How To Be Single!

As we celebrate summer coupling, writer Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi makes a case for the growing generation of singles and the comfort of solitude

- Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

Kyare jase? When will they leave? In our mother tongue, Gujarati, my mother often asked this question about a set of loathsome relatives who presided at our family lunches. When I was older, I felt this way about some of the people I’d been providential enough to date: When would they leave? This was not to disservice my love for their mind, spirit and body. I remained in thrall of their gift for throwing together a rocket salad with orange capriccio, their impressive erudition (nine languages and counting), a gift with the piano, how they painted in bold, flaring gestures and their ability to extend a reasoned argument for capital punishment.

SETTLING IN

Rather, my question of when they would leave was based on a growing awareness that my solitude was sacred, and I had to protect it: I was to be its greatest watchman, as I was to later make it my own best companion. This knowledge was postscript to too many failed affairs, where there was always blame to apportion—I’d been irritable, or distant, while they had their own misgivings. Locating a reason for the end was pointless. The recognition that we had, in our term together, exchanged something valuable, a black pearl of private knowledge, well, this was why we bruised our knees to fall in love.