now I often notice others like me, enjoying their own company. Sometimes we smile at each other. Mostly we just enjoy the fact of each other, of ourselves, at large and at home in the world.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com
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