JOIN US'I love hanging out with myself'
For most performers like me, the weekend is when people around us relax and we are on the job, hosting some events and entertaining people. When others party, I work. My ‘weekends’ often turn out to be from Monday to Wednesday, when I sit back and have the last laugh while people around are frantically trying to settle into the new week filled with fresh targets and deadlines. This is my life and it has been like this for 10 years.
But when I do manage to get a normal weekend away from work, it is absolute craziness. I have just so much to do — it’s not funny. I get out of the house and go to a friend’s place. Getting this sacred day is rare and I don’t want to realise that the geyser’s not working or my toaster’s broken... We don’t do parties outside. It’s more of get-togethers at home, fun dinners and house parties.
My weekends have different things packed in them. I love going to a place called Kamshep with my childhood friend Samir Kochhar. But before that, we grab a few sandwiches on the way and only then hit the road. Other weekends, I love hanging out with myself. Hibernation is heaven for me. Alone time is something I really enjoy. There are so many people that one talks with and there is so much movement constantly that being boring and just sitting in one place would be my idea of a break.
A perfect weekend for me means having a fun Friday night that ends by 1.45 am after which I’m in bed and asleep by 2.20 am. When I wake up Saturday morning, it would be to perfect silence, where the ‘bai’ (househelp) isn’t around asking me to make difficult decisions like what to make. Then I like to read headlines over a cup of coffee, followed by reading interesting articles on Flipboard. I spend a few hours with the plants that I’m growing and I love just sitting and looking at them.
I usually don’t have a heavy breakfast, but head out to a friend’s place for lunch and later. The afternoon would be about chit-chatting and binge-watching TV shows. I have a lot of friends from all over and the chats often range from fun to trivial to philosophical ones. Evenings again would be about being with people I love, playing board games and just doing anything equating to ‘quality time’ spent.
While for many like corporate professionals, the weekends are about ‘wanting to see the world’, going out and ‘getting out of the cubicle’, I mostly always go ‘let’s get into the cubicle’ and ‘let’s not go out’. There are some weekends when I am outside with friends at places like Goa, Kashmir or Singapore. And those trips always include funny interactions like this one time when a group of my friends and I took a couple of hours to decide where to eat. I love the art of furniture and believe that I would have been a great furniture designer. I love interiors and architecture. I also love playing video games.
When I’m travelling, I love walking around. If I’ve been for an event abroad, I try to stay for a few more days to ‘feel the place’. I’m interested in the history of places and make a point to explore them, when I’m at a new place. I also enjoy cooking food while camping like pot roasts and playing the djmebe. Though I know I’m not great at it, this is what makes me want to play it all the more. My weekends also comprise time with dear ones like my girlfriend Vaishali, where we chat about life. She loves discussing all the issues in our country, just when I’m enjoying my meal. We chat and chill around. We often end up going to my mother’s place where we hang out and have lunch. The meeting always begins with how we don’t meet enough. Not sure if this happens with everyone, but my mother feels that I don’t work at all.
Whenever she calls me, she asks where I am and I tell her that I’m in Bengaluru or Kolkata. So she thinks that I don’t do any work and just hang out in different cities through the year. And whenever I say ‘I’m tired’, she asks me ‘By doing what?’ I’m going to make a montage shot of me throwing up, blacking out and fainting, so that she finally believes that I work too. My mother also gives me chores like getting her washing machine fixed and I always manage to worsen the situation. I’ve told her that we should move it to the hall and tell others it’s a curio. We have random conversations, which go nowhere often.
Then there are other weekends, where friends come over. It’s not large groups but around five to six people. They are a collection of people, who are all performers, so I forever get free shows. It’s like I have a free ticket and I just sit back and enjoy it all. I find that the most funniest conversations in my life are at those times and it’s sad that I’m never able to replicate them.”
A few of my favourite things
My record player
An old 1960s design couch
Plants at home
My Mickey Mouse coffee mug
The only photo album which has my baby pictures