Main Aisa Kyu Hoo...

I remember the day I started turning into an Introvert.

It was a Saturday and an 11-year-old me was passing by a roadside second-hand book shop. Out of the hundreds of books lying around, one caught my eye. Two words boldly sprawled across the cover; James Bond. That book was ‘Dr. No’ by Ian Fleming. I was intrigued and thought ‘been reading Chacha Choudhary comics till now. Maybe give this one a shot’

I started reading and within 10 pages I realized that James Bond is a completely different animal than Chacha Choudhary and this was not a suitable reading material for an 11-year-old. Which made it that much more appealing to me. Took me couple of weeks to read the whole thing as I had to pull out my dictionary quite often but I was hooked throughout. That book taught me so many things. One; Vodka Martinis should be shaken, not stirred. Another; Walther PPK is a better handgun than Beretta. Now granted, both facts were useless to me in real life. But then again, I spent quite some time learning Trigonometry. Same can be said about that. At least, those Bond facts were interesting and reciting them authoritatively in front of my friends got me some respect. After finishing ‘Dr. No,’ I rushed back to that second hand book seller and got myself ‘Moonraker,’ arguably the best Bond novel. And thus began my love affair with books.

The Wonder Years

Now before all that, I was just like any other 11-year-old. In the morning, I would eagerly hang out with friends in school and in the evening, I would rush to community playground to play cricket with my society friends. But as I started reading more and more, I realized something. My friends were not particularly funny, interesting, knowledgeable or wise. All they could talk about was which teacher was the worst; Which WWF (Now WWE) superstar is the strongest and how awesome is this some new cricketer by the name Sachin Tendulkar. We would talk about the same things week after week after week. Funny how I had never noticed that before. It’s like your mind was blown by the special effects in Ramayana TV serial when you were 7 and then you see special effects in Star Wars; released 10 years earlier. You can’t believe you were impressed with Ramayana CGI and now Star Wars is your reference point.

Now this was also that time when I had very little spare time. School, classes, extracurriculars, homework…I realized if I am to keep on reading what Bond is upto, I need to steal some time from other activities. And the first casualty was the time spent playing cricket. It helped that I was not particularly good at it. Later, I started spending some time of the school recess reading novels and forgo hanging out with my school friends. Of course, all this did not happen suddenly. Took couple of years.

And it was not as if I did not meet more interesting people as the years passed by. I did. But at the same time, books also got way way more interesting. Ian Fleming gave way to John Grisham. Then Archer, Forsyth, Clancy. The list continues even today. Also, reading requires way less physical efforts than socializing and usually is way more rewarding. So I turned more and more inwards. My parents were a bit worried about all this. Both are very social and to them introversion feels instinctively wrong. But as I was getting good grades in school and was not getting into trouble like many extrovert kids, they could not figure out how and on what to criticize me.

In today’s day and age, introversion is definitely not an advantage. It was way less so 20 years back. In school and college, extrovert students would volunteer for sports, drama, dances, singing, speeches etc and were favoured by teachers and us introvert’s parents received notes from school to the effect ‘Needs to be more social’. During job hunting, extroverts would dazzle in Group Discussion and Personal Interviews and introverts would struggle to get a word in edgewise. On work front, extroverts were at ease with meetings, conference calls, presentations and introverts sweated bullets every time they had to talk to more than 5 people. So by the time I reached 25, I cursed that day my eyes spotted ‘Dr No’. I thought if I hadn’t seen the book, I would have stayed ‘normal’ and would have been more at ease with societal norms.

Nature or Nurture?

But by the time I turned 35, I came across information about introversion which painted a vastly different picture. The research suggested that introversion/extraversion is directly linked to how our brain handles dopamine; the pleasure hormone. In some brains, dopamine released by a social activity will cause exhilaration while in other brains, the same activity, same dopamine could cause dejection. Exhilarated brains belong to extroverts and dejected ones to introverts.

So does that mean whether you will turn out to be a party animal or a wallflower is set in stone at birth? Not exactly. See, there is Temperament and then there is Personality. Temperament is our emotional and behavioural reaction to things happening around us. As per research, that is pretty much set at birth and does not change throughout your life. Your personality, on the other hand, can change over your lifetime based on your environment and life experiences.

For example, take introvert Bill Waterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes and introvert Barack Obama, 44^th POTUS. Bill shuns limelight assiduously while Barack rocks every stage he puts his foot on. Both would rather spend time alone reading a book but circumstances and life experiences have made Barack more at ease in social situations than Bill.

So I was wired for introversion from the very beginning. And it came with its challenges. So what? Complaining about that would be like complaining about the cards you are dealt in a poker game. These are the cards you have to play with; no way around it. You concentrate on the game, accurately calculate the odds, patiently wait for the right chances, display a little courage and bluff once in a while….after that, all you need is a little luck to succeed in the game.

Some introverts reading this would scoff how easy I am making all this sound. Believe me, I know it’s not. It will be a long, gruelling fight. But you are not without weapons either. You are thoughtful, observant, detail oriented, self-motivated, focused and completely at ease by yourself. This is one powerful beast. So go and grab the life by it’s horns, give it all you got and emerge victorious.

Then you can do what Bill, Barack and BachelorPython does every chance they get…reading a book. I recommend ‘Dr. No’ :)