Silence is my Sanctuary

Can I be honest pls ? surviving a world that demands extroversion on demand is an extreme sport. Between the endless pings, the forced cheerfulness of group chats, and a planet that seems to equate volume with value, being an introvert can sometimes feel like trying to read a book inside a roller coaster.

We live on a loud, demanding turf where everyone expects you to be "on." Always available, always responsive, and ready with a sparkling opinion. There are so many times ( and I have said this earlier in my blogs it is a curse being available always ). So many times I just want to channel my inner Bridget Jones, pull the duvet over your head, and mutter something incoherent about wanting to live in a cave.

If my last piece on the ROI of Doing Nothing was about the radical act of reclaiming your time, this one is about the radical act of reclaiming your space.

In that earlier post, I talked about the joy of being "useless”, of hopping on the back of a two-wheeler just to feel the wind, rather than treating every moment as a task to be optimized. But once you’ve cleared that space in your schedule, the next challenge is finding the actual sanctuary where you can hear yourself think. Believe me finding a corner on this loud, spinning planet where your soul isn't "performing" is harder than finding a parking spot on a weekend at a typical Bengaluru Mall

For me on a normal day, it is usually the sacred, unapologetic sanctuary of 2:00 AM or early mornings at 5:00 AM. There is an absolute magic to the middle of the night or just at break of dawn when the rest of the world finally passes out. The phone stops vibrating, the internet slows its frantic roll, and the air feels lighter. It’s that glorious window where you can finally hear your own thoughts think, unbothered by emails, expectations, or the general chaos of the day.

We need this quiet not just to rest, but to process. Solitude is the grace period where the glitter finally settles back down to the bottom, letting you see clearly again.

For others, the sanctuary can be geographical. It’s a particular stretch of beach back home in Neil Island, Andaman where I sat side-by-side with a friend, wrapped in comfortable silence, staring at the sunset without feeling the desperate need to narrate every single second. (Because true friendship means being able to sit in total quiet without awkwardly wondering if the other person is judging your breathing). Or maybe, for the mountain souls, it’s the quiet cradle of the hills where the air is crisp, the cell reception happily dies, and the majestic peaks that you can talk to and make all your corporate world look ridiculously small.

That need for quiet follows us everywhere, even into how we choose to unwind. While the rest of the world treats Friday night as an open invitation to squeeze into a jam-packed, bass-thumping pub where you have to scream your order over a remix of an already loud song, I’ll take a quiet evening at home every single time. Give me a peaceful dinner on the couch with a hot plate of comfort food, some rich dal makhani or a simple bowl of khichdi or even my all time fav maggie where the only soundtrack is the ceiling fan, rather than a crowded venue where people are trading LinkedIn profiles over overpriced food and still getting bored

Of late, my sanctuary has also been daydreaming . I zone out during a painfully long conversation, staring blankly at a wall while my brain quietly packs its bags and heads off to Neil Island mentally

We need these spaces. We need places where our energy isn't being billed out by the hour.

Solitude isn't loneliness; it's the oxygen mask we put on before we have to re-enter the circus. It’s telling the loud, demanding planet, "Hey, you can have the rest of the day, but this specific two-foot radius, or this two o'clock / five am belongs entirely to me."

So, if you’ve been feeling frayed around the edges lately, go find your corner. Turn off the notifications, brew your fourth cup of chai, and let the noise fade into static.

After all, even Batman needs his cave. I just prefer mine with a better views and zero villains.