2026-05-06
I am dreading going back to India because I am bored of people there
Disclaimer
Main
- I am dreading going back to India
- I think an important part of the problem is just that when I'm travelling, I'm actually curious what is going on inside people's minds, because they're new to me and from a new culture.
- Whereas with people in Delhi and Bangalore, my curiosity is completely dead. If I meet yet another casual sex-maxxing corporate slave I will seppuku, and if I met yet another young hindu conservative making-money-for-family-type my first reaction is to wish I lived in a wild west where I could take out a revolver from my pocket and point it at their head.
- Or even like, if a random waitress in Bangalore smiles at me, I have already spoken to some waitresses in depth so I already have some sense of what their lives are like and how real or fake the smile is. Whereas if a random waitress in Moscow smiles at me, I genuinely don't know that well what their life is actually like.
- I like travel because it exposes me to people who are doing things besides fucking engineering and medical and banking and finance and corporate tech job and whatnot.
- It's like, I recently heard the most insane story from some guy at a bar. And then I remembered, how did I even get into this place. And I was like, okay this other person at this completely other place I travelled to bought these clothes for me, hence the bouncer let me in. And then I was like, how did I meet that guy. And then I remembered I visited that place to meet this other person because we had previously met at a festival. And like, I actually love this sort of life. (I've removed all the identifying details here, for privacy reasons.)
- You end up drawing very interesting connections between people across cultures when you do stuff like this. Talking to such people satisifies my insatiable desire for novelty in life, and most other sources of novelty dry up very fast, except talking to people.
Conclusion
- I don't know, I think I should put more effort to meet strangers in Bangalore or Delhi who are outside my usual circle. You technically can meet people from literally any state in India, from a variety of professions, and across socioeconomic classes, in a place like Bangalore. I have done a bit of this, but perhaps I should do a lot more?
Side Note
- I genuinely don't get what it is like to be these people. If merely looking at these people is enough to make me depressed, imagine what it would be like for me to actually Be them. I don't know man, I think being a bit neuroatypical allows you to walk through walls you don't even realise exist, until you talk to the normies.
- I often comment that I suck at networking. And like, maybe this is true for networking with ambitious busy people. Especially ambitious busy people who are corporate slaves themselves.
- But when it comes to networking with randos, I think I'm actually fairly decent. Like, if someone sets me a challenge like "go obtain a chinese SIM card in black market" or "get an autograph from a local cricketer" or something like this, I actually think I won't do too bad at it. I'm sure there's people better at me at such tasks too, but yeah. I think this is what I mean by "walking through walls." For instance, one of the first things I would do to get a chinese SIM card is probably go visit some tourist hostels in Bangkok and talk to some Chinese people about it. Or for getting autograph from a cricketer, my first attempt is probably to go find a canteen or store near a cricket ground and just start approaching random people there. To me these just sound like obvious things you should try, but I know some people who won't try stuff like this because of some invisible wall they see.
- If this is an actual advantage I do have, maybe I should be aware of it and use it more intentionally. I can imagine this skill being useful for dating, and I can also imagine this skill being useful for extracting information from people. (Both of these seem like goals I have nowadays.)
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