Day out with Rishabh Birla

Rishabh, Aditi and I at Nutcracker

Meeting someone new for the first time brings with it a fear that's kind of unexplainable. They call it social anxiety. There's that nice feeling of wanting to meet people, wanting to connect, because you're generally so comfortable with being aloof that it comes as a nice change. But that nice feeling is grappling for space with this ever present scare that social expectations will not be met. 

And because of that, you'll be a letdown. 

A disappointment to add to people's endless list of disappointments. 

Like Rishabh puts it: "I've experienced a tapering off of closeness in my friendships... after a while, I see the excitement fizzle out of the people that seemed to connect well with me at first. It leaves me confused." 

I feel him. It's happened to me, too. There was a point earlier on when I met someone new, hit it off well, and then anxiously waited for when they would discover the "real me." Up until then was the 'honeymoon period' of our friendship, when my masking would be at its peak. 

Slowly as the mask unpeeled, the people went further and further away. 

Rishabh Birla is scheduled to meet us below our apartment at 10 am. We've planned a brunch Sunday, and want to get to know him and take him through our plans. Rishabh is smack on time, and calls up Aditi from downstairs saying he's arrived. We ask him to come upstairs. 

We sit in our living room getting to know each other. We're from the same school, both only children, and sons of medical professionals. Quite a bit of common ground to start off on. 

It's not until you've spent time in the presence of another person with a similar neurotype that you realise how often and long you've been masking. 

Aditi, Rishabh and I drive over to town without much of a plan. I know I want to shoot some stuff, some intro bits, a bit of conversation, but I'm also kind of nervous, not really knowing when's a good time to start. 

On our way, we talk lived experiences, anxieties, stims, navigating corporate life... a bunch of topics. We jump from one to the next to the next, without any pressure to segue. Rishabh seems way precocious. He has a rich vocabulary. He's well informed and, contrary to my expectation, not camera shy. He's happy to talk about anything, no judgments. 

I'm finding it both difficult and kind of nice to be completely myself. There's random silences in our conversations, especially when there's a scenery change, and all three of us take a pause, look out the window of the car, absorb everything in silence and come back to the moment. 

The more time you've masked, the more time it takes to become comfortable in your own skin again. 

We go to Nutcracker. I order a kathi roll, Aditi a mac & cheese and Rishabh a soya kheema pav. The food is good, and we're quite hungry, so we eat it all up real fast. We take pictures, and Rishabh and Aditi talk for a while about autistic discovery, expression and cognition. 

I'm recording it and thinking that's good content for the next vlog. 

It's very hot by the time we leave Nutcracker, and we're exhausted as soon as we step out of the cafe. We drive around town, to Malabar Hill and Napear sea road, looking for a garden or lawn to shoot some b-roll. But it's peak afternoon and we don't find any open parks. 

We decide to come back home and sit and talk over some chai and aamras. 

We discuss some more lived experiences - our time at school, college, friendships. He talks often about his friend from Mysore, who, when I ask if he considers her a friend or girlfriend, he smiles and says, "she's family." He emphasizes how lucky Aditi and I are to have found each other. We say we agree, and all three of us knock on wood at the same time. 

He's a keen reader of expressions. He looks at my face and says to Aditi, "He's thinking... right now... about what's going to happen?" I joke and say, "That's my default state of mind... what's going to happen?" We all laugh. 

Then talking about people close to us, Rishabh mentions his nanaji (maternal grandfather). He talks about a time when the both of them took brooms and mops and spent a day scrubbing clean their family home. His eyes tear up reliving that time. Aditi talks about her dadi (paternal grandmother), and breaks down too. 

She says about me that I'm so hyper-perceptive, I know she's going to cry ten minutes before the tears start rolling down her face. I say about her that soon after a short spell of crying, she's in such a good mood she'll prance about the apartment like a little rabbit. We laugh again. 

For some reason I'm a bit overwhelmed, and feel my eyes moistening up. I mention how autistics perceive time teleologically; the past, present and future all meshing together, and Rishabh agrees. He says there's times when a past trauma plays itself over in his head like it were happening right then and there. 

The similarities in lived experiences are eerie.

At 5 pm, Rishabh has to go back. He has a wedding function to attend. As we're dropping him off near his bike, he says, "जाने का मन तो नही कर रहा पर जाना पड़ेगा। (I don't feel like going but I have to.)" We smile and exchange hugs. 

He wears his helmet and says, "I'll reach home and text you guys." 

Twenty minutes later, he does. 

The anxieties of the morning have been placated. Now there's a silent, heavy feeling, like a big, dark rain-filled cloud looming overhead. On some level there's a grouse - if only understanding social cues weren't everything, and people weren't written off so easily. On a different level, there's a quiet appreciation - a hushed gratitude - for the way we are. 

It's confounding. Our intense experiences and expressions, our singular interests, our proclivity for fairness, justness. Would I give it all up to have inclusion? To have a brain that finds its peace, its place in conformity? 

I wish I could say no, but honestly, I don't know. What I do know is meeting similar neurotypes puts things a little bit more into context. A small piece of a larger puzzle presents itself. And you like the picture that's beginning to form.

To stereotype it would be to say we're expert coders, and Silicon Valley geniuses, and stock market wizards and engineering marvels. But we are none of that. 

We're plain and simple dreamers. A complex mixed-breed of artists, anthropologists, experience scientists and self-advocates working and wondering our way through a hard-to-crack world.

The type that doesn't fit into any of society's ready-to-serve moulds.

And neither do we. Which, perhaps, explains the social anxiety.